When the song kicks off in earnest around the thirty second mark, it’s with a riff that makes up for its lack of inventiveness with undeniable infectiousness. When the album’s title track begins the record with tribal percussions, chants, and guitarist Marc Rizzo going nuts on a pitch shifter pedal, one could be forgiven for thinking “Been there, done that.” Just wait. Not that Cavalera and company do very much here differently than they have in the past (with a notable exception, but we’ll circle back around to that momentarily). I don’t know if the band’s eleventh full-length, Ritual, will change that or not, but I do know this: the album is, from start to finish, Soulfly’s best to date. At no point has the project proved itself to be something about which people would have cared if not for mastermind Max Cavalera’s tenure in Sepultura. Soulfly have made some good albums (2005’s Dark Ages), some bad albums (2000’s Primitive), and, mostly, albums that are somewhere in-between (pretty much everything else). Even as some who has brought himself to care about Soulfly, it’s hard to fault Vince, and others who share his feelings, for their stance.