Jatasura - Negative Creep - Song Review - Nirvana cover in the style of Slayer and Sepultura, from Rome, Italy
Today we are featuring the Rome, Italy-based band Jatasura with their latest Nirvana cover "Negative Creep", which was released on the 13th of January, 2022.
As a metal artist and composer myself, I pretty much have an idea about what "writing original music" or "making a cover song" means, together with its challenges. First of all, I always respected those bands such as Metallica, a perfect example with the way they approached cover projects in their careers, dressed those original songs in a Metallica costume. Meanwhile, almost all songs in Garage Inc. (1999) became better songs than the originals.
I knew Jatasura for some time now and remember the band with their groovy nu-metal origins and digital home studio recording sound design. This time, it was a cover project, and finally, a great chance where we get to see his pure vision and creativity in a challenging task. I know from my experience, making a proper cover song can get much more complicated than writing original songs from scratch, not everybody can musically beat the original.
My first impression of the song was highly positive. First I listened to Jatasura - Negative Creep today while having a smoke on the balcony. After the first listen, I simply asked myself was this song really a cover? It's strange because I've never heard of anything like this before. When I got back to my laptop, I searched for Nirvana Negative Creep, and started to give it a listen, then realized the reason why I was highly positive from the beginning, but briefly, it simply was a great experience.
The original Negative Creep is quite a performance-based song with so much ugliness and thrash in it, a typical performance-based Nirvana approach. Kurt Cobain plays the superstar with his massive energy, solid character, and attitude together with his punctuating lyrics. I loved the raw energy and the simplicity of the idea above everything else, you listen to it once and this grinding feeling stays with you.
Jatasura, on the other hand, took the job seriously from the beginning by picking a song from bulletproof times of a mainstream genre definer band. In their version, the song immediately makes an impact on the listener with its right tempo, energy level, and giant, fat guitars. The riff works perfectly and brings it to somewhere you'd never expect to hear, an artistic section where it gets lower in dynamics before hitting you the actual punch.
Moreover, the way Bruno turned the verse into a Slayer classic was the moment where I fell in love with the track. I felt like listening to the best times of Slayer with fat nu-metal guitars and a modern sound, accompanied by a talented vocalist who isn't copying Tom Araya, but doing something badass instead. This was the first time I enjoyed so much of Jatasura vocals on this section so far, I think this is one of his strong vocal personalities, that he should note somewhere down.
Lastly, the song ends with a cinematic experience where you hear strong influences such as electronic beats and ambient effects from The Prodigy, Brazilian Metal, Groove Metal, Sepultura, System of a Down, and Deftones. It flows so naturally with the necessary amount of energy, excitement, richness, climate, vision, and originality, fits my "making a respected cover song description" perfectly. The Visionaire shows great potential with his intelligence in this project, musically one of the best turnouts I ever listened to.
On the other hand of the coin, I think the project is quite fantastic with its musical side, and weak with its technical at the same time. Feels like Jatasura moved in a direction that I didn't enjoy the most, in terms of sound design and mix. First of all the song sounds overly digital in general, this sound to me is a clear home studio recording sound, and I don't enjoy listening to it very much. When I played Jatasura - Negative Creep right after finishing Nirvana - Negative Creep, it became very obvious that you don't like what you hear at first.
When I take all these into account, I'd like to say that I've had a great time listening to Jatasura's Nirvana cover, Negative Creep. Fantastic songwriting, respected approach, and originality value where Slayer's thrash meets Sepultura groove, with one weakness, overly processed sound. This song would easily be a hit with the necessary sound and production, but still a great one. Strongly recommended if you are into Sepultura or Slayer. Thanks for reading.
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