Sepultura - Soulfly - Back to the Bloody Roots

Traveling on trains. Getting beat up by cops. Sleeping behind the stage. It’s part of growing up. It’s part of the nature of this stuff. If you don’t have that kind of background, you can’t be a band like us.

(Max Cavalera, recalling Sepultura's early days)

Among extreme metal bands, Sepultura have played the role of innovators and experimenters, without ever giving up the violence and power of their sound. They embodied the need to move away from clichés, drinking from the well of their own local tradition. The inclusion of folk elements had already been legitimized, among others, by metal stars Metallica, on albums like “…And Justice For All” (1988) and “Metallica” (1991), but this time there's a substantial difference: Sepultura are a Brazilian band, so their local musical tradition is very different from that of a US band. The return to their roots, then, means turning metal extremism into something exotic in its own way, which recalls not so much a romantic journey to some faraway place, but a brutal tribal conflict: forget the honeymoon to be remembered nostalgically on winter evenings — we're closer to the gruesome territory of “Cannibal Holocaust”, the infamous ultra-violent film from 1980.

This, however, isn't the only reason Sepultura became such an important band, one whose albums are worth revisiting and whose story is worth retracing more than 35 years after their formation. In their major albums, they push guitar virtuosity into the background in favour of rhythm, or rather the groove, the “feel” of the songs. More than harmonic and melodic development, the true counterpart to the groove becomes the menacing, unsettling atmosphere that permeates many of their greatest, most memorable tracks. It's not dazzling speed that stuns on first listen, nor sheer sonic violence in itself: many compositions move at medium tempos, built around devastating riffs that exploit complex rhythmic figures (often polyrhythms) and flaunt numerous, disorienting elements borrowed from other musical styles.

Making extensive use of studio effects, psychedelic touches, ethnic injections, and dark, tragic narratives, Sepultura wrote some of the masterpieces of new metal, which only by sheer chance ended up not coinciding with nu-metal. Even more surprising, in putting forward this warlike, innovative music, the band would go on to sell something like twenty million copies worldwide, finding success even in secondary markets like Australia, France and Indonesia, besides their native Brazil. Retracing their story means capturing a unique moment in the evolution of heavy metal, and one of the genre's last moments of worldwide fame. To understand how some kids from Belo Horizonte conquered the world, though, we inevitably have to go back in time, to an Orwellian 1984.

Two very angry brothers: from Belo Horizonte to Roadrunner Records.

You wake up lying on wet ground

Worms corrode your flesh

Pick up your own eyes

Watch your septic end

To shout at someone and not to be heard

The silence supports the paranoia

To die crying, this is my fate

The life I choose

(From "R.I.P. (Rest In Pain)")

Max and Igor Cavalera were born into a well-off family that grew poorer over time. They are the sons of a model and an Italian diplomat. When their father dies, the two brothers process their grief by forming a band. On that tragic day, Max listens for the first time to Black Sabbath's "Vol.4" (1978): it's an imprint that can be recognized throughout much of the band's output. Having chosen an appropriately grim name, Sepultura (meaning "grave" in Portuguese), they try to follow in the footsteps of the aforementioned Black Sabbath along with fellow countrymen-turned-influences like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Motorhead and Judas Priest, without snubbing the virtuosity of Van Halen or the theatrics of Australia's Ac/Dc. Their life changes, however, after hearing Venom: it's a revelation that forces a change of course, in pursuit of speed, aggression and the wildest possible power.

Having set aside the less violent bands, they discover the extremism of Hellhammer and the experimentation of Celtic Frost, the brutal German thrash-metal school of Kreator and Sodom, and of course the great American scene of Slayer, Megadeth and Exodus. The omission of Metallica from interviews doesn't seem like a mere coincidence. There's also the influence of the local metal scene, starting with the first album in Brazilian metal history, "Stress" (1982) by the band of the same name, as well as Sagrado Inferno and Dorsal Atlantica. Had they limited themselves to imitation, though, they would never have turned their furious, late-adolescent music into an international phenomenon. The turning point, as we'll see further on, is a shift in perspective that focuses attention on the interplay between power and groove, in search of the heaviest possible sound. While in the States it's the likes of Machine Head, Pantera and White Zombie who embody this quest for heaviness - with an important contribution from more peripheral bands such as Prong and that rhythm-obsessed outfit Helmet - in the rest of the world it's Sepultura who lead the charge. The road to success, however, is still a long one.

In the original lineup, Max Cavalera plays guitar, his brother Igor handles the drums, singer Wagner Lamounier takes care of vocals, while the bassist is Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. Lamounier, who doesn't last long in the band, carves out his own place in Brazilian metal history by founding Sarcófago, a brutal thrash-black-metal band active from 1985 to 2000.

Max Cavalera decides to become the new singer, leaving lead guitar duties to Jairo Guedes, who is destined to last barely a couple of years... The instability surrounding the guitarist's role, which will only be resolved in 1987 with the arrival of Andreas Kisser, is probably what pushes the band to imagine more rhythm-driven songs, centered on its true heart: the two Cavalera brothers. The result is music that often pushes lead guitar out of the spotlight, relying instead on the talents of singer Max Cavalera - a cross between a tribal warrior and a schizophrenic - and above all on the dense, earth-shaking percussion of his brother Igor.

Their debut comes alongside fellow countrymen Overdose with the split album Bestial Devastation/Seculo XX (1985), on which Sepultura take the first half. It's a set of five songs in the vein of the most chaotic Venom, barely 16 minutes of rudimentary sonic extremism steeped in obligatory satanism.

The style is refined, though not by much, on the debut album, Morbid Visions (1986), one of the most extreme records of the period, with devastating moments like "Troops Of Doom" and "War". The limits of this music, besides its considerable debts to Venom and Celtic Frost, lie in a creeping monotony and in a still-rudimentary production that renders a crude amalgam of black-metal and death-metal. One of the weakest points are the lyrics, translated from Brazilian Portuguese into rough, broken English. This is the last album with Jairo Guedz, who leaves in 1987, replaced by the aforementioned Andreas Kisser.

Given the modest success of the single "Troops Of Doom", the band decides to relocate to São Paulo, a megalopolis offering far more musical opportunities. Having shed the Venom-style black-metal component, thanks to Kisser's arrival Sepultura rediscover their heavy-metal soul, weaving more melodic elements into their new songs.

The second album, Schizophrenia (1987), hits the accelerator like never before, brimming with brutality and spectacular instrumental assaults, becoming an example of thrash-death-metal in line with what American Slayer and German Sodom are playing in the same period. The new songs, from the feverish "From The Past Comes The Storms" to the long, instrumental "Inquisition Symphony", not to mention the heart-stopping finale offered by "R.I.P. (Rest In Pain)", are all displays of violence and speed that have little to envy in the most vicious thrash and death-metal classics.

Such a display of power, bolstered by the band's ambition and tenacity, doesn't go unnoticed: although at first the band struggles to perform in the United States, the album is distributed internationally by the influential Roadrunner Records. The enthusiasm is so great that the label signs them without ever having seen them play live. From Belo Horizonte to São Paulo, and then to the States: it's an unstoppable rise. The satanic rock'n'roll rampages of their early days have given way to a more sophisticated thrash-death-metal, in line with young Americans' thirst for sonic violence. Just two albums were enough to earn them a place in the big leagues of the music world, a feat that is more unique than rare for a South American metal band. Having broken into the world's leading music market, though, they can aim even higher, and instead of chasing the great European thrash-death-metal bands, Sepultura can start building a sound entirely their own.

Bloody Roots: Sepultura's New Metal

Nonconformity in my inner self

Only I guide my inner self

(from "Inner Self")

The new financial resources guaranteed by Roadrunner finally allow for a more polished production, entrusted to an extreme-metal star like Scott Burns, a Midas touch already at work with Death's "Leprosy" (1988) and Obituary's "Slowly We Rot" (1989), later destined to become death-metal's key man thanks to his work with Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Cancer, Atheist, Gorguts, Malevolent Creation, Napalm Death, Suffocation and many others. Burns agrees to work for a relatively low fee, two thousand dollars, intrigued by the chance to visit Brazil. Max Cavalera flies to New York to negotiate with Roadrunner, agreeing on a budget of eight thousand dollars, which will end up not being honored in the slightest. No matter: this album is the calling card that turns Sepultura into one of the best-selling metal bands around.

Beneath The Remains (1989) is one of the classics of thrash-death metal. The manifesto track is “Inner Self,” with its stentorian, cadenced march, slow enough to create a menacing, claustrophobic aura. Igor Cavalera, aided by the greater space in the arrangement, gets to decorate the rhythm with machine-gun bursts and acrobatics, following the model set by Dave Lombardo on Slayer's “South Of Heaven” (1988). His brother Max, no longer needing to cram as many words as possible into lightning-fast passages, begins here to develop a vocal style that will take him ever further from thrash-metal, embracing with growing conviction the rhythmic, guttural dimension of death-metal.

The other pivotal track is “Mass Hypnosis,” notable for its tempo shifts and unusual stylistic range: it even features a long solo from Kisser that nods to the English heavy-metal school, sandwiched between hardcore-punk pummeling and Max Cavalera's menacing death-metal roar. The psychedelic and Middle Eastern echoes that surface in “Sarcastic Existence,” along with the increasingly complex and spectacular grooves Igor Cavalera deploys on tracks like “Lobotomy” and “Primitive Future,” speak of a band searching for a sound of its own within the crowded thrash-death-metal landscape. “Stronger Than Hate” features, among others, Kelly Shaefer (Atheist) and John Tardy (Obituary): proof of the band's closeness to the death-metal scene then exploding, and confirmation of the strategic advantage gained from distribution through Roadrunner Records.

I see the new millennium tribal warfare

I see them blind sheep going nowhere

The new exodus, just like they say

I see the crown of thorns, you know i was there

This is the Prophecy

(from "Prophecy")

Having just left Sepultura in 1997, Max Cavalera founded Soulfly in Arizona, surrounding himself for the debut with numerous prominent nu-metal artists: it was a chance to move past the split from his original band, but also to process the grief over the death of his stepson. This dual need comes through in Soulfly (1998), explosively kicked off by "Eye For An Eye" (featuring Bell and Cazares of Fear Factory) and "Bleed" (featuring Fred Durst and DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit), two blockbusters that expand on Roots's vocabulary without betraying its premises.

Max is fired up by an expressive urgency that leads him to revisit his idea of tribal music with "Tribe", "Bumba", "Bumbklaatt", while also proving capable of a far-from-obvious blend such as "First Commandment" (featuring Chino Moreno) and "Quilombo" (featuring Benji Webbe and DJ Lethal).

It's therefore easy to consider Soulfly the true follow-up to Roots, its natural heir: if Sepultura's thrash-death-groove-metal already found common ground with nu-metal and Brazilian tribal music, it's an easy step to graft onto it fragments of rap, scratching, ethnic instruments, drum'n'bass rhythms. What's more, heavy metal no longer even needs to be the sole, unchallenged protagonist, as shown by the mournful instrumental "Soulfly", an ethnic, melancholic psych-rock piece, or the samba of "Umbabarauma", borrowed from Jorge Ben Jor.

In no time, Soulfly becomes a vessel into which Max Cavalera pours every kind of sonic experiment. With Primitive (2000), things start over again from Roots, which echoes through "Back To The Primitive" and "Mulambo", without neglecting to reaffirm the bond with nu-metal on "Jumpdafuckup" (with Corey Taylor on vocals), a song torn between desolation and rage.

Among the oddities are the dub interlude on "Bring It", the melancholic, minimal coda of "Son Song" (featuring Sean Lennon), the hardcore-punk elements of "Terrorist" backed by the acid-tongued vocals of Slayer's Tom Araya, and the ethno-chillout of "Soulfly II", a sort of Latin American reworking of Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan". Closing things out, "Flyhigh" offers the most eccentric oddity of all, split between pop vocal melodies and the usual killer explosions.

Even though it feels like a catalogue of juxtapositions, not all of them equally successful or well thought out, and without that sense of unity that made Roots's exploration coherent and in-depth, both the Soulfly debut and especially the following Primitive deserve credit for fearlessly tearing down genre boundaries, beating many nu-metal artists at their own game of contamination and contrast.

The following 3 (2002), despite two bone-crushing anthems like "Downstroy" and "Seek'n'Strike", pulls back a great deal on unpredictability, except for the lengthy "Tree Of Pain", which juxtaposes noir trip-hop with the furious outbursts we know so well, without, however, bothering to make the transition feel like more than a mere assemblage.

Prophecy (2004) dares much more, essentially the product of a totally different band due to numerous lineup changes, yet still firmly led by Max Cavalera. The most spiritual work in the discography is also influenced by a period the frontman spent in Serbia.

This time numerous styles are thrown into the mix, ready to be wrapped in the usual overwhelming, devastating blend of thrash-death-metal and groove-metal. That said, when the crossover element is almost entirely set aside, as on "Defeaut U", little remains beyond sheer overpowering drive. Better to hear "Mars" and its armored charge dissolve into an ancestral psychedelia, or "I Believe" let a new-age-tinged litany surge into groove-metal explosions.

On "Moses", a collaboration with Serbian band Eyesburn, reggae and even brass instruments come into play. What makes Prophecy an album on par with Primitive is its unstoppable determination to use metal as a lingua franca to bring together and interpret the most disparate styles. A certain disorientation remains while listening, due to the usual succession of very different styles, but the album's spiritual dimension serves as a modest unifying thread.

Once again tormented by grief, after the death of his 8-month-old nephew and the murder of his brother-in-arms Dimebag Darrell (of Pantera), Max Cavalera vents his rage with Dark Ages (2005).

Far removed from the creative climate of early Soulfly, but also from the new-age spiritualism of Prophecy, the album bets everything on sheer power. As a vocalist, Cavalera proves to be at the top of his game, while as a composer he doesn't shy away from brutal solutions that bring him forcefully back toward thrash, death, and even black metal. The extremist slaughter of "Carved Inside", the greed of "Bleak", the killer speed of "Frontlines", the tormented spiritualism of "Innerspirit" make up a bleak picture, turning the once-eccentric juxtapositions into a vehicle for Cavalera to express a moment of personal crisis.

Too bad it's a path that leads to Conquer (2008), an album that returns to the thrash-death-metal of early Sepultura, greatly scaling back the injections of other genres that had made Soulfly something unique.

That Max Cavalera is the same histrionic frontman on tracks like "For Those About To Rot," screaming and thrashing about with undying rage, is by now a given that needs no further proof; proof arrives anyway, right on schedule, with Omen (2010), an album of barely 40 minutes which at least features Greg Puciato of Dillinger Escape Plan and Tommy Victor of Prong trying to bring something new to a formula that's by now all too recognizable.

The hope, with Enslaved (2012), is that newcomers Tony Campos (of Asesino) and especially David Kinkade (of Borknagar) might reignite the appetite for change. Aside from a move back toward death metal, partly via the bestial vocals of guest singer Travis Ryan (of Cattle Decapitation) on "World Scum," there's little here that sounds fresh — not just for metal in general, but even just for the band itself.

When Max Cavalera vents his rage in Portuguese on "Plata O Plomo," the album harks straight back to the old climate of violence and contamination, simply injected with a more visceral brutality.

With his son Zyon Cavalera now on drums, Savages (2013) also features his other son, Igor (yes, named after his uncle), on vocals. Beyond the family reunion, it's worth flagging "El Comegente" above all, a horror-show of a track running over 8 minutes that closes with a bleak instrumental dance.

Archangel (2015) is no less violent, but offers decidedly more gothic moments ("Sodomites," "Archangel," "Titans"), while the eleventh studio chapter, Ritual (2018) — alongside guest spots from Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, Ross Dolan of Immolation and Mark Damon of Pretty Reckless — does little more than rehash the same ideas as the previous ten albums.

Soulfly's twelfth studio album, delayed more than once, is called Totem and arrives after the departure of longtime guitarist Marc Rizzo (in the band since 2004), replaced by Arthur Rizk. It's hard, perhaps even unreasonable, to expect surprises, and indeed none arrive. For those who don't particularly care about the twists of Max Cavalera's career, one spin of the closing, unusually long "Spirit Animal" might suffice: almost ten minutes of sonic onslaught that opens with a climax straight out of the "Chaos A.D." era, dusts off some hardcore-punk urges, flares up into a thrash-death-metal solo, slows into a monstrous mechanical sludge, and finally closes out with a long coda that softens into melancholy.

By the time of the thirteenth album, the Soulfly project led by Max Cavalera and his sons, with old and new collaborators in tow, tries to bring some order to a path now heading toward its thirtieth anniversary. That means Chama blends the groove metal of the early days, with its fitting contaminations, with various industrial, death-metal and hardcore-punk detours, plus more traditionally Brazilian interludes.

It's a journey, enlivened too by some notable guests, that won't fail to excite die-hard metalheads, starting with the armored, mechanical instrumental nightmare of "Indigenous Inquisition." We're back to full-throated war anthems ("Storm the Gates," "Nihilist," "No Pain = No Power"), driven by an urgency that's genuinely admirable given the frontman's age ("Ghenna," "Favela/Dystopia"). To slow things down a bit you have to wait for "Black Hole Scum," a title-referencing gut-wrenching sludge track, and for the predictable ethnic-instrumental interlude "Soulfly XIII." But it's the title track that closes out the apocalyptic assault, again in the territory of Sepultura's masterpiece Roots — the song that most effectively fuses the brutal and the spiritual, and in doing so also calls back to the original nature of the Soulfly project, one that's grown a bit frayed and inconsistent over the decades.

If Soulfly's first two albums expanded on the multifaceted sonic universe of Roots, and if Prophecy gave more explicit proof of the project's spirituality, then after the dark and violent Dark Ages the band failed to keep up its drive for change, often reduced to simply quoting itself. Sales figures, remarkable for the debut — which racked up half a million copies in the States alone — were halved for Primitive and dropped to 200,000 for 3. While Prophecy lifted things back up to 275,000 copies sold, what follows is a debacle in purely commercial terms that ought to give the band pause too.

Appendix: the Cavalera brothers' other projects

Beyond Sepultura and Soulfly, the two Cavaleras have taken part in numerous other side projects, minor for various reasons. First and foremost, in terms of success: none of the other experiments drew an audience comparable to that of their two main bands. They're also almost all one-off experiments. Case in point: Max Cavalera's first minor project is called Nailbomb, teaming the Brazilian up with Los Angeles native Alex Newport for the sole debut Point Blank (1994) and for — literally — a single concert, documented on Proud To Commit Commercial Suicide (1995). It's industrial-thrash-metal with strong hardcore-punk leanings, which at times suggests what Sepultura might have sounded like had they crossed paths with Fear Factory or Godflesh ("Vai Toma No Cú," "24 Hour Bullshit").

Another project, Killer Be Killed, produced only Killer Be Killed (2014), an album with all the hallmarks of a supergroup effort destined to be a one-time-only experience. With a lineup featuring Greg Puciato (vocals, guitar) of Dillinger Escape Plan, our own Max Cavalera (vocals, guitar), Troy Sanders (bass) of Mastodon and Dave Elitch (drums and percussion) of Mars Volta, it's obvious these are musicians far too busy to follow through with a second record. The fact that, thanks to its diversity and curious hybrids, it holds up well against the best of Soulfly remains a detail only die-hard fans will appreciate.

The only project that seems to have staying power is Cavalera Conspiracy, the collaboration between Max and Igor Cavalera born out of the two brothers' reconciliation after ten years apart. Since 2006 it has produced 4 albums: from the return to the original thrash-death-metal sound found on Inflikted (2008), through the more hardcore-punk-leaning Blunt Force Trauma (2011) and the brutality of Pandemonium (2014), arriving finally at Psychosis (2017), which even dredges up some ideas from the Nailbomb project on tracks like "Hellfire."

Out of the two brothers' reconciliation came a band that ideally returns to the days of Arise and Chaos A.D., picking up the musical thread right where it had been left off.

There's no doubt the two Cavaleras share a bond forged by their long years together in Sepultura and by having grown up, both as people and as musicians, side by side. That said, while on Inflikted we find tracks that could easily be mistaken for Sepultura songs from fifteen years earlier, like "Terrorize" and "Black Ark," by the second album you're already left wondering what this new musical venture can offer that Sepultura and Soulfly haven't already thoroughly explored.

In the same years that what remains of the original Sepultura lineup announces an inevitable end to its career — who knows how definitive — the two most famous brothers of Brazilian metal decide to simply rename themselves Cavalera in order to release new versions of Bestial Devastation, Morbid Visions (both 2023) and Schizophrenia (2024). The operation is somewhere between a tribute to themselves and a treat for die-hard fans, the kind of thing it's hard to judge by normal critical standards. Obviously, there's no trace of the youthful recklessness, seasoned by a still semi-amateur production, but the tracks gain in power, the lyrics are easier to follow, and certain instrumental elements come through more clearly.

While for Bestial Devastation and Morbid Visions the operation retains some justification given the rough-and-ready nature of those early releases, the third and hopefully last re-recording experiment, Schizophrenia, feels more like a pretext: the original may not have been flawless, but it was still perfectly enjoyable in 2024 in its original, raw, brutal form. What's more, at this point it's unclear who the whole operation is even aimed at, since the band's later albums are the most celebrated and widely regarded as essential: fair enough for the first EP and album, but this second full-length easily invites suspicion that it's really about cashing in once more on the Sepultura name, without officially rejoining the band. A revisionist operation that strips the original album — a cornerstone of thrash-death metal — of its context, performing a facelift that wasn't really necessary, and wearily pushing forward a saga, that of Cavalera and Sepultura, which is frankly growing tiresome. The one genuinely new track, the furious "Nightmares Of Delirium", is the only thing worth recommending to curious listeners who already know the original Schizophrenia.