Sepultura
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Sepultura

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When Sepultura came into being in the mid-’80s, Brazil was going through a time of major social turbulence as the country’s long-ruling military dictatorship was coming to an end. The aggression and socially-conscious themes in Sepultura’s songs owe much to growing out of this sort of environment, where musicians were treated almost as criminals. The social climate may have gotten a little better since then, but for bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. the prejudices they faced in those early days are still very much alive today.  

“Being a kid and just the fact of having long hair was an offence to the people,” Pinto recalls. “Things have changed a little bit but it’s still out there, those prejudices. Everybody thinks if you’re a musician then you’ve got no job. It’s not a proper job. Just the fact there was a military government at the time made it a little rougher. Even at that time, we were still going to school and doing everything that a normal kid would do, plus listening to the kind of music that we liked and spending a lot of time with our friends on the weekends to play and listen to this type of music.”

Sepultura’s reign over the world of metal was at its peak between ’91 and ’96, with the release of their three highly influential albums Arise, Chaos AD and Roots. Those collections of songs brought the frantic percussive rhythms of Brazil to the world stage while blending in elements of industrial music kicking off the nu-metal phenomenon. Containing iconic metal anthems like Roots Bloody Roots and Refuse/Resist,those releases took the band to the top of the hard rock ladder. In the ever-expanding world of metal where genres are constantly being created, some might have seen this new Brazilian-infused metal as just another fad. However, Sepultura have maintained a respected position in the echelons of music and for Pinto there’s one pure and simple reason for this.  

“The main reason is the music,” Pinto summarises. “That’s just what we’re here for. What we know what to do and what we’ve done all this time. It’s the music itself. The fusion came naturally. When we were kids, we tried to avoid all the Brazilian mixture because we were fed it. Listen to it all the time everywhere but once you start to travel all over the world and living outside of the country you start to miss it. I know a little bit of that ended up being reflected in the music in such a way [that] it made us different and unique from other bands from the whole continent including the United States. That’s the difference.”

The years between ‘95 and ‘97 saw Sepultura perfect their style with the release of Roots, before everything came crashing down as tensions grew between singer Max Cavalera and the other band members. Aside from internal disputes, the main issue was the rest of the band wanting to fire their manager Gloria Bujnowski, who was also Cavalera’s wife.

Eventually it ended with Max quitting and starting Soulfly, leaving behind his drumming brother Igor, who would end up quitting 10 years later. Outside of the domestic problems of the band, the world was going nuts over their fusion of Brazilian folk music and metal, selling two million copies of Roots worldwide and making it to number 27 on the Billboard charts. The entire album still hits as hard as it ever did, running electric shocks up your spine with tracks like Spit and Attitude. Pinto and the Cavalera brothers still aren’t on speaking terms, which he admits is for the best, but despite those personal disputes the better times still stick out in his mind.       

“We really saw the impact after it came out,” Pinto remembers. “Everybody was focussed and working: band, record label, management, to make it the best album at that time. I think we succeeded for what it is at the period of time. It could have been a bigger record if all the problems hadn’t happened but we did as much as could with the record at the time. I was glad that we managed to do at least a few tours with it and had the time to do some stuff instead of not doing anything.

“Of course at the end, it was a mess and confusing. But we had very good moments when everybody was on the same page and the machine was working perfectly until the parts started to fail. Definitely up to ‘96, we had great moments together, otherwise we never would have made it up to that point and after that everything changed. We had to turn the page and keep the life going. It can happen in any band or any personal matter. It’s part of life and you just have to learn and keep moving forward. That’s what we’ve been doing since then. Moving forward. Respect what we’ve done in the past but always looking for the new challenges, the new music, the new tours. That’s what we do, that’s what we’re here for.”

Last year’s release of The Mediator,saw the band work again with Roots producer Ross Robinson and tracks like Manipulation Of Tragedy and The Bliss Of Ignorants have elements reminiscent of that earlier period. Singer Derrick Green’s guttural bark sounds diabolically menacing and the youngest member drummer Eloy Casagrande seems to wrap his mind around complex Latin rhythms with ease. The old guard of Pinto and guitarist Andreas Kisser seem to play off one another, pushing each other like two brothers trying to outdo the other.

Pinto knows the 11-year gap between Australian tours means the crowds are going be hungry to hear a lot of their older back catalogue and the band are hoping to not disappoint. While explaining the long absence from Australia, Pinto is adamant it was not up to them, but instead managerial decisions being made above their heads kept the band away.    

“I know since the last time we were there we had a good following so we’re expecting at least the old metal heads to come and see us,” Pinto says with a laugh. “It would be nice to see some young faces in the crowd which we have been seeing lately at our concerts. [There are] a lot of young kids coming to see us which is very positive but we have very big expectations for this. It’s been over a decade and I know we tried on our part but it was really not up to Sepultura. I think there was a lot of politics involved. We never got a chance to play the main festivals and I think with this run it will help us re-establish confidence with the Australian promoters. I see basically all the bands from the ‘80s metal scene coming to Australia and I still don’t understand why Sepultura couldn’t be a part of it. We have the name, we have the music. We do pretty good everywhere that we go and I don’t think that should be different in Australia.”

As Pinto talks about his band and their music, it sounds like he treats Sepultura as an entity of itself, unaware of band member changes and the passing of time unable to stop moving forward. This attitude may be the reason the band is still kicking after so many years and still able to impact the music world. When something is not reliant on the sum of its parts and able to adapt as Sepultura do time and time again, it becomes an unbreakable force. Rest assured time, has no grip on Sepultura and they are far from sinking into the abyss. 

BY RHYS MCRAE