By Andrew Bansal
Longstanding Brazilian metal veterans Sepultura are ready to release their thirteenth studio album on October 29th via Nuclear Blast Records, an album with the tongue-twisting title ‘The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart’. The band’s previous album ‘Kairos’ came out in 2011 and turned out to be a success in every sense. With this new album, Sepultura have taken inspiration from Kairos’ success and blended in musical elements old and new into this 47-minute, 10-track set of hard-hitting heavy music. A week ago, I spoke to guitarist Andreas Kisser to discuss the length of the album’s title, the making, musical style, artwork, production and lots more. Read the in-depth conversation below along with a taste of the album, and folks in North America should check them out on their upcoming tour.
Andreas, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. In this interview we’ll mainly talk about the new album that’s coming out later this month. First of all, don’t get me wrong, I know the story behind the album title and the reasons for it, but did you ever have any doubts or second thoughts because of its length?
Not at all! For one thing, the length of the phrase that became the title made it more exciting, actually. It’s something different. The title expresses the importance of being human, not to lose our heart, not to turn completely into robots. And the title expresses this kind of difference in the human side. People are so accustomed to certain things that when something new happens, everybody thinks that it’s weird or it’s wrong. That’s a type of robotic feeling as well. Anything away from the normal, from the routine, is considered as a wrong thing. But it’s not. Art in general is here to break the rules, you know. And for Sepultura, it’s been our motto since we started. We really tried to look for something different all the time, new music, new instruments, and we’ve had the privilege to travel the world and to know new people. We keep our mind fresh and that’s why every time we have these ideas. So I would say there was never a doubt or an attempt to find a shorter name just because the phrase was too long. I think the phrase really expresses basically what we feel today and what we see today.
Right, and I guess it catches people’s attention too because it’s so uniquely long. That’s a good thing as well.
Yeah I hope so! It’s very rare to see something like this from any band or any musician. But it’s not forbidden, you know. At least not yet (laughs).
Talking of the music, upon listening to the album I feel that it retains some of the qualities of the previous album ‘Kairos’, and that album was pretty well received by fans. So, did you try to approach this similarly to that one?
Well, every past Sepultura album is definitely an influence on every new album we start working on. Of course Kairos was the closest one from this, and it was really well received and everything. We did two years of touring in support of it and played great places and great festivals. It was our first album on Nuclear Blast too. So yes, there’s definitely a reference to Kairos on this new album in every aspect, but musically we always try something different because we don’t try to reproduce a past album again, you know. But on this one we have influences from the old stuff, more of the death metal type of thing, and I think it’s dirtier and more raw than Kairos. I think the main difference is the drummer Eloy Casagrande. This was the first time we worked with him, he’s 22 years old, has a lot of energy and he has done a lot more metal than our previous drummer Jean Dolabella. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Jean is a great musician and drummer. We did Kairos with him and as we were just saying, Kairos was really well received. But the new drummer is more into the metal world with his background. He’s a big Sepultura fan and loves playing the style of music. He made a big difference to the sound and inspired us to write what we did.
I think you’re right. But, Sepultura has so many people wanting the band to stop, and critics in general. I won’t get into the reason because it’s well-documented. But does that actually inspire you to keep going even more, the fact that you have people out there saying all these negative things?
Yeah! This is the story of our lives. Since day one of Sepultura being created, even before I joined the band, lots of people have been constantly talking shit about the band. Imagine being the kind of band that we were, the way we sounded, in 1984 in Brazil. It was always like that, heavy metal in general. We have to fight with the normal media, the non-specialist media. Heavy metal is still seen as something violent, but that’s totally a lie because it’s the opposite. It’s so united and so pacific, I mean, we play everywhere around the world and regardless of the culture, the politics or the religion, the metal lover is very pacific. I’ve seen much more murders and violence in carnivals than I’ve seen in heavy metal shows. But this is something that we’re very accustomed to now, and we’ve survived. The criticism always seems to be there no matter what we do. So, it doesn’t bother us. It even helps us. Some criticism is good to listen to, but then if you’re starting a record you’re not going to be able to do anything if you just stop and listen to 35 different opinions. Of course I don’t agree with them all but I respect them all because Sepultura has so many different kinds of fans, from the death metal era, the thrash era, and the Brazilian influence. We always gained new fans despite the criticism. Even when Max and Igor were in the band, we had critics. It’s something very natural to us. If people are not criticizing, that means we’re doing it wrong (laughs).
Very true! Coming back to the new album, the artist who has worked on it did some kind of charcoal drawing for it. That sounds quite interesting, tell me about that.
Yeah, the artist is a very young guy named Alexandre Wagner, who’s from Belo Horizonte, the same city that Sepultura came from. A friend of mine showed me his work last year, a long time before we worked on this album. We receive a lot of artist proposals to do artwork and it’s something very common. When this year we started working on the album, found the name and concept of it, I went to all the artists to look at everything that we had so far, and this guy had this painting ready. It was not really done specifically for our album, and I was surprised that it fit perfectly with the concept. The hands and the heart, the kind of creature that doesn’t know if it’s human or not, it was perfect! I reached out to him and he showed him all other art that he has. He’s got a lot of charcoal-style stuff. This artwork was perfect for us and it was ready, just waiting for us to pick it up.
And in terms of the production, it’s been done by Ross Robinson who also did ‘Roots’ back in ’96. You were talking earlier about the fact that the music still has some old influences. Is the production also a reason for some of the old-school sound?
Well, together with Ross we did one of the best albums in Sepultura’s career, and his career as well. We respect the whole Roots process so much, the music and the recording we did, of course we talk a lot about the good memories we have from those days, and the bad ones too. At the same time we were doing great in the studio and the music, the management at that stage was kind of confusing. The troubles were already there, and eventually Max left the band on the Roots tour. But, we learnt so much with that album and it’s still very powerful and influential in many aspects, we were very happy to find out that we could do this job with him again for this new album. Monte Connor, who used to be our A&R in Roadrunner Records, he’s now the president of Nuclear Blast USA. So he was the one who really put us together again, and I thought it was great! It was a great opportunity to be with Ross again, to go back to the States to do an album again. We hadn’t recorded an album in the States since ‘Nation’ (2001). He has his own studio built in his house, and it was great. The chemistry we have together is amazing. We understand each other so much and he gained a lot of experience after Roots, working with different musicians and styles of music, different challenges, in the same way that we did over the years. It’s like he never left. The connection was so easy and so great, I think he was the perfect choice for this album. We’re very happy with the result and the sound is so raw, so heavy and so there in your face. He likes to create unique atmospheres with the guitars and vocals, and it was a blast. It was one of the best recordings we ever had, enjoying a lot in the beautiful place while still really focussing on the recording.
That’s very cool, man. So, you have a North American tour coming up starting in November. It’s a package tour with four other bands, so for people who’re going to see just you, it’s not an ideal situation with so many bands, but I guess you’ll be able to fill up the venues more with these bands bringing their own fans as well.
United States is just really hard to tour, man. I think it’s the hardest place in the world to put a package together, and the money is not great. We actually do those packages and the mini-festival type tours because it’s the only thing that works in the States. It’s a very tough crowd, very driven by what’s hot in the media and what’s not, and it’s a huge country requires a different approach from bands as compared to other places in the world. But I’m glad we have this opportunity. It’s been hard to put together something like that. We’re getting to open the Mediator touring cycle in the States. It’s a really different tour with great venues and great bands playing with us, so I’m very excited about it. We’re ready, because it’s going to be great.
I think a couple of years ago during the NAMM week, you did two shows with Angra, in Hollywood and Anaheim. Those were greatly received here by fans of both bands, kind of like a Brazilian metal feast. Have you got in touch with them again for a tour or something? Has that been tried at all?
Well yeah, we tried! We really tried to make this thing happen, but there are so many bands out there that have the same difficult times, even worse than our difficulties. Sepultura still has a name in history so it’s easier to deal with things, but in general it’s very hard. But it’s great to have the possibility of playing with them again.
Visit Sepultura on the web at:
Sepultura.com.br
facebook.com/Sepultura
twitter.com/SepulturacomBR
youtube.com/SepulturacomBR