Sepultura Why Max Cavalera Left The Band

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Today we discuss why Max Cavalera quit Sepultura and how the band fell apart around the time of their 1996 Roots album.

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Sepultura broke the mould of metal by not originating from America or Europe as most other bands in the genre did. Instead they were 4 kids from Brazil who got lucky and found their way to America. The third album of their career Beneath the Remains was their first release on American label roadrunner records. Considered by many to be a monumental album in the thrash genre, even former frontman Max Cavelera acknowledged that it was the album where the band found their style. It was brash, explosive and in your face. It was a warning to metalheads everywhere of what the 90’s would have in store for the band. The group’s 4th album titled Arise would be released in 1991 and would be a commercial and critical hit going platinum and would be considered by many to be one of the band’s finer moments. While the album’s sound stayed close to Beneath the Remains there were glimmer’s of the band experimenting with their sound that wouldn’t come to fruition until their follow up record.

The group’s fifth album Chaos AD saw the band pushing them past their contemporaries exploring new sounds and becoming more comfortable with experimentation putting a bigger emphasis on groove metal.. The album easily found an audience becoming a top 40 hit in UK and US. The band would tour alongside Pantera and Ministry, Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser would recall to Metal Hammer “During the making of Chaos AD, we were very focused, very organised, very connected,”. “We were together, it was a very special moment in Sepultura’s career.”

But by 1995 the incarnation of the band fronted by Max Cavalera was on its last legs as the band fell apart. What happened? Stay tuned to find out.

It’s a story that’s been told a million times. A band gets big, they are inundated with pressures and new found fame and they suddenly fall apart. That pretty much describes Sepultura’s story in the early to mid 90’s. The classic lineup of Sepultura would consist of vocalist/rhythm guitarist Max Cavalera, lead guitarist Andreas Kisser, bassist Paulo Jr Pinto and drummer Max’s brother Iggor Cavalera.

Max would summarize the band’s rise and fall to Metal Hammer saying
“All of a sudden we’re this really big machine and we couldn’t really comprehend it,” We didn’t know how to deal with it.” he’d say

It was 1995 and the band was ready to hit the studio to work on their follow up to Chaos AD titled Roots. They had assembled at the Indigo Ranch in California with future Slipknot and Limp Bizkit producer Ross Robinson. As the title of the album implied this album was meant to pay homage to the band’s birth country of Brazil, but it may surprise people to know that it was producer Ross Robinson who came up with the idea of “Braziliness” as he called it. Roots saw the band experiment with elements of the music of Brazil's indigenous peoples, and adopted a slower, down-tuned sound. Many consider the album to have had a huge impact on the nu metal scene that exploded a few years later.

According to guitarist Andreas he would reveal the monumental impact producer Ross Robinson had saying:

Ross had a whole new perspective. He came and showed a lot of new possibilities for us. He really brought that idea of the ‘Brazilianness’: the jams, the free approach to everything.” while Iggor would tell

“He was pushing a lot of crazy ideas. I remember coming back from the studio with a tape we’d done there, and I didn’t know what we were going to do with it, ’cos there was so much going on – a thousand guitars on a take with noises and percussion, that kind of thing. I was a bit confused.”

Robinson wasn’t the only person who had a huge influence on the sound of the album It legendary engineer Andy Wallace who worked with a huge eclectic list rockstars including Guns N’ Roses, Paul Mccartney, System of a down also worked on the album Max pointed out the importance of Ross Robinson and Andy Wallace working on the album saying “The greatest thing was having the combination of Ross and [engineer] Andy Wallace. Ross recorded it on his own and it sounded like total dogshit – not for human consumption. We’d send it to Andy. It would be like sending him a diamond covered in shit, and he had to clean all the shit from it to make the diamond shine, which is what he did.”
The band would successfully make it through the recording