Max Cavalera says that his collaboration with his brother Igor Cavalera is “the only thing” that “sounds close” to the classic lineup of their former band SEPULTURA.
The Brazilian four-piece fell apart in 1996 with the exit of Max after the rest of the band split with the vocalist/guitarist’s wife Gloria as their manager. Igor, who plays drums, stuck around with the group for another ten years before leaving SEPULTURA and re-teaming with Max in CAVALERA CONSPIRACY.
Although SEPULTURA has maintained a diehard fanbase in all parts of the world throughout the band’s nearly four-decade history, Max-era albums “Roots” and “Chaos A.D.” were by far SEPULTURA‘s most commercially successful, having both been certified gold in the U.S. for sales in excess of five hundred thousand copies.
Asked in a new interview with “General Population With Marco Lesher” what he thinks of his replacement in SEPULTURA, vocalist Derrick Green, Max said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It doesn’t bother me. It is what it is. At the end of the day, the fans know what the band was and what it is now, the difference [between the two]. And I really don’t care. I’m not bitter. They do what they do; I do what I do. It’s been like that for a long time now. But you can’t touch the classics; those records that we did [in the 1980s and 1990s]. It still goes, but it is what it is.
“If you wanna really hear something that sounds close to what it was, you have to come see me and Igor play,” he added. “That’s the only thing that is gonna be close to what it was, to that time.”
Igor and Max have spent much of the last six years celebrating the 20th anniversary of SEPULTURA‘s “Roots” and 30th anniversary of “Beneath The Remains” and “Arise” albums on tour all over the world.
Last year, SEPULTURA bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. said that he has had “zero” contact with Max, adding that a reunion with the band’s original frontman would have to happen “naturally.”
Back in 2017, Igor Cavalera told The Salt Lake Tribune that he and Max “believe SEPULTURA doesn’t really make sense nowadays, to do what they’re doing.” The drummer also downplayed the possibility of a reunion of SEPULTURA‘s classic lineup, saying: “Unless it’s something really solid — and we haven’t seen that from their part — of doing something totally professional and coming together, trying to do something like that. At the end of the day, it would be special for the fans, so it’s not like a closed door, but at the same time, we have no time to spend energy with this kind of thing. So we just move forward.”
Max echoed his brother’s sentiments, telling The Salt Lake Tribune that he doesn’t even think about his former bandmates much. “For a time — for a long time — there was a war in the press, like, ‘He’ll talk this, I’ll talk that,'” he explained. “I got really tired of it, honestly. I’m not gonna do that anymore. So let them go their way and do their thing, and we’re gonna do our thing, and I think that’s the best for everybody.”
While stopping short of completely ruling out a reunion of SEPULTURA‘s classic lineup, Max said: “Right now, we don’t even need it. It’s been so much of that kind of bad vibes through the years that I don’t even know how that would even really work out. I think what [Igor and I] are doing is the closest thing to that, and it works great, it works like a charm. It’s amazing.”
SEPULTURA‘s current lineup — Green, guitarist Andreas Kisser, bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. and drummer Eloy Casagrande — released its latest album, “Quadra”, in February 2020 via Nuclear Blast Records.
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