Sepultura broke the mould of metal by not originating from America or Europe, as most other bands in their genre did. They were 4 kids from Brazil who got lucky and found their way to the United States.
Beneath The Remains
Their third album, 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 Cavalera acknowledged that it was the album where the band found its 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, Arise was released in 1991 and was a commercial and critical hit. It went platinum and was 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 small glimmers of the band experimenting with their sound that wouldn’t come to fruition on 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 both the US and the UK. The band toured alongside Pantera and Ministry.
“During the making of Chaos AD, we were very focused, very organized, very connected.” – Andreas Kisser
Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser recalled to Metal Hammer, “During the making of Chaos AD, we were very focused, very organized, very connected. We were together, it was a very special moment in Sepultura’s career.” By 1995, the incarnation of the band fronted by Max Cavalera was on its last legs as the band fell apart.
It’s a story that’s been told a million times. A band gets big, they are inundated with pressures and newfound fame and they suddenly fall apart. That pretty much describes Sepultura’s story in the early to mid 90’s.
The classic lineup of the band would consist of vocalist and rhythm guitarist Max Cavalera, lead guitarist Andreas Kisser, bassist Paulo Jr Pinto and drummer Max’s brother Iggor Cavalera.
“All of a sudden we’re this really big machine and we couldn’t really comprehend it.” – Max Cavalera
Max summarized 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.”
In 1995, 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 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 was Ross Robinson who came up with the idea. Roots saw the band experiment with elements of the music from Brazil’s indigenous peoples, and adopted a slower, more tuned down sound.
“Ross had a whole new perspective.” – Andreas Kisser
Andreas revealed the monumental impact producer Ross Robinson had on Roots, 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.”
Robinson wasn’t the only person who had a huge influence on Roots. Legendary engineer Andy Wallace, who had previously worked with a huge eclectic list of rock stars including Guns N’ Roses, Paul McCartney, and System of a Down, also worked on the album.
Max pointed out the importance of Robinson and 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 that stuff from it to make the diamond shine, which is what he did.”
Sepultura Becomes Divided Amongst Members
The band would successfully make it through the recording of Roots and release the album in 1996 but behind the scenes, the band was splintering. Soon enough there were two camps forming, one involving Max and his wife Gloria who had been the band’s longtime manager. The other camp was the remaining members of the band.
“…To have a kid is not that special. I have three myself. I love them, but I don’t use them as a trophy.” – Andreas Kisser
The source of the tension was due to the fact that Gloria was giving preferential treatment to her husband Max. Andreas would give an example, saying, “Things had started to go kind of weird before that. When Max and Gloria’s son, Zyon was born, instead of putting the band on the cover of a magazine, they had Max with his kid. That’s nothing to do with the band. To have a kid is not that special. I have three myself. I love them, but I don’t use them as a trophy.”
Max didn’t see it that way. He saw it as the other three guys trying to steal the management role from his wife. He believed her management style was working because the band was more popular than ever and had reached new heights of success.
Things got so dysfunctional that the other three members completely stopped communicating with Gloria. According to Max, he would reveal how he saw shady manager types meeting with the other three guys in the band’s dressing room.
Max Cavalera’s Step-Son is Killed in a Car Accident
In August of 1996, Sepultura was set to play at the Monsters of Rock Festival at Castle Donnington alongside Ozzy, Type O Negative and Biohazard. Prior to taking the stage, the band was notified that Gloria’s son from a prior relationship, Dana Wells, was tragically killed back in the United States in a car accident.
Gloria and Max left the gig before the band took the stage to head back home. Sepultura would still perform that night, but with only 3 members, with Andreas taking over lead vocal duties. What could have been a defining moment to pull the band’s two camps together, pulled them further apart.
While Max returned to the band to perform several months of shows, the other members realized they needed to get rid of Gloria. Luckily for them, their contract with her was set to expire by the end of the year.
The band would continue to perform shows across South America and Europe until the end of the year, playing their final show at the Brixton Academy in December. Their last show also happened to coincide with the day their contract with Gloria ended. Max and Gloria knew this day was coming as Andreas would reveal the band had a huge blow-up a month prior in Argentina.
Max and Gloria Leaves Sepultura
The band told Max they wanted to terminate their contract with Gloria. Following their decision, Max and Gloria left Sepultura. Max recalled to Metal Hammer, “Gloria tried to talk me out of it. She told me, ‘Go with them.’ I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’m not that kind of person. I cannot eff over people like that. That’s how great of a person she is. ‘Just go with them, stay with them.’ I’m, like, ‘I’m not doing that to you. It’s absurd.’ They had a meeting to try to get me back.”
The remaining members of Sepultura had to cancel scheduled tours and reflect on whether they could even continue with the band’s name or start a new band. Max claims he could have fought to keep the name himself, as he claimed he invented it and started the band, but for him it was easier to walk away.
What came next was a trip down the rabbit hole as he would deal with his band imploding and the death of his step-son, revealing to Metal Hammer, “I could have gone, ‘Eff you all, this is my band.’ I could have if I’d wanted to. It was my band, invented by me, the name and everything. I just felt it was easier to walk away. But it was six months of hell. I lived in my room, just drinking and taking drugs all day long. I didn’t want anything to do with music.”
Things got ugly after Max’s departure as the former bandmates would trade shots in the press for almost two and a half decades. Max would start his new project SoulFly featuring members of Fear Factory, Limp Bizkit and the Deftones who would release their debut record in 1998.
Derrick Green Joins Sepultura as Frontman
Sepultura would find a new frontman in Derrick Green. In 2006, the Cavalera brothers would settle their decade-long feud when Iggor left the band and reunited with his brother to form The Cavalera Conspiracy.
Iggor would point to another seminal band who seemed to show the brothers how short life can be, as he told Metal Hammer, “I flew to Phoenix to hang out with Max. We were influenced a lot by the whole thing with Pantera, the Dimebag thing – like, ‘Look, these guys cannot do what we’re doing right now.’ We know life, it’s super-short. So I was, like, ‘Eff it, I just want to hang out with my brother.”
Following the brothers’ reconciliation, rumours of a Sepultura reunion with the brothers seemed to start around 2007 with huge offers from promoters supposedly coming in, but nothing would materialize.
“…That Sepultura they have in mind, it’s not us.” – Andreas Kisser
Max admitted that he and his wife have approached his former bandmates to reunite the original lineup and while there have been discussions, it only seems to be a pipe dream.
Andreas revealed to Metal Hammer, “We both played at a festival in Germany in 2009, Sepultura and Soulfly, for the first time. Our bus was parked here and their bus was parked a few metres away. I went out there, Gloria was there. I give her a hug, ‘Hey, what’s up? How’s it going?’ And since then, she was like, ‘OK, maybe we could put all this bad stuff back and we could try again.’ It didn’t go further because it’s something that’s completely out of reality. It’s not a part of what we are. That Sepultura they have in mind, it’s not us.”
In a separate interview in 2013, Andreas compared the brothers to fathers leaving their children when they both quit the band. Once again, highlighting how the brothers were never forced out.
Max gave his own version of the events when it came to reuniting, saying, “I was for trying it. I thought it’d be very cool. Especially after I saw Faith No More get back together. It’s like, ‘Why can’t we do the same?’ I actually talked to Andreas on the phone about it, like, ‘Come on man, let’s do this. Let’s effing do it. The whole world wants it. It would be a great thing.’ And he agreed with me, then a couple of weeks later it was all back to shit again. So I was, like, ‘Eff it, I’m not going to try anymore.’”
“Sepultura was really close to my heart. It was like my baby.” – Max Cavalera
By 2016, Max seemed to have some regret over not fighting for the ownership of the band’s name, even saying he should have fired the other guys, telling Metal Insider, “Sepultura was really close to my heart. It was like my baby. Now, after all this time passed, I think about it, Iggor and I should have just fired those two assholes and kept the name. Why we didn’t do that, I don’t know. At that time, we didn’t have the vision to do it, so I just quit.”
The two camps would continue to go their separate ways releasing records and touring. As recently as 2018, Derrick Greene gave an interview discussing how it’s hard for some people to move on from the original lineup while Gloria released her own rebuttal slamming Greene.
“Hey, I have a shout out! Eff You! Max and Iggor never ever talk about a reunion. Why do you think they left? You’re needing to talk about Max and Iggor to get some press? Yeah, it is hard for you to move on! Max and Igor can return to their roots and all you can do is sing lyrics my husband wrote!”
Like this story? Check out Rush’s Alex Lifeson’s Shocking Arrest
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Both Max and Gloria are pathological lying trash.
Dana Wells was not murdered as they both claim, Dana Wells was loaded on drugs and alcohol and killed himself in the car crash. Dana Wells lifted his shirt displaying what looked like a butt of a gun, chased both me and my passenger, Eli, and caught up to us. He threw out a beer bottle and lost control and killed himself nearly taking 2 others in the car with him. Eli and I escaped with our lives. Dana Wells was loaded on pain pills, alcohol, and acetone. Per Maricopa County’s Medical Examiner’s Office.