SLAMBADA

Rip It Up, Issue 179, 1 June 1992, Page 4

SLAMBADA

Brazilian death metal superstars Sepultura are, according to a review of their Marquee show in Metal Hammer, patently into Big Macs rather than black masses and tonight played the sort of thrash metal that stripped a quivering Marquee to the bone and left hundreds of rattling skeletons shaking in mute appreciation.

Sepulture (emphasis on the last syllable) play one show in Auckland this month, leaving a lot of disgruntled death-heads around the country. But wait, the death metal label doesn't sit so easily on the band's shoulders these days. Guitarist Andreas Kisser, speaking to

RIU from Brazil prior to the trip downunder, explained: "Right now I don't think we're death metal anymore. We recorded Morbid Vision 85/ 86 and that album was really death metal, it was about Satanic stuff, like death metal lyrics, but the music was too much only one style, the whole album sounded the same, you know. After that, in 'B7 we started to listen to a lot of different stuff. I think right now we like to call our music, I don't know, thrash metal — fast and heavy. I think we have a really strong death metal influence in our music still, but it's not only death metal anymore." Still, the name Sepultura suggests

rotting corpses, graveyards at midnight, candles in bottles, you name it. "The meaning of that name, back in 1984 Max and Igor, they used to translate the titles of songs to Portuguese with a dictionary and they picked up the song from Motorhead 'Dancing On Your Grave' and Sepultura is grave in Portugeuse. They liked the name at the time and here now it is the same one." Sepultura took root in a small town called Belo Horizonte in 1984, when brothers Igor and Max Cavalero started playing drums and guitar just for fun, having quit school early and finding themselves with nothing to do. They teamed up with bass player Paulo Jr and original guitarist Jairo (since replaced by Andreas) and started playing small shows at local clubs and schools. Soon after they recorded some primitive demos which led to a split LP with countrymen Overdose on the fledgling new Brazilian indie, Cogumeio Records. By the release of Schizophrenia in 1987, the undergound buzz had spread to American label Roadrunner whose A&R man signed them sight unseen. This resulted in their first album made with a 'real produce/, 1989's Beneath The Remains, hailed as a thrash metal masterpiece. The band have been touring for the past two years with 1990's Arise, culminating in their first trip to Japan, Australia and NZ. Far from being irresponsible worshippers at the shrine of decadence, Sepultura have quite a social conscience, reacting to the poverty and violence they see around them in Brazil. "Ifs an influence because we were born here and we see that every day. Brazil is a pretty cool place to live, but there's of course a lot of fucked up shit going on like economical stuff and the violence, but we can deal with that and we like to talk about that kind of thing, to write about the sorts of things that make the people think about it, just to see if something better can

happen." What do you think of a band like Deicide? "Oh, I don't like Deicide a lot. I think at the time we start bands like Venom were really big and they were not really Satanic people, they just talk about that in the lyrics. But right now ifs kind of stupid to bum a cross in the head and make crosses in the arm with knives and shit. I think ifs a really bad influence for the kids who are starting to listen to this kind of music right now." Were you ever into doing things like that? Andreas laughs. "I like the music. I'm not Satanic or nasty at all. I have my beliefs, but not like evil or something, you know. I like to play aggressive music and energetic stuff and to release anger and be happy after that. And I like to see people come to our show and enjoy it a lot, release a lot of things. After two hours they leave the place much happier, I don't know, much higher." Andreas says there's a lot of cool music in Brazil, from traditional music to garage bands singing in English, inspired by the international success of Sepultura. 'We have a lot of homemade music, music from the countryside, a lot of really cool stuff, instrumental, tribal stuff and that's a lot to do with our music because ifs really strong and energetic and can be mixed easily. We can add from tribal stuff a lot of different rhythms and percussion." Finally, what is the most important element of your music? "To me music is honest. If you're going to make music you shouldn't think what other people are thinking about. If you believe in the band the music the rest just becomes a consequence." In the words of that Marquee review: Sepultura write great songs, they play them superlatively are insanely nice people and not surprisngly the crowd loved them. Black metal? Nah, this was more of a golden noise.

DONNA YUZWALK