This week, long-running Brazilian thrash metal crew Sepultura dropped their new album, Kairos, and to get inspiration album No. 12, the band looked inwards. As guitarist Andrea Kisser explained in a recent Exclaim! interview, Kairos is the end result of being a band since 1984 and everything they've gone through along the way.
"The very theme of the album is our history, everything we passed through, the experiences we had on stage, the experiences with managers, the press, friends, fans, family... it's great," Kisser says. "It just came that way. Playing all of [1991's] Arise [at a concert last year], doing old songs, jamming everywhere -- it brought back a lot of old feelings. There's a lot of the old Sepultura, but it's very new, it's very us now. You got Jean [Dolabella] on the drums, you fuse Derrick's [Green, vocalist] style and everything, plus me and Paulo [Jr., bass] playing together forever. It was a great time to do an album. It was perfect."
One of the many things the band has gone through over the years was a much-publicized break with guitarist/vocalist Max Cavalera and drummer Igor Cavalera, both of whom were part of the band's classic lineup; Max left in '96, Igor in 2006. Many old-school Sepultura fans have been holding on to the seemingly little chance of the two camps getting back together after so much dirty laundry had been publicly aired between them. As recently as last year, Sepultura released a video statement saying this will certainly not happen; there are still no plans for a reunion, but Kisser does share some good news that a healing process has begun. Soulfly (Max's current band) and Sepultura played a festival last year and the two parties met up face to face for the first time since '96.
"Yeah, man, we opened the channels of communication last year," says Kisser. "We saw each other, I saw Gloria [Max's wife and Sepultura's ex-manager, and the cause of much of the tension that broke up the classic lineup] there, we went and talked to her. I have no bad blood with nobody, man. Everybody has their reasons and their fucking paranoias and stuff, and I have mine too. But I've known them for so long and we did amazing stuff together. At least now we have each other's emails and stuff, so we can talk to each other. Of course, we don't do that that often; we have totally different lives and rhythms, we live in different countries. But at least we have that. I think that's very positive."
But Kisser and the rest of Sepultura -- whose current lineup is really a powerful beast, as Kairos (their first album since 2009's A-Lex) proves -- are focused on the future, not the past, even if the new album has given the band some time to reflect on everything they've been through.
"We never really stopped, you know," says Kisser. "All the changes and stuff... it's great to just be here, after 26 years."
Kairos is out now on Nuclear Blast Records. Stay tuned for a Timeline feature on Sepultura in Exclaim!'s August issue.
"The very theme of the album is our history, everything we passed through, the experiences we had on stage, the experiences with managers, the press, friends, fans, family... it's great," Kisser says. "It just came that way. Playing all of [1991's] Arise [at a concert last year], doing old songs, jamming everywhere -- it brought back a lot of old feelings. There's a lot of the old Sepultura, but it's very new, it's very us now. You got Jean [Dolabella] on the drums, you fuse Derrick's [Green, vocalist] style and everything, plus me and Paulo [Jr., bass] playing together forever. It was a great time to do an album. It was perfect."
One of the many things the band has gone through over the years was a much-publicized break with guitarist/vocalist Max Cavalera and drummer Igor Cavalera, both of whom were part of the band's classic lineup; Max left in '96, Igor in 2006. Many old-school Sepultura fans have been holding on to the seemingly little chance of the two camps getting back together after so much dirty laundry had been publicly aired between them. As recently as last year, Sepultura released a video statement saying this will certainly not happen; there are still no plans for a reunion, but Kisser does share some good news that a healing process has begun. Soulfly (Max's current band) and Sepultura played a festival last year and the two parties met up face to face for the first time since '96.
"Yeah, man, we opened the channels of communication last year," says Kisser. "We saw each other, I saw Gloria [Max's wife and Sepultura's ex-manager, and the cause of much of the tension that broke up the classic lineup] there, we went and talked to her. I have no bad blood with nobody, man. Everybody has their reasons and their fucking paranoias and stuff, and I have mine too. But I've known them for so long and we did amazing stuff together. At least now we have each other's emails and stuff, so we can talk to each other. Of course, we don't do that that often; we have totally different lives and rhythms, we live in different countries. But at least we have that. I think that's very positive."
But Kisser and the rest of Sepultura -- whose current lineup is really a powerful beast, as Kairos (their first album since 2009's A-Lex) proves -- are focused on the future, not the past, even if the new album has given the band some time to reflect on everything they've been through.
"We never really stopped, you know," says Kisser. "All the changes and stuff... it's great to just be here, after 26 years."
Kairos is out now on Nuclear Blast Records. Stay tuned for a Timeline feature on Sepultura in Exclaim!'s August issue.