SEPULTURA - Uncharted Territory
Face to Face with Andreas Kisser
Written & designed by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media
Andreas Kisser is ensconced in what he calls “the Bunker”, the musical hub of his São Paulo home, surrounded by guitars and road cases. I’ve just asked him how long it’s been since he’s seen his bandmates in the flesh. “I saw Paulo a few times … but we’ve kind of kept our communication to the internet, doing Zoom meetings and stuff like that.” Brazilian metal icons SEPULTURA were gearing up to take their fifteenth studio album Quadra on the road when the world fell over in March 2020. “We were ready to go, you know,” he explains. “Then all of a sudden, boom.”
In the isolation that followed, the band – guitarist Andreas, vocalist Derrick Green, bassist Paulo Jr. and 30-year-old drumming powerhouse Eloy Casagrande – started the SepulQuarta sessions: online collaborations with fellow heavy music luminaries, including Devin Townsend, Phil Campbell of MOTÖRHEAD, TRIVIUM frontman Matt Heafy, MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson and TESTAMENT’s Alex Skolnick. They revisited numerous tracks from SEPULTURA’s catalogue, and posted the results on Youtube. Now, these collaborations have been released in album format. SepulQuarta is a unique listening experience. The difference in sound quality between a studio production and a band collaborating over Zoom is readily apparent, but this works in their favour here. SepulQuarta is raw, unfiltered SEPULTURA – agitated thrash metal with a fuzzy, unpolished quality that sounds like it is being played through a tape deck. The tribal pummel that opens Territory sounds amazing with Ellefson and Paulo playing bass together, and Mask has Devin Townsend harking back to his days fronting STRAPPING YOUNG LAD. “It’s a very raw, very spontaneous, very honest album, you know? We worked from our houses, the same way when we started playing this kind of music – learning and listening to the albums and stuff. All of a sudden, all of us in our own houses, playing together, which was inconceivable a while ago, but because of technology we were able to do that. It’s not live, it’s not studio – it’s this new pandemic whatever-you-want-to-call-it,” he laughs.
Pictured: Derrick Green, Paulo Jr., Andreas Kisser + Eloy Casagrande - SEPULTURA
Photographer: Marcos Hermes
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SEPULTURA’s music shifted radically with the departure of founding member Max Cavalera after the Roots album. It wasn’t just a case of trading his trademark roar for the very different, but no less formidable vocals of Derrick Green – Max also took his guitars with him, leaving SEPULTURA a single-guitar band. How did that change how Andreas wrote music? “Me and Max, we started everything, since I joined the band … exchanging riffs and playing together, because we used to practice a lot, especially me, Max and Igor, you know? We wrote Beneath the Remains almost as a trio, because Paulo was not really around in those days during the rehearsals. We spent every day there, rehearsing, so it was two guitars and a drummer. We were developing ideas and recording etcetera. Of course, that changed, and I got more connected to Igor musically when Max left. And then, Derrick came in with lyrics and ideas for vocals and stuff … And then Jean [Dolabella – former SEPULTURA drummer] came in, and Eloy, and Paulo was participating a little more on everything, you know. He’s not actually a writer, but he was always there with his bass, putting his input in. Everything changes. It has to change. When I joined the band, I changed the band a lot. SEPULTURA, before [me], was a death metal band, very different from Schizophrenia. Then when Derrick joined the band, it changed the band drastically, like I did. And then with Jean Dolabella, when Igor left, and Eloy now, you know? It’s very natural. We have somebody new there, with new elements, new characteristics – might as well use it, instead of trying to copy something that is not there anymore. Change is something inevitable, and something that we welcome, because every day is a different day, and we work with the tools we have.”
The pandemic, he says, is a perfect example of that. “We have to reinvent SEPULTURA – to keep SEPULTURA, as a band, working, without touring. That was the biggest challenge of our career, and we got it – we did it! SepulQuarta kept us together, and we have an album out of it, which was great.”
There is one glaring omission from the album – Roots Bloody Roots, SEPULTURA’s mid-90s anthem, and far and away their most well-known song. Why leave it out?
“We weren’t really thinking about an album, you know? We were just thinking about playing the Quadra album, having this connection with the fans, the live Q&A … The first SepulQuarta episodes were like a playthrough of our album, you know? … Slowly we developed more of a performance, using more technology. Eloy was recording the drums, and then I put the guitars on, and we built from there. The stuff was really step-by-step. We did Arise and Territory and stuff like that, but our intention was to use a situation like that to play some side-Bs and side-Cs, and songs we don’t normally play live, you know? Why are we going to do Roots? It’s too obvious. It’s a song we play every show. That’s why it’s not on the album, because we felt we could do Apes of God and Hatred Aside or Slaves of Pain – songs that are kind of obscure – in our setlists … It was a lot of fun, you know? It was really cool … At the end of 2020, we had an album that we didn’t even know we were making! … It’s a very spontaneous album. We didn’t do any overdubs to do the album, you know? It’s very honest, very unique … It’s a possibility for the future as well, to keep doing collaborations like that.”
I turn the conversation to Derrick Green, vocalist for SEPULTURA for over two decades. I mention that I refuse to read the comments for anything to do with the band, because every second comment is some jackass saying that the band hasn’t been the same since Max left.
“That’s going to be eternal,” he laughs. “It is a part of what we are, man. This kind of gossip is what it is, you know? … The fans are the fans. I remember with my friends, when I was young, discussing which was better – Ozzy or AC/DC? I was the Ozzy advocate, and my friend was AC/DC. It was hours of discussion, and it was great. Of course, we fight a little bit, but we had a great time listening to the music, and that was great research – going and creating arguments for Ozzy or AC/DC, looking for the best solo or production or cover or whatever. Everything was something we could use to defend our thesis!” He laughs. “Fans today are just the same. It’s just different because everyone has a voice now, because of Twitter and Facebook and stuff. It’s crazy. Everybody thinks they know everything!”
I mention my discussion with Barney Greenway of NAPALM DEATH, about the section of their fanbase that hates all their output beyond their 1987 debut, Scum. “NAPALM DEATH is a great example … They’re still there, making what they believe, you know? It’s very powerful. It’s fantastic.”
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I’m not in the habit of including my personal stuff in my pieces – you’re not here to read about me, after all – but please indulge me for just over one paragraph. In March 2018 I went to rehab to be treated for alcoholism. I mention this because SEPULTURA’s set at the Eaton’s Hill Hotel in Brisbane was the first gig I ever went to sober. I remember standing in the car park, terrified. What if it’s no fun without booze? What if I can’t relax? Won’t I feel self-conscious? Fortunately, the second SEPULTURA came onstage and ripped into I Am the Enemy, I realised I had nothing to fear. I remember every second of that show; Arise turning the pit into a whirlpool, the one-two punch of Against and Choke almost leveling the building, and Roots Bloody Roots sounding like the end of the world.
To this day, I am convinced that if the band hadn’t come out and absolutely killed it, I would’ve used that as an excuse to pick up a bottle again. So it came as a pleasant surprise when Andreas announced that he, too, was off the grog. After making an arse of himself at a family gathering, he looked at his relationship with alcohol and decided to cut the cord. He hasn’t had a drink in over a year, and he couldn’t be happier about it. “Once it was very clear in my mind that I had to stop, it was very easy to stop,” Andreas laughs. “I realised that alcohol was making the choices for me, you know? Which places I would go, what kind of vacation I would do. “I don’t want to go to Disneyland because they don’t have beer” – that type of stuff. It doesn’t matter if you are with your family or your kids and stuff, alcohol was more important. Once I realised that, it was very easy for me to see [that] I have to stop this. I’m a slave to this fucking thing. I liked to drink – I liked to have a beer, I liked to have wine and stuff – but, for me, it was enough … I’m fifty-two years old. I toured the world. I drank all over the place. It was a nice journey and all, but from now on … I stopped, and I feel great, you know? I don’t feel the urge or the wish to drink anymore. I can be around people drinking. My family drinks, at barbeques and stuff, and backstage … I’m fine. I’m not running away from anything. I just decided I’m not a part of that anymore. It wasn’t like a promise I made to a saint … or my wife or my kids for that matter. It was just a very personal choice … It’s all up to you – if you don’t realise that, you’re never going to change.”
Pictured: Derrick Green, Paulo Jr., Andreas Kisser + Eloy Casagrande - SEPULTURA
Photo by: Marcos Hermes