Sepultura

Those three decades have not gone by without challenges, most notably a major lineup overhaul when founding member Max Cavalera left the band in 1996 after the release of the seminal Roots album. Last year saw Sepultura release their 13th studio album, The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart, and they’re set to touch down on Australian soil for the first time in 11 years next month.

Bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto, Jr. has been with Sepultura basically since their inception, so there’s no better man to offer an understanding of how they’ve managed to stick around for 30 years. For Pinto, there’s really only one pure and simple reason for their success.

“I think the main reason is the music,” he says. “That’s just what we’re here for. What we know [how] to do and what we’ve done all this time. It’s the music itself. The fusion [of Brazilian music and metal] came naturally. When we were kids we tried to avoid all the Brazilian mixture because we were fed it. [You] listen to it all the time, everywhere, but once you start to travel all over the world and living outside of the country you start to miss it. I know a little bit of that, and that ended up being reflected in the music and in such a way it made us different and unique from other bands from the whole continent, including the United States. That’s the difference.”

11 years is a long time between visits, but Pinto is hoping Sepultura’s younger audience will be out in force alongside the old guard on this trip Down Under. The band never meant to stay away so long, he says.

“We’re expecting at least the old metalheads to come and see us,” Pinto laughs. “It would be nice to see some young faces in the crowd, which we have been seeing lately at our concerts – a lot of young kids coming to see us, which is very positive, but we have very big expectations for this [tour]. It’s been over a decade and I know we tried on our part, but it was really not up to Sepultura. I think there was a lot of politics involved. We never got a chance to play the main festivals and this run will help us re-establish confidence with the Australian promoters.”

Bringing up the 1996 departure of Cavalera, and ten years later his drumming brother Igor, turns the conversation slightly icy. They’re still not on speaking terms, but Pinto’s memories of the group pre-’96 aren’t tinged with hateful memories. Instead, he chooses to highlight the better times.

“Definitely up to ’96 we had great moments together, otherwise we never would have made it up to that point – and after that everything changed,” Pinto says. “We had to turn the page and keep the life going. It’s part of life and you just have to learn and keep moving forward. That’s what we’ve been doing since then. Moving forward. [We] respect what we’ve done in the past, but [we’re] always looking for the new challenges, the new music and the new tours. That’s what we do, that’s what we’re here for.”