In a new chat with HEAVY, Max Cavalera talked about his decision to re-record two Sepultura albums and why he wanted to do so. Apparently, his goal wasn’t simply to fix the ‘mistakes.’
“[It was] kind of like a chance to do it again, but do it better, kind of not really fix the mistakes, ‘cause I think the mistakes were kind of cool, but make the stuff sound better,” the rocker revealed. “We had a chance to have better guitar, better drum sound, a better studio, surrounded by knowledgeable metal people that know how to record this stuff.”
“None of those things were available when we made those records in Brazil,” he continued. “We were on our own. The engineers didn’t know what to do, and it was like no man’s land making these records in Brazil. So we had a chance to redo them and redo them the way we envisioned them to sound. So the re-recordings is the way we, as musicians, think they should sound like, the re-recordings — that’s the proper way that we envisioned those songs. Even as kids, we were hoping to get the sound that we got on the re-recordings; this is what we were shooting for in the first place. So it’s really cool that we get the chance to do that.”
“A lot of bands don’t have the chance, don’t try it or they try and they fail. They don’t keep the energy and the anger of the original. We kept all that in check. We made sure it stays pissed. It’s full of piss and vinegar all the way through. So I think that’s why a lot of people love the re-recordings, man. The fans fricking love the re-recordings, and it’s really well received around the world,” he added.
Max and Igor Cavalera re-recorded Sepultura’s early albums, ‘Morbid Visions’ and ‘Bestial Devastation,’ releasing them in May last year. While for the Cavalera brothers, it was an opportunity to ‘do it better,’ Andreas Kisser disagrees. “I mean, it’s a weird choice that they had. I think artistic value is zero,” Kisser said in a chat with IMPACT Metal Channel. “Maybe they’re going for some money or something, but there’s no reason to do something like that. […] But if they’re having a good time, so let it be. I don’t care, man. I just think it’s totally unnecessary. It’s really very disrespectful from themselves, for their own selves in the past.”
Kisser also questioned the Cavalera brothers’ reasoning. “It’s weird to see a guy [Max] who always says, ‘Oh, I did this,’ ‘I did all that,’ ‘I’m so creative,’ and ‘I did everything by myself,’ and doing this shit, like re-recording riffs that we did 30, 40 years ago. It doesn’t click, the rhetoric with the example. But whatever. I just don’t think that — the artistic value is zero.”
Cavalera later subtly responded to Kisser’s comments. “I think the way we approach it was really cool too because I think what we did was me and Igor [Cavalera] just did the thing the way we always do our whole life. I put a mic in the middle of the room, I got my guitar and Igor is right in front of me, and like one two three go live. That’s the brother magic right there. We didn’t break that and I think that’s in the center of the recordings,” the rocker said during a chat with Everblack Podcast.
In other news, Cavalera recently talked about reuniting with Sepultura, saying he’s open to a reunion, but hasn’t been approached about it yet.
