Speaking with Full Metal Jackie, Sepultura‘s co-founder Max Cavalera got straight to the point about the band’s end. He feels, and a lot of fans agree, that he and his brother Igor are the ones truly carrying the old Sepultura vibe in everything they do. Even though the name’s still around, Max says it’s just not the same band anymore, and he’s got nothing to do with their decision to call it quits. For him and Igor, it’s about their own journey, revisiting those classic tracks on their own terms. And to prove it, they’re even opening for Slayer, blasting out those Chaos A.D. anthems.
He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “To me, I feel — and I’m not saying that just for myself — I think a lot of fans feel that me and Igor kind of carry the spirit of Sepultura with us on everything that we do. And I don’t know — they still call it Sepultura, but everybody knows that it’s not the same and it’s never gonna be the same. And I don’t have nothing to do with what they’re doing, with the disbanding of the band.”
“Me and Igor, we have our own path, we are on our own thing, we are revisiting those old material on our own time. And the way we did them was the way we always did — it was from our heart. For us, it’s really special to preserve that.”, he continued. “I think it’s kind of like that young heart, the teenage heart that lives inside of you. I kind of like keep that really sacred. And no matter what happens in in the business or the politics of music, I try not to let that affect my young mind and soul that I carry with me all the time. So I feel like that when talk about Sepultura. It was a special band of a special time and we celebrate that — I get a chance to celebrate that with Igor, regardless of what the other guys are doing.”, he concluded.
Back in November, the current Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser weighed in on their decision to re-record the old-school classics, Morbid Visions and Bestial Devastation, plus a new take on Schizophrenia, which was Andreas‘s debut with the band. Here’s what he told the IMPACT Metal Channel: “I don’t think anything. I mean, it’s a weird choice that they had. I think artistic value is zero. Maybe they’re going for some money or something, but there’s no reason to do something like that. I much rather prefer The Troops of Doom, the new band from Jairo [former Sepultura guitarist Jairo ‘Tormentor’ Guedz], which are doing a really amazing tribute to that era, very honest, doing new stuff, writing new music… 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.”
“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.”, he added.
Sepultura‘s setting the date for their final curtain call in São Paulo, Brazil, sometime in 2026. Even though an invitation was extended to them, don’t hold your breath for Max and Igor Cavalera to jump on stage for one last jam. It’s probably no shocker, seeing as Max hasn’t exactly been shy about his feelings on Sepultura continuing without him and Igor all these years.
Back in a conversation with Metal Injection, Max didn’t hold back his surprise about the whole buzz.
Here’s what he had to say: “My insight about the whole thing is I’m kind of surprised by it, you know,” Max said. “As far as a reunion – I wanted to reunite with my brother and that’s what he also said a long time ago when we first got together. So to me that was the real reunion, me and him, and we did that and it’s opened the doors for all these re-recordings and playing, all these records. It is so cool the way we’re doing them.”
“We have like an unwritten rule between me and Igor, like we’re gonna do this thing now differently than how we did it back then, because back then there was a lot of drama and stress that we didn’t like, and a lot of political stuff,” Max continued. “So it was like, if we’re gonna do it now, we’re gonna do it for the love of it, you know for the pure enjoyment of the thing. That’s how we’ve been doing all these years, with all these tours and recordings and everything.”
“So for me, there’s not really a reason to go back to Sepultura. I know it would be back to more stress and stuff that I don’t really need in my life, man, and I think us playing live, and even having like Travis and Igor Amadeus with us is so badass because they connect with the younger generation. Yeah, I don’t see a need to do a reunion and I think more than ever now, especially now that they’re gonna disband. The band is done and me and Igor will get to keep doing what we want with Cavalera Conspiracy, which is Sepultura in itself.”
When the topic of a potential Sepultura reunion was pushed further, Max made his feelings crystal clear: “The more the time passes by, the more I feel that I don’t need to. Like I said, the real reunion is between myself and Igor, and I did that. It’s pure magic and amazing what we’re doing right now. You kind of have to realize if we end up doing a Sepultura reunion, it’s almost like we can’t go back to the Cavalera thing, You know? It won’t really make sense. People probably will be like ‘I don’t want to go watch Cavalera if they’re doing a ‘real’ reunion. To me, I don’t want to do that because I love what we have here in Cavalera now. It’s so Bad a*s. So yeah, it’s definitely out of the question.”
So, how did Sepultura end up on this farewell path? Back in ’96, things went sideways when the band parted ways with Max Cavalera after the rest of the guys split with his wife Gloria, who was their manager. Igor stayed on for another decade before he also left Sepultura and joined forces with Max again in Cavalera Conspiracy. Fast forward to today, Sepultura‘s lineup is Andreas Kisser on guitar, Derrick Green handling vocals, Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. on bass, and their newest addition, drummer Greyson Nekrutman (ex-Suicidal Tendencies), who stepped in after Eloy Casagrande‘s departure in February 2024. Their final tour kicked off on March 1, 2024, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and that sold-out show was Greyson‘s first gig with the band.
