In a recent interview with Czech Republic’s Project Backstage, Max and Igor Cavalera were asked about their choice to revisit and re-record SEPULTURA‘s early albums under the name CAVALERA, while still maintaining a distinct project, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, for releasing new music.
Igor responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Well, it’s actually a bit simple, but also it can be a bit confusing if you’re just picking up the stuff and you’re reading. But the way I look at it, and it makes sense to me, is that CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, me and Max, we write completely new songs, and then with CAVALERA, we are having these re-recordings and then performing them live. So they’re not like completely different projects.
“They’re the same project, but maybe just different faces of the same project. And in a way, at the end of the day, it’s all Cavalera — from the beginnings of SEPULTURA, it’s always been about me and Max. So Cavalera is the soul of the whole thing. And there’s a bit of mutations in there, with CAVALERA CONSPIRACY [and] CAVALERA with the re-recordings and the live show. So it can be a bit confusing, but at the end of the day, it’s quite simple.”
“It’s all from the same root,” Max added. “It comes from the same spirit that we had. And the most important thing, the coolest thing is that the spirit of the original SEPULTURA is here with CAVALERA. I think that is what the fans feel it most. And I think that is the greatest thing we have, is that what they wanted to feel is what we had in the soul and the spirit of the original SEPULTURA. And we’re doing that with this — mostly with CAVALERA, because we get to play the SEPULTURA material. CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, we get to do new music, which we’ll do in the future as well. We plan to keep rocking for a long time. Nobody has plans for retirement. That don’t exist. I don’t know what that is. We are rockers — lifers, as they say.”
During a recent interview with Metal Injection, Max Cavalera shared his thoughts on SEPULTURA reunion rumors, saying: “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,” he 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 pressed whether there’s any chance of reunion with SEPULTURA happening, Max offered: “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.
This past April, SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser spoke about the possibility of reuniting with Cavalera brothers during an appearance on Conectados program on Transamérica radio, in São Paulo.
He said: “I think the idea of a last and final show, it would be interesting to have the members, including, obviously, [the Cavalera brothers].” We have Jean Dolabella, Eloy [Casagrande] himself, Jairo Guedz, other musicians who took part, such as Roy Mayorga and Max and Iggor himself”.
“But man, this is something that… this will be a little later. I would really like to invite everyone, right? But that doesn’t just depend on us.”
When discussing his relationship with Max, Andreas said: “Man, I don’t know, I saw him, I don’t know, like six, seven years ago, at a festival. We greeted each other. Dude, there’s no such thing as seeing each other and hanging out at each other’s necks, there’s no such thing as that, you know? We don’t have this aggressiveness or hatred thing. I don’t hate Max at all, I respect Max and Igor a lot. If it happens, it will be beautiful. But also, if it doesn’t happen, we’ll celebrate it the same way.”
Max Cavalera left the band in 1996 after the rest of the band split with his wife Gloria as their manager. His brother Igor stuck around with the group for another 10 years before leaving SEPULTURA and re-teaming with Max in CAVALERA CONSPIRACY.
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