Sepultura may be on their farewell tour, but former frontman Max Cavalera isn't feeling particularly sentimental about the curtain dropping on the band that he and his brother Iggor formed in Belo Horizonte in 1984.
Max Cavalera left Sepultura in 1996, and Iggor departed the band in 2006. The current incarnation of the band - Derrick Green, Andreas Kisser, Pauklo Jr. and Greyson Nekrutman - announced their farewell tour in 2023, and Kisser says that the group will play their very last show back in Belo Horizonte before the end of 2026.
In a new interview with Full Metal Jackie's show on FMJ Radio, Max Cavalera says, "They still call it Sepultura, but everybody knows that it's not the same" and says that he believes that, for many fans, it is he and his brother who still carry the true spirit of the band.
"I feel - and I'm not saying that just for myself - I think a lot of fans feel that me and Iggor kind of carry the spirit of Sepultura with us on everything that we do," he states, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. "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."
The Cavalera brothers have annoyed Andreas Kisser in recent years, by re-recording Sepultura's earliest records. with the guitarist stating, “It's really very disrespectful... the artistic value is zero.”
Max Cavalera is untroubled by the criticism.
"Me and Iggor, we have our own path, we are on our own thing, we are revisiting those old material on our own time," he tells Full Metal Jackie. "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. 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 Iggor, regardless of what the other guys are doing."
Listen to the full interview below:
