Cavalera at Spotify O-East, January 27th 2025

 

One of my favorite movies from Latin America is Rodrigo D - No Futuro. It’s a movie directed by Victor Gaviria and released in 1990. In a documentary style the movie follows the lives of disenfranchised youth in Medellin in the late eighties.The way these kids cope with the violent context they live in is with music, metal and punk music. Places like England, where punk started, cities like New York and to a way lesser degrees other areas associated with extreme metal like Norway and Sweden have some violent elements to them, but nothing can compare to Medellin in the eighties. That scene created a unique lo-fi merge of punk and metal that was a mirror to what those kids in cities like Medellin or Sao Paulo experienced. The tagline of the movie poster says it all: “is it death living this much?”

Sepultura and other bands from Belo Horizonte, like Sarcofago perhaps didn’t experience poverty but they definitely witnessed it, it’s unavoidable when living in Latin America. Political and police oppression are at another level. It could be argue that the anger in their music is more genuine. Sepultura first three records are metal records that sound like crust punk. That aggression, that used traditional metal satanic imagery, was deeply connected to the more earthly immediacy and urgency of punk.

Those three records, two albums and one shared EP, were the centerpiece of the show that Cavalera brought to Japan. The band is the reunion, from a few years back, of the Cavalera brothers, Max and Igor, who were the founders of the seminal band Sepultura. I believe this was the first time they played in Japan since reuniting. This time they headlined the 35th edition of the on and off extreme metal event “Extreme the Dojo”, curated by the metal news website of the same name.

Sigh was the first band on the bill. This was my sixth time seeing them but the first since the pandemic. As expected they put a big emphasis on the visual presentation that this time included two little girls on the side of the stage holding skulls, I’m assuming they are the daughters of the two lead singers, I believe they are a married couple. The music was a mix of multiple genres that leaned more to the traditional sounds of heavy metal than to the black metal sound they are more associated with. Nonetheless it was a fun and engaging opening to the show.

Next, in the other side of the spectrum, was Melt Banana. We went from maximalist to minimalist. The bands consist of a vocalist that’s all in charge of handling sequencers and a guitar player. The music is more experimental, they reminded me of another band that came around the same time, The Locust, Unlike them, though, there’s a bit of a hint of melody and song structure in their music. It was also a fun addition. I was happy these two bands were on the bill.

“Tonight you’re in the presence of the real Sepultura” or something to that effect Were the first words uttered by Max to the audience. It seems like he can really hold a grudge, the drama of Sepultura’s disbanding kind of remind me of another extremely popular genre from Latin America: telenovela. One thing is for sure, unfortunately after the two camps went each their own way, neither of them have been able to recreate the magic of those years when they were together.

As I mentioned earlier, this time Cavalera opted for a showcase of those three recordings when Sepultura still embraced a more traditional death metal sound with lots of punk elements: Bestial Devastation, Morbid Visions and Schizophrenia. Each of the records were introduced by Max and three or four songs from each performed. At times they would extend them and go into almost experimental territory. At one point the two brothers were on stage without their bassist and lead guitarist and proceeded to jam in a more exploratory vein that included nods to Black Sabbath. It was fascinating to get a sort of a history of the band through songs, flaunting their role as key pioneers of the genre.

Those records are great, but in my opinion can’t compare to the Sepultura sound of Arise, Chaos AD or Roots. When they briefly played songs from Chaos AD, the classics Refuse/Resist, Territory and a treat especially for Japan, Biotech is Godzilla, boosted the show energy, that was already at max, up a few notches. It was worth being there just to have seen the Cavalera brothers performing those songs. They came back for an encore ending the hour and a half show on a high note.

In 2020 I had tickets for Extreme the Dojo. Brujeria was to headline that bill that never happened due to the Cover-19 pandemic. Sadly the two lead singers of Brujeria passed away just a few months apart last year. Hopefully this initiative of bringing this type of special bands continues with future editions of Extreme the Dojo.
 
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