Max Cavalera says that he doesn’t keep in contact with his former bandmates in SEPULTURA.
SEPULTURA‘s classic lineup fell apart in 1996 with the exit of Max after the rest of the band split with his wife Gloria as their manager. His brother, drummer Igor Cavalera, stuck around with the group for another 10 years before leaving SEPULTURA and re-teaming with Max in CAVALERA CONSPIRACY.
Although SEPULTURA has maintained a diehard fanbase in all parts of the world throughout the band’s three-and-a-half-decade-plus history, Max-era albums “Roots” and “Chaos A.D.” were by far SEPULTURA‘s most commercially successful, having both been certified gold in the U.S. for sales in excess of five hundred thousand copies.
Asked in a new interview with the “RRBG Podcast” if he stays in touch with the guys in SEPULTURA nearly 25 years since his departure from the band, Max said (hear audio below): “Not really. When [we went our] separate ways, it’s a bit like — I’ve never been divorced, but I assume that would be what a divorce is like. You don’t really wanna see your ex-wife, and you don’t wanna keep tabs on who she’s dating or whatever. So I don’t really follow them. Whatever they do, it’s all right by me, man. I’ve got so much on my plate, I’m plenty busy here that I don’t need to be looking at them, be measuring what they are doing to what I am doing. In the end, I think things just kind of went that way.
“I’m super proud of the time we had together,” he continued. “We made some magnificent records, man — stuff that influences people forever. I’m in contact with a lot of young, upcoming bands that really love the old stuff — guys from CREEPING DEATH and NECROT, they always mention especially the early era [of SEPULTURA]: ‘Bestial Devastation’, ‘Morbid Visions’, ‘Beneath The Remains’, of course, ‘Arise’. So it’s cool to know that we did those records. But there’s so much more to do.”
This past January, SEPULTURA bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. said that he has had “zero” contact with Max, adding that a reunion with the band’s original frontman would have to happen “naturally.”
Back in 2017, Igor Cavalera told The Salt Lake Tribune that he and Max “believe SEPULTURA doesn’t really make sense nowadays, to do what they’re doing.” The drummer also downplayed the possibility of a reunion of SEPULTURA‘s classic lineup, saying: “Unless it’s something really solid — and we haven’t seen that from their part — of doing something totally professional and coming together, trying to do something like that. At the end of the day, it would be special for the fans, so it’s not like a closed door, but at the same time, we have no time to spend energy with this kind of thing. So we just move forward.”
Max echoed his brother’s sentiments, telling The Salt Lake Tribune that he doesn’t even think about his former bandmates much. “For a time — for a long time — there was a war in the press, like, ‘He’ll talk this, I’ll talk that,'” he explained. “I got really tired of it, honestly. I’m not gonna do that anymore. So let them go their way and do their thing, and we’re gonna do our thing, and I think that’s the best for everybody.”
While stopping short of completely ruling out a reunion of SEPULTURA‘s classic lineup, Max said: “Right now, we don’t even need it. It’s been so much of that kind of bad vibes through the years that I don’t even know how that would even really work out. I think what [Igor and I] are doing is the closest thing to that, and it works great, it works like a charm. It’s amazing.”
Igor and Max have spent much of the last five years celebrating the 20th anniversary of SEPULTURA‘s “Roots” and 30th anniversary of “Beneath The Remains” and “Arise”, respectively, on tour all over the world.
SEPULTURA‘s latest album, “Quadra”, was released in February via Nuclear Blast Records.
