In a new interview with Australia’s Heavy, former SEPULTURA guitarist/vocalist Max Cavalera spoke about why he and his brother, former SEPULTURA drummer Igor “Iggor” Cavalera decided to revisit their earliest SEPULTURA releases, “Morbid Visions” and “Bestial Devastation”, and re-record them and put them out, along with a re-recorded version of guitarist Andreas Kisser’s first album with SEPULTURA, “Schizophrenia”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):”[It was] kind of like a chance to do it again, but do it better, kind of not really fix the mistakes, ’cause I think the mistakes were kind of cool, but make the stuff sound better. We had a chance to have better guitar, better drum sound, a better studio, surrounded by knowledgeable metal people that know how to record this stuff. None of those things were available when we made those records in Brazil. We were on our own. The engineers didn’t know what to do, and it was like no man’s land making these records in Brazil. So we had a chance to redo them and redo them the way we envisioned them to sound. So the re-recordings is the way we, as musicians, think they should sound like, the re recordings — that’s the proper way that we envisioned those songs. Even as kids, we were hoping to get the sound that we got on the re-recordings; this is what we were shooting for in the first place. So it’s really cool that we get the chance to do that. A lot of bands don’t have the chance, don’t try it or they try and they fail. They don’t keep the energy and the anger of the original. We kept all that in check. We made sure it stays pissed. It’s full of piss and vinegar all the way through. So I think that’s why a lot of people love the re-recordings, man. The fans fricking love the re-recordings, and it’s really well received around the world.”Asked if he thinks those early SEPULTURA albums would have been as well received had they been as well recorded back in the 1980s, Max said: “We never had a manual how to do this stuff. We did it on the fly. They call it, you’re gonna wing it, you’re just gonna do it by trial and error. And that’s the beauty of these records — they were full of stuff that really comes out of nowhere. Like, what I was thinking when I made this riff; this riff is crazy. What the hell was I thinking? But it’s beautiful, man. It’s cool. It shows that even at the age of 14, 15, I had that metal in my veins. I had that wild metal flowing through my blood, and I just went for it. And now I have a chance to revisit, as an older person, and still get the same enjoyment from these albums that I got it when I was a kid. It’s an incredible feeling. You get to do this. I feel very fortunate, me and my brother, we are able to celebrate our past through these albums and get to play them live for people. It’s an incredible feeling.”SEPULTURA fell apart in 1996 with the exit of Max after the rest of the Brazilian four-piece split with the vocalist/guitarist’s wife Gloria as their manager. Max’s brother, drummer Igor stuck around with the group for another ten years before leaving SEPULTURA and re-teaming with Max in CAVALERA CONSPIRACY.For the new versions of “Morbid Visions”, “Bestial Devastation” and “Schizophrenia”, the Cavalera brothers enlisted Travis Stone (PIG DESTROYER) on lead guitars. The full lineup would consist of more Cavalera alumni, as Igor Amadeus Cavalera (GO AHEAD AND DIE, HEALING MAGIC) once more brought his talents on bass to the fold.CAVALERA’s version of “Schizophrenia” was recorded from April 15, 2023 to June 5, 2023 at Focusrite Room in Mesa Arizona. Mixing and mastering was handled by Arthur Rizk (SOULFLY, GO AHEAD AND DIE, TURNSTILE). The original “Schizophrenia” cover artwork was restored in hand-painted watercolors by Eliran Kantor.Last November, Kisser was asked by IMPACT Metal Channel for his opinion about Max and Igor’s decision to re-record “Morbid Visions” and “Bestial Devastation”, and re-record them and put them out, along with a re-recorded version of Andreas’s first album with SEPULTURA, “Schizophrenia”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “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.”Andreas added: “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.”Earlier last year, Max told V13 about the decision to re-record “Morbid Visions”, “Bestial Devastation” and “Schizophrenia”: “I think [Igor and I] were [doing special tours celebrating] the other [SEPULTURA] records, like we did ‘Roots’, and then we did ‘Beneath The Remains’ and the reaction was so explosive and the fans were reacting so good, with the way we were playing that stuff live that, I mentioned to Igor that it would be cool to have this sound on this old records that sound like shit, especially if we can get them to sound the way we sound now because we sound great right now with the way we are playing.”A lot of people are… there’s a big taboo about re-recording,” Max continued. “There are a lot of people who are [freaked out] about touching old stuff. I had to kind of block all that and think, ‘Fuck it. Let’s do it, man, but let’s do it the way we wanna do it, the way we wanna hear it as fans.’ I think that’s the difference in the approach that we took. So ‘Morbid Visions’, ‘Bestial Devastation’, it’s still very dirty and aggressive, maybe even more aggressive than the original. We play a little bit faster and it’s more angrier. I don’t know how, but it’s angrier than the original. I think that’s key for these records. We don’t want it a digital, brand new modern sound. We just want it to sound live, like a good live-sounding [recording] and we did that. I think that’s why it sounded so cool. Of course, when we did those, we knew what we were going to do with ‘Schizophrenia’, because it’s another record that we feel it’s never really lived up to the potential. The songs are great, but they were never really recorded the right way. So now we’re very happy. We did the three, we got the trilogy and we got to tour for it.”Although SEPULTURA has maintained a diehard fanbase in all parts of the world throughout the band’s nearly four-decade 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.In December 2023, SEPULTURA announced that it would celebrate its 40th anniversary this year by embarking on a “farewell tour” which will cover the entire globe.SEPULTURA’s current lineup comprises Kisser, vocalist Derrick Green, bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. and drummer Greyson Nekrutman, who officially replaced SEPULTURA’s longtime drummer Eloy Casagrande in February 2024.[embedded content]