Chaos is a common word within the Sepultura camp, especially to Max Cavalera, vocalist and guitarist of the band. Together with brother Igor, Andreas Kisser and Paul Jr, Sepultura has unleashed their best work to date with their latest release, Chaos AD. Not bad at all for four lads from Brazil wo didn’t think they’d ever get out of their problem-laden country a few years ago. When they released their fourth album Arise, it went on to sell one million copies worldwide. Sepulture played two memorable shows in Australia in 1992 and their Australian only EP Posse has gone on to become a consistent seller both locally and overseas.

Max explained what happened to the band after Australia. “We went to Japan and then we did two opening tours, one with Ozzy Osbourne and one with Ministry. We finished up in December. We very much enjoyed the Australian tour,” stated Max in his heavy Brazilian accent, “and we definitely want to come back.”

With all this behind them, the group was determined not to rest on their laurels. With producer Andy Wallace, the quartet flew to South Wales in the UK to record their most challenging and exciting album to date. And so, as we enter the age of Chaos AD, no-one knows the coming of the next thousand years will bring, this is the philosophy of the band, it’s album and the title of it.

“It was just a name that showed up in my mind and I thought it would reflect the whole album vibe of the songs, the lyrics and the cover. So, it’s everything related to Chaos. We like to write about that kind of stuff. It’s what really inspires us and it’s how we like to release our anger and our energy. It goes from personal topics to topics of gaols and rebellion, and the massacring of Indian tribes.”

The opening trac, Refuse/Resist finds drummer Igor Cavalera delving further into percussion more reminiscent of World Music rather than Death Metal, within the monstrously heavy context of a classic Sepultura riff. But it’s the heartbeat (Max’s son Zyon), recorded in utero that is the first sound you hear on Chaos AD.

“We didn’t want to do an intro,” explains Max. “We’d used acoustic intro , weird effects intros so this time it was like, we were either not going to use any intros or have something special. Buth then I came up with the idea of using Zyon’s heartbeat, everybody agreed because it was really simple and short. It was a good way to start the album.”

What are some of the other songs like?

“There’s Biotech is Godzilla, which is about laboratory sickness. It’s 100% Jello Bialra (Dead Kennedy’s founder), and I just called him up because I like his lyrics. To be quite honest I didn’t have the lyrics so I asked him if he could write some for me. Then there’s Kaiowas, an acoustic instrumental on the album which was inspired by a tribe of Brazilian Indians who committed suicide. With this one, we just wanted to do something really different for a change. There are no electric guitars, and we used a lot of Brazilian drums and rhythm.”

With Arise being so successful, was there any pressure in putting this album together?

“Yeah, there was a little bit, because people kept on asking us about the album, when it was going to come out and how different it was going to be. For a while I was getting pretty annoyed about the whole thing. Right now I think we did the right things, which was to keep the roots of the music, but at the same time show a different side of the band. I also got pretty frustrated with the scene in Brazil. When we lived there, it was basically just a fucked-up place. People were not really into the music and helping each other out, but more so about screwing each other around. Just ‘cos we got lucky and got a chance to tour, a lot of people started hating us.”

On January 23, 1992, Sepultura opened Rock in Rio II in front of an audience of several hundred thousand people and an estimated television audience of 540 million. In late ’92, the group opened (in their first American arena shows) for Ozzy Osbourne on his final US tour and played that most famous show at Costa Mesa. Supporting Ozzy would have been huge for Sepultura, but did they feel right about playing the Costa Mesa one?

“It was weird, explained Max. “I had fun ‘cos it was the first time that we had played arenas. Everything you do the first time is exciting. I really missed the real Sepultura crowd and playing in smaller places where you can do whatever you want. I ended up in trouble in a couple of places though. I can’t behave the way society wants you to behave, so I ended up fighting with bouncers and shit like that on some parts of the tour, so that bummed me out for a while. But apart from that it was great”

Talking of tours, where will this one take you to?

“We’re starting in Scandinavia. We stay in Europe ‘till December and tour with Paradise Lost, then we come back to America and do a tour with Fudge Tunnel. We’ll be going back to Brazil in January and I think we will be on tour for most of next year.