Original Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera recently reflected on the lasting legacy of Sepultura's 1996 classic LP Roots in a new episode the Brutally Delicious podcast. Cavalera noted how proud he was of the band for taking the risks they did in making the album, and particularly, the influence it had on French noisemakers Gojira.
"We know the guys [in Gojira]. We are friends with them. I can just see a huge influence on things that we did. And I look at that as a very groundbreaking thing. Because at the time, I don't even remember this whole thing with metal bands going back to their roots. Even Norwegian bands doing Viking stuff, that wasn't a thing back then. Later that became, like, 'Oh, shit. We can look into our past and bring some of that stuff that it totally makes sense to the music that we do today.' And that's something that we did. And I find myself sometimes very, very proud of that. Because that's one of the legacies, I think, of Roots." You can watch the complete interview with Igor below.
We're really digging on the connection and praise that Igor is bringing to the table with his answer. And if we had to guess, there's a good chance he's got Gojira's "Amozonia" in mind. Off Gojira's recent Fortitude LP, the track swings with a tribal grunt (and trust us, it's hard to make things really swing on a double-kick drum) and echoes with emulation of cuts like "Attitude" and "Ratamahatta" off Roots.
Cavalera continued by saying, "Some people look at Roots as our biggest-selling record, which is fine, but I like to look at Roots the other way around, where we were trying things that, at the time, they were very risky. They were not the typical thing that every metal band was doing. We were pushing the limits of things that could go completely wrong. It was a risk at the time. We didn't know how it would work out. By doing the thing with the [Brazilian] Xavante tribe, recording with them and bringing all those elements, it could go completely wrong. We didn't know at the time. It was just we had this gut feeling that it was the correct thing to do.
"And to see a band like Gojira doing this nowadays, it totally relates to the work that we did 30 years ago… And we are a hundred percent very proud of it. Not only Gojira, but there's a lot of people going back to ideas… There's a lot of black metal bands nowadays that they do a lot of things with their roots, especially with the American Indian roots, and those things back then, they were not common. So I feel very proud of it, that we kind of launched this idea, and nowadays it kind of became a thing."
You can also check out our exclusive vinyl box set of Roots here.
