Legendary Brazilian metal icons SEPULTURA release their upcoming album “The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart” on October 25th via Nuclear Blast and in anticipation Andreas Kisser sat down with DP no estúdio com o Sepultura to talk through the album. Read that track by track, below:
Intro
“Actually the intro is the demo we did just before we went to the studio, with all the songs played at the same time! It’s like you are listening to all the songs that you will hear separately on the album at once. It sounds so great, noisy and powerful and it was a result of an accident that I had on my computer. Each song had its track so when I accidentally played the tracks together they came strong and beautiful so I decided to show the guys and they all liked it!”
Trauma of War
“This will be the first song on the album and is one of the fastest and most brutal songs we ever did. The performance of our drummer Eloy is fantastic, it gave such an energy to the song that the guitars, bass and vocals had to top that level of brutality, for sure our strongest opener so far. I wrote the lyrics inspired by friends that went to war and came back with some kind of trauma, some kind of disturbance that they have to live with for the rest of their lives.”
The Vatican
An ironic tribute to the conclave that elected Argentinian Pope Francis I as the successor of Benedict XVI. "This track has some Death Metal influences. The lyric tells the story of how the Vatican was created, filled with blood, orgy, murders, corruption, adultery. It’s one of the most evil and perverse lyrics I ever wrote.”
Impending Doom
”Song with a very slowed tempo, with heavy picks and a low-tuned rhythm. Its nickname was “Puxada”, because of the guitar’s riff characteristic. This track is very heavy. The lyrics are Derrick’s. And it talks about cursed inheritances that are left from generation to generation. What world we are going to leave for ours heirs?”
Manipulation of Tragedy
“Another of Derrick’s lyric. Talks about collective manipulation through a culture of fear, creating tragic and drastic situations in order to justify certain decisions made by the governors, legitimizing some limitations to the society. The manufactured consent. The song was born from Eloy’s double bass drumming rhythm. It sounds very Sepultura, with influence from several periods of the band.”
Tsunami
“Derrick wrote the lyrics for it, part inspired by the natural phenomena and part by the ‘tsunami’ of information we receive nowadays through the world wide web and the media in general. A tsunami is the most powerful force of nature, stronger than any earthquake, tornado or a storm. It simply destroys everything in its path. The result is total destruction but also total cleanup, a new beginning.”
The Bliss of Ignorants
Derrick’s lyric. “It’s about the illusion created in society that we are free to do whatever we want, but, in fact, it is not like that. Freedom is limited and part of the society lives under ignorance, euphoric, without awareness of everything that surrounds us. The song opens with percussive drum, low tuning and groovy sound. Its nickname was ‘Brasuca’. It’s kind of a mix of Roots and Chaos Ad rhythm. Ross influenced us to explore more this Brazilian side. With participation of percussionist Fred Ortiz (Beastie Boys’ former drummer who plays with Derrick in Maximum Hedrum).”
Grief
“It is a song that starts with clean guitars in a way that we never attempted before, I think it was our biggest challenge on this album and it came out amazing. I wrote the song inspired by a tragic incident that happened in Brazil in January 2013. More than 200 kids died in a fire inside a night club. The place didn’t have the proper emergency exits and most of the people died asphyxiated, it was horrible. The small town at
