HARD NOISE: RETURN TO ROOTS // The Cavalera Bros. Say The Weirdest Things

Rising from a miserable one-room shack in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to world-beating metal heroes, the brothers Cavalera—Max and Iggor—are as weird as they are revered. Celebrating the Return to Roots tour (tickets on sale today) we’ve gathered five of the weirdest things they’ve said over the years.

“Everything is a lie! Christopher Columbus, the guy who came from Portugal to Brazil (Pedro Alvares Cabral), even the moon landing. It’s so confusing.”

In Hysteria December 2013, Sepultura’s Iggor Cavalera denied the moon landing, among other things. He also questioned Christopher Columbus discovering America first (that’s probably a lie, all things considered.) Though he might be wrong about the whole moon thing, he did say “There’s nothing more absurd than the lies the official media says!” In the age of fake news, his portent rings true as ever.

“I couldn’t wait to plug them in and listen to Sepultura’s Roots album on them, because they’re the size of the Glastonbury PA. So I put in a CD of Roots and I turned it up to 10—and that fucking record blew those speakers right out. Fifty-thousand-dollar speakers, gone because of Roots …”

Max Cavalera on his massive speakers after the release of Roots, as chronicled by Joel McIver in Roots Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond; the official Max Cavalera biography. If you can ball like Max can, wouldn’t you blow up 50K worth of speakers on the regular?

“I’m so proud to be a metal dad that can record with his own kid.”

That’s Max again, talking about his son Zyon behind the kit ahead of the release of Soulfly’s 2013 disc, Savages. Most dads can’t boast that…except for maybe, I dunno, Steve Harris?

“And nu metal just came up with horrible shit, like Limp Bizkit, that got huge in US. So everybody said: ‘No, it was the guys from Sepultura that kind of started all of this with Roots.’ And then these guys took it [toward] this more pop direction.”

It’s hard not pointing at Roots and declaring it patient zero for nu metal. Jonathan Davis of Korn guests, as did then drummer David Silveria. Hell, DJ Lethal scratches up a storm. (If you wanna count Mike Patton in there, be my guest.) Ross Robinson behind the desk packaged it all in groovy, tribalistic sound. Like Dr. Frankenstein recoiling in horror at his creation, Iggor does the same in an interview with CVLT Nation magazine in February of 2015.

“I do hate a lot of ‘religion’ but people like Christ – yeah they inspire me. I mean if you look at Christ, He was hanging around with the lowlifes, prostitutes and the losers you know, not going around with those high society motherfuckers you see trying to sell Jesus today!”

Max Cavalera dedicated his Soulfly records to God. It’s kind of like Black Flag dedicating their albums to drunken police officers. In 2006 interview with MusicOMH, he declared some of the psalms and Revelations to be “apocalyptic and exciting,” reciting Psalm 91 in Portuguese for the album Dark Ages. His fluorescent dreads hold nothing but secrets…