Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian went to northeast France for Wednesday’s Big Four show, but at other July dates the new father’s guitar duties are covered by Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser (as reported here). It’s weird to see Anthrax on stage without Ian — a first — but clips from Kisser’s second gig as temp on Saturday in Sweden are jamming (above)! Kisser is energy for the other Anthrax dudes who, having tirelessly performed for three decades, probably don’t retain measurable enthusiasm for favorites like “Indians,” “Madhouse,” and “Anti-SoCal.” Not to mention, those jamz date back to their writers’ mid-20s. Those guys are relaxed adults now, not lulzy youths. Shit, I bet they no longer even mind being caught in a mosh.

Click to read more…

Fans who read the headline might be hoping that this is another Elseworlds-style temporary supergroup-thing, like Gary Holt touring with Slayer or Doc Coyle touring with Lamb of God, but, alas, the above photo — taken at the 2005 Roadrunner United concert — is not to be re-created live anytime soon.

Nope. See, Scott Ian got his wife, Meat Loaf’s Daughter, preggers, and he’s staying home for a bit in order to be present for the birth of the baby. So the Sepultura guitarist will be filling in for him for eight ‘Thrax shows in July (including at least one Big 4 show), according to this tweet from Kisser, which an anonymous Portugese-speaking reader assures me says what I just told you it said.

Click to read more…

I can’t even fucking believe this. Max Cavalera has been calling for a reunion of the classic Sepultura line-up for awhile now, first blaming Andreas Kisser and then Paulo Jr. for the fact that it hasn’t happened yet; and then the current Sepultura line-up released a video in which they just killed the idea dead, dead, dead. And that should have been the end of it.

Unfortunately, it’s not. From Blabbermouth:

Click to read more…

So Max Cavalera has been running around saying he wants to do the Sepultura reunion, but it ain’t gonna happen because Andreas Kisser is a dick, or, no, wait, Paulo is a dick, or, really, your mom is a dick and it’s all her fault that the reunion isn’t happening. And up ’til now, to the best of my knowledge at least, the remaining Sepulturians have kept their mouths shut about all of Max’s smack-talking.

Well, no more:

Now, of course, you should never say never, but that seems to be pretty definitive, at least for the moment. Maybe if Max points the finger at Igor next, though, he can really make this happen.

-AR

So back in May, Max Cavalera blamed Andreas Kisser for our current lack of a Sepultura reunion. And while I took Max’s side at the time, Anso schooled me right proper just a couple of days later, proposing that Max might be, um, less than honorable. And now that Max is changing his story just seventh months later, it’s getting really, really hard not to think that Anso nailed it right on the head.

See, all of a sudden, Max is on an anti-Paulo Jr. campaign. Last week he told Revolver that Paulo was “the only musician that didn’t improve much” during the classic Sepult-era, even going so far as to allege that Paulo didn’t record any of the bass tracks on any Sep releases prior to Roots. I didn’t think much of it at the time; for one thing, I don’t think that Paulo is anyone’s favorite member of Sepultura, and for another thing, even though it might seem weird that Max is asserting that for roughly a decade the band has a bass player so untalented that he couldn’t record his album tracks and no one ever thought to replace him, I’m sad to say that I’ve heard stories like that before, so it actually seemed entirely plausible.

But now Metal Insider has brought it to my attention that Max is once again talking smack on his former bandmate, this time saying it’s all Paulo’s fault, and not Andreas’ fault, that there hasn’t been a Sep reunion. He tells Sonic Excess:

Click to read more…

I’m not so naive as to think that in any conflict there’s a evil-intentioned, deceitful jerk on one side who’s opposed diametrically by a lily-white innocent on the other. Especially in the entertainment biz, long a haven for those with awful people skills and only a passing acquaintance with reality. So we can all agree that to call hot, steaming bullshit! on Max Cavalera is in no way equivalent to an exoneration or endorsement of his foe and former bandmate Andreas Kisser. All I’m saying is that Cavalera’s latest statement, in which the woefully out-of-touch recovering nu-metalist attempts to turn the divided metal community against Kisser on the thinnest of premises, is embarrassing shit-talk at best and character assassination at worst.

Regardless of personal loyalties (full disclosure: I’m kinda anti-anything that lives in camo cargo shorts) or tastes (again, F.D.: Soulfly reeks), it’s hard to dispute the eye-rolling, head-slapping 8th-grade wackness of Cavalera’s logic. But just to be safe, let’s cart in the 100% impartial MetalSucks Translate-Bot 3000 to help us parse through the accusations in a May interview that Kisser squashed a proposed Sepultura reunion. Sure, even T-B3k emitted a sour wisp of oil fumes and the occasional clank when I began to feed in text that originates from a mega-stoner whose manager/wife has been describing his farts as musical perfume for two decades. But you’ll see that the results are stellar, if not uncannily laser-like in their precision. Take it away T-B3k:

Click to read more…

I don’t like to talk too much smack on Andreas Kisser, because he’s a terrific guitar player and I have no real evidence that he’s a jerk or whatever; I’ve never really seen or heard about him doing anything super-douchey, unless you consider his part in the dissolution of the classic Sepultura line-up super-douchey, which you might. It does seem awfully funny that Max Cavalera left and the band basically never made anything good again, but that really just suggests that Max was the driving creative force behind the Sepulturawesomeness, not necessarily that Andreas Kisser should suck it.

But awhile back there was a rumor that there was gonna be a Sepultureunion, and now Max has told AltSounds that it almost happened – except a certain guitar player ended up mucking up the works:

Click to read more…

This article about Sepultura allegedly being “carbon neutral” really rankles me. It’s been a while since I ranted about the environment on this website (Gojira’s Joseph Duplantier has done plenty of that for me elsewhere), but it’s time. This Sepultura piece is bullshit.

In theory, being carbon neutral is an admirable goal. The problem is that it’s very unlikely that Sepultura are actually carbon neutral. First of all the article cites no source and doesn’t explain what Sepultura are actually doing to become carbon neutral, but that certainly isn’t the band’s fault.

Touring is absolutely brutal on the environment. There’s the obvious issue of gas consumption and the corollary pollution issues; I’m guessing this is what Andreas Kisser is most concerned with… if he’s even given it any more thought than “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to try and be green?”. Andreas, how are you planning to uphold your vow to “neutralize” your carbon emissions? Will your bus run on vegetable oil? Will you buy carbon offsets? Please tell me.

Click to read more…

In my review for AC/DC’s Black Ice, I wrote about how certain trademarks of an artist or band – Michael Jackson’s falsetto, Axl Rose’s gravelly throat, Angus Young’s dirty blues rock pecking – suck me in immediately, even despite their use for blatantly nostalgic purposes. The punch in the gut of Andreas Kisser’s muddy-but-monolithic power chords at the beginning of “A-Lex I,” the opening track on Sepultura’s eleventh album, A-Lex, pull me right back to being seventeen and getting lost in the ridiculous grooves of the band’s punk/thrash classic, Chaos A.D. Of course, when making this comparison, I meant it positively toward Black Ice. And though A-Lex doesn’t necessarily suckle at the leathery teat of nostalgia, it doesn’t lift off in the way the intro track implies. Though the album is packed with primo Sepulturaness, it’s also packed with directionless filler, bloating it from a tight groove metal record to an overly/questionably ambitious record that’s practically impossible to get through in one sitting. Their lack of self-editing ultimately mars the record, but the bits of it that are good – and don’t let my misgivings fool you, because there’s quite a bit that’s pretty fucking good – make you glad they’re still here, even if they are completely without the Cavalera brothers for the first time since the band’s inception.

Click to read more…

Two new Sepultura songs, “The Treatment” and “We’ve Lost You,” are now avail on the band’s MySpace page. The tracks come off of A-Lex, Sep’s forthcoming, Cavalera-less, A Clockwork Orange-themed album. Since we’re nothing if not dorks here at MetalSucks, I thought it would be fun to needlessly dissect, judge, and argue about the two tracks. After the jump, read my thoughts, and then tell me why I’m a genius/asshole in our comments sections.

Click to read more…

Blabbermouth tipped us off to the below footage of Sepultura rehearsing a new song for their upcoming album, which is apparently a concept album based on Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (which was – duh – also the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic film). This new album should provoke a lot of interest (if not record sales), ’cause it’s the first Sep album ever to feature neither of the Cavalera brothers.

So will it be any good? The riff in the video is okay, even if it doesn’t exactly knock my socks off. But the band’s last album, Dante XXI, was good enough that I’m curious to hear what Andreas Kisser and the fellas come up with.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=32090898;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

So… what do y’all think? Let’s get some premature judgements up in here!

-AR