MAX CAVALERA

Live-Metal.net recently conducted an interview with vocalist Derrick Green of Brazilian/American metallers SEPULTURA. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. Live-Metal.net: Is that at all surprising to you that it's taken so long for fans to accept you into the band, even after seven albums, 10-15 years, or whatever it's been. And is it still a challenge every day to win back these older fans? Derrick Green: It's not really that surprising. A lot of times in the world of metal when you're a fanatical fan of a band that you really enjoy, it's hard to see certain changes happen. There have been a lot of changes in bands that I have loved in the past and they made changes happen. But being an artist, I understand a little bit more that those changes were inevitable sometimes. It's just life. It's just constantly changing, and it's just something that you have to deal with. As an adult and as a human being, those things are going to happen. When you look at life that way and there are changes that happen for a reason, you can kind of get beyond living in the past. But instead a lot of people do, and I do the same because there are things I'm going to always love. But I love from that time period — that time period when I discovered SEPULTURA and "Arise", and I had a cassette tape that a friend gave to me and it was amazing. And I cherish it, and it can never be replaced. It can never go back truly to that time. It would be silly to even think that. For me, I think the challenge for us is the fact that we love what we do. We never walk away from this band, we have always stuck to it and we always stayed focused on creating new music. And music that we wanted to do. Everything was a process, and we knew that it would take time to evolve, to know each other, to get to do it together, to create music together. We needed that time to bond, and I think it was all a process of evolving for us. And we wanted to get better with each album, and I think we've been doing that since we've been together. And for us, that's always been our goal, to really focus on music and leave all the other stuff behind. A consequence of just focusing and doing what we do and the drive and not giving up has brought a lot of new fans that have never seen SEPULTURA in any period of "Chaos A.D." or "Roots" or "Beneath The Remains". So we have those new fans that truly appreciate what we've been doing since I've been in the band. And then they go back and listen to old stuff, and they have an understanding, but they're not really kind of dwelling on the past. And then there's the old fans that we brought back who had lost touch with the band and are not really feeling the changes. But they still have that hope and that glimmer, and they still like good music. So I think that we're able to produce some good music that people are interested in hearing, so it's great to see that mix. And I know that we'll never be completely bringing back all the old fans, but that's never been my goal. Our whole goal has really just been to create and write great music.