Sepultura, the start of the nu metal love

In its early days nu metal bowed down at the altar of Faith No More and Rage Against The Machine. But there was another band who were equally influential on shaping the sound of the genre - Sepultura.

The Brazilians had begun life in the mid-8os as an underground death metal band, but 1993’s Chaos AD album was filled with the kind of scuzzy, groove-heavy metal that would inspire Korn and their ilk.

Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera’s antennae for new music were always twitching, and he was an early adopter of Korn’s self-titled debut album. He enlisted its producer, Ross Robinson, to work on his own band’s landmark 1995 album Roots. That record saw Sepultura incorporating nu metal’s downtuned grooves into their own sound and enlisting Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis to duet alongside Faith No More’s Mike Patton on the track Lookaway.

Max batted away suggestions that Roots was a nu metal album, describing it as “really more kind of caveman [thing]’’, but the links were established. The singer guested on Headup from Deftones’ second album, Around The Fur - a song whose lyrics gave their name to Soulfly, the band Max formed in the wake of his split from Sepultura in 1996.

The love-in worked both ways. Soulfly’s self-titled debut album featured appearances from Limp Bizkit duo Fred Durst and DJ Lethal (on the single Bleed) and Deftones’ frontman Chino Moreno (on First Commandment), while 2000’s Primitive saw Max collaborating with Corey Taylor of Slipknot on Jumpdafuckup. Max had helped breathe life into nu metal with Sepultura. Now the circuit was complete.