Chaos A.D.

Production

The band considered a number of producers, including avant-garde jazz composer John Zorn and Al Jourgensen of industrial metal pioneers Ministry. They ultimately chose Andy Wallace, who had previously mixed Arise. Sepultura wanted isolation, and for that Andy Wallace suggested Rockfield Studios, located in South Wales.

"Kaiowas" was recorded live among the ruins of the medieval castle of Chepstow. It was an entirely acoustic track, with Andreas Kisser and Max Cavalera on the guitars and brother-drummer Igor Cavalera and bassist Paulo Jr. handling the percussion duties. When they recorded "Kaiowas", the quartet never even considered playing the track live, because they thought it would be too difficult to recreate the drumming on stage. They changed their minds after seeing a video of the American band Neurosis: "We saw in that live video that the Neurosis guys put down their guitars and everybody started to play the drums on stage", lead guitarist Andreas remembers. "We decided to try the same thing. We rehearsed it once and it was wonderful. We haven't stopped playing the song live since."

During Chaos A.D. recording sessions, Sepultura recorded a number of covers: "The Hunt", from New Model Army, "Polícia", from Titãs, "Inhuman Nature", from the American hardcore punk band Final Conflict, and "Crucificados pelo Sistema", from Brazilian Ratos de Porão. Igor was a New Model Army fan and he convinced the other band members to include "The Hunt" on the record. Paulo joked that the money of the LP would go straight to new dentures for Justin Sullivan, the toothless singer of New Model Army. The latter 3 covers would be included as B-sides and also on the compilation Blood-Rooted. "Polícia" is also included as a bonus track on the Brazilian edition of the album.

Musical style

Out of the boredom of playing the Arise songs for two years straight and concerned about the threat of musically stagnating, Sepultura pushed the envelope on Chaos A.D. The first track, "Refuse/Resist", revealed the band's new musical direction: slower, with more emphasis on groove than speed. The song starts with the heartbeat of Max's then-unborn first son, Zyon, followed by some Afro-Brazilian drumming reminiscent of Salvador, Bahia samba-reggae group Olodum. About the track's introductory guitar riff, Max acknowledged that it "could have been created by a death metal band." Chaos A.D. was their first record to utilize some lower guitar tunings. Half of the songs in the album are tuned down to D standard, except for "Kaiowas" which is in drop C# tuning.

Diversity was the key to Chaos A.D., revealed Max Cavalera. "Biotech Is Godzilla" was "pure hardcore", according to the elder Cavalera. "Nomad", with its characteristically slow riffs, was described by lead guitarist Andreas Kisser as their answer to Metallica's "Sad but True". The album also featured Sepultura's first all-acoustic incursion, "Kaiowas". "It's like a mixture of Led Zeppelin, Sonic Youth and Olodum", said Max of that particular song. Dazed & Confused magazine stated the album "signalled a move away from the [Sepultura]'s thrash roots, focusing on slower, industrial grooves." In the book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists, author Joel McIver stated the album showed a "movement away from extreme metal to a more punk sound" with a stronger focus on "feel and groove". McIver went on to state that the album showed the first signs of the groove metal genre that Sepultura would apply by the mid-1990s. In Ian Christe's book Sound of the Beast, he credits Chaos A.D, along with American heavy metal band Pantera for developing the death metal-influenced music of groove metal that would later influence other artists in the 90s.

Themes

The lyrics of "Refuse/Resist" mention "tanks on the streets, confronting police, bleeding the plebs." Its chorus ("Refuse! Resist!") resembles a protest march slogan, and when released as a single featured a photograph of a South Korean student rushing at Seoul's riot police contingent while holding a Molotov cocktail. The next song, "Territory", dealt with the conflict between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. "Slave New World" — with its lyrics co-written by Biohazard bassist Evan Seinfeld — was a protest against censorship.

Massacres were a major part of Chaos A.D.'s overall theme. "Amen" tackled with the massacre of David Koresh's followers in Waco, Texas. "Manifest" had a faux-radio report of the Carandiru massacre, and "Kaiowas" was made in honor of a Brazilian Indian tribe that committed collective suicide in protest against the government that wanted to drive them off the land of their ancestors. "Nomad", written by Andreas, talked about people expelled from their homelands.

In 2008, speaking to Kerrang!, Max Cavalera remembered: "This certainly got in touch with the dark side of Sepultura. "Refuse/Resist" is an anti-police song – a real piece of anarchy. You could call the album riot music. It was full of heavy shit and some of it was risky, but it was just where we were coming from at the time. "Manifest" is also very close to me. That's about a massacre of prisoners by police at a jail in São Paulo. One hundred and eleven prisoners were killed, and one of my friends was there and took pictures of it all, one of which we used in the artwork."

On Chaos A.D., Sepultura honored one of their biggest idols, Jello Biafra. Max had called Biafra asking him to contribute to the album with a song about the growing neo-Nazi movement. "I asked for something like 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off - Part 2'", remembers Max, referring to the anti-Nazi song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" by the Dead Kennedys. But Biafra wasn't interested in recycling old ideas and he suggested a song called "Biotech Is Godzilla", that he had written during his visit to Eco '92, a world conference about ecology organized in Rio de Janeiro. "Jello spent ten minutes explaining me his crazy theories", said Max to Anamaria G. of Bizz magazine, "he said that George Bush had sent a group of scientists to Brazil to test germs and bacteria on human beings and use them as guinea pigs. The lyrics claim that biotechnology created AIDS. But they don't say that technology is bad, just that it's in the wrong hands."

Touring and promotion

By the time Chaos A.D. arrived, Sepultura were the biggest act of Roadrunner's roster. Aware of the band's increasing popularity, the label spent nearly $1 million on a "marketing blitz" which quickly guaranteed them silver and gold records in Belgium, France and the UK. The group also signed an exclusive distribution deal with a major label, Epic Records, home of Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine. This deal eventually went sour: Epic paid little attention to Sepultura, preferring to invest in Fight and Prong, groups that were, in the long run, less successful than the Brazilians.

The Chaos A.D. tour kickstarted on October 23, 1993 with British doom metal band Paradise Lost as the opening act. The tour went well, except for an incident where Berlin's police received a false tip claiming that Sepultura's tour bus was loaded with a major cocaine shipment. Enraged by the unjust search and seizure procedure, Max re-wrote "Antichrist", from their 1985 Bestial Devastation EP, as "Anti-Cop", and then the band proceeded in playing the song live throughout the tour (a recorded version is available on the combined re-release of Bestial Devastation/Morbid Visions and The Roots of Sepultura albums).

While touring Europe, rumors floated around that Sepultura would be part of the latest edition of Brazil's Hollywood Rock music festival, taking place in January 1994. The event would happen simultaneously on São Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro.

Critical reception

Chaos A.D. received positive reviews from music critics, with many commending the album's experimentation and sense of the band coming into their own. AllMusic declared it one of the best heavy metal albums of all time, calling it "a remarkable achievement not only in its concentrated power and originality, but also in the degree to which Sepultura eclipsed their idols in offering a vision of heavy metal's future." Entertainment Weekly proclaimed that "Sepultura will separate casual headbangers from rabid addicts fast... even nonmetalheads will be impressed by the variety in [Chaos A.D.]: they're not averse to slowing things down."

Track listing

All music composed by Sepultura, except where noted.

Notes

Personnel