SEPULTURA Drummer On His Early Musical Influences, Replacing IGOR CAVALERA

Love-It-Loud.com recently conducted an interview with SEPULTURA drummer Jean Dolabella. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Love-It-Loud.com: How did you first come to drum professionally and what do you recall of your earlier groups? Did you always want to play in a metal band and which drummers were you inspired by?

Jean: I started playing drums when I was very young but I started playing professionally when I was 15. Before that I played in bands with friends and it was always related to rock or metal music. After, when I started working with music, I played in many bands and many music styles. I always wanted to play music and live off of it, I never thought it had to be a metal band, I love playing metal but I'm not only a metal drummer, I'm a musician. I don't want to be stuck inside a music genre, never wanted. There was this band I played that I consider to be one of my biggest schools in life. We played only covers, but I was young and I learned a lot about how everything works. It was my first time playing to a click track and we played a lot of different styles of music. Doing four or more shows a week for two years, that really helped me to develop my playing. I was always inspired by a lot of musicians, not only drummers, and this changes from time to time. Eddie and Alex Van Halen, John Bonham, Dave Lombardo, Dave Grohl, Igor Cavalera, Mike Bordin, Jeff Buckley, Carter Beauford. This is back then. From nowadays, Joshua Redman, Dave King, Steve Jordan, Tomas Haake, John Mayer, Brian Blade and many many others.

Love-It-Loud.com: Igor Cavalera was such an integral part of SEPULTURA with his drumming and percussion giving the group a unique sound that set them apart from other metal bands. How does it feel to be following in his footsteps and how did you approach adding your own style whilst still being faithful?

Jean: It was hard in the beginning. I felt some pressure from the outside but most of it from myself. I really wanted to be faithful and keep what SEPULTURA always had but at the same time I never wanted to copy or to play like Igor. I started trying to bring everything I thought was most important as far as drumming structure. After that I started putting my own voice in between. Now that we've been touring for four years and recorded one record with this lineup, it's a lot easier.

Love-It-Loud.com: Having grown up in Brazil, were you a fan of SEPULTURA prior to your involvement with the band and how did you come to be invited into the group?

Jean: Yes, I was a fan of the band and the first big concert I've been to was SEPULTURA in Uberlândia in 1991, "Arise" tour. On that day I manage to go backstage and get a pic from Andreas [Kisser, SEPULTURA guitarist]. It's funny to think that 19 years latter I'm here on tour with them. Stanley Soares, our [front-of-house] soundguy, works for SEPULTURA for almost seven years and he was the guy who recorded UDORA's first record and several other records I played in. He told Andreas about me and at the same time Igor decide to leave the band I had just come back from L.A. Andreas called me to ask if I wanted to do an audition. I listened to all the songs he said they were playing lately and I went to São Paulo two weeks later for the audition. We played the whole show and talked for a few minutes. After that I came back to Belo Horizonte, the city I used to live in. A couple of days later Paulo [Xisto Pinto Jr., SEPULTURA bassist] called me saying I was the one.

Love-It-Loud.com: Aside from "A-Lex", which SEPULTURA album do you feel is their strongest and which songs in particular do you enjoy playing live?

Jean: I guess the album that stands out the most for me is "Chaos A.D." Not only because it's a great album, it's also because it was such a big influence on me when it came out. The whole thing of being in a band and travel the world hit me. Especially because they are from Brazil and believed in their music so they went all over the world, that, to me, being a 15-year-old guy listening to that record and seeing that it's possible to really get somewhere when you believe in what you're doing, it was very strong. I pretty much like to play all the songs live. It changes from time to time.

Read the entire interview at Love-It-Loud.com.

Drum-cam footage of SEPULTURA's Jean Dolabella performing the song "Territory" during the band's April 17, 2010 concert at SO36 in Berlin, Germany can be viewed below.