SEPULTURA's KISSER Talks About The Group's New Album, Record Label Situation

SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser recently spoke to Britain's Live4Metal regarding the group's upcoming album, "Roorback", and the band's current record-label situation following their split with Roadrunner Records in early 2001.

When asked how they decided on the title for the new album, Andreas said, "Well, first because ['Roorback' is] a pretty unique name. It's something that I'm pretty sure nobody really knows what that means [laughs]. It sounds pretty strong and the actual meaning is pretty strong too. It means lies and false propaganda and creating situations to bring advantage in political races and stuff like that, and pretty much the whole political system. Like conspiracies and stuff like that — it's all based on that word pretty much. It represents that action. We felt that represents pretty well what we're talking about on the album. It's only 12 songs, but 12 songs that we talk about actual stuff that's going on today in the world. We felt that the name could really represent well what we're saying.

"[Musically] it's a much more compact album," he continued. "Like I said, it's only 12 songs, compared to the last three albums that we did — 'Roots', 'Against', and 'Nation'. Each one of them had 16 songs and millions of guests, and tribes and cellos and millions of things going on. This time we decided to just be the band together in the practice room, nobody from outside — just the music and keep it simple and direct. That's how it is. There are shorter songs. It's hard to say in words, but the first song is a fast song. We didn't open an album with a fast song in ages. It's cool to bring that feeling back — just the band, nobody from outside, and really enjoying working on riffs and stuff like that. We enjoyed it a lot and had a lot of fun working on the album and feel pretty confident that we can do a lot of stuff with it.

Regarding the songwriting and recording process, Andreas said, "We always have like a year flowing. We keep stuff written and taped and shit like that. When we decide to start working on something new, we bring all these ideas. We started doing that last September and we did the pre-production in December, all in Sao Paulo. Then we went to Rio in January to record for a month. Then it was another two weeks in Sao Paulo to mix. So it's cool we did it all in Brazil near our family, our friends, and our home pretty much. [We had] pretty good studios. We had Steve Evetts, who produced our last album, to work with us again. He really enjoys working in Brazil and the equipment there is more than enough to be quality stuff. It's good to do everything there. We didn't spend that much money because the financial situation in Brazil is much more positive — if you pay in dollars, it's two times more. In every way you see it, it's very positive to be there and then do the album there and everything. We're just very confident on the stuff and hopefully we'll have a deal soon here in America and Canada so the album could be out in June."

SEPULTURA were most recently rumored to be inking a North American deal with No Name/Elektra Records, a prospect that now appears unlikely due to a reported breakdown in negotiations between the two parties. Despite this, Kisser is optimistic that the group will land a U.S. deal very soon.

"[So far] we have [secured record deals] in Europe, Japan, and Brazil. In Europe, we're on SPV, which is doing a great job. That's an option that we had after we left Roadrunner, to have different labels in each continent. It's been doing great in this way. It's something new for us and I guess we have more control over one particular continent with one specific label, when people understand the place and everything. Here in the U.S. we've been talking to different labels — big labels, small labels. We really didn't close a deal with anybody, but we're pretty sure that we're gonna do that in the next two weeks. We want to make sure we do something really good and fair for the band because we signed that deal with Roadrunner in 1988 for seven albums. That was something that was very stupid to do because it was too long and we couldn't really re-negotiate stuff, etc. I'd rather be spending all this time making sure we do something fair, instead of just signing something in a hurry just to put an album out. We're taking our time. I'm sure we're gonna close a deal here in the States pretty soon."

You can read whole interview here.

"Roorback", is set to surface in Europe on May 26 through SPV/Steamhammer Records. A North American release through an as-yet-undetermined label is expected during the summer.