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Roots — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Initial inspiration and recording

Roots is the product of a concerted effort on the band's part to embrace its Brazilian heritage, including indigenous sounds that were unfamiliar to the Sepultura's members up to that point. The album reflects Sepultura's heightened focus on the music, culture, politics, and history of their native country. The overarching concept was inspired by the film At Play in the Fields of the Lord (particularly the scene in which Tom Berenger's character parachutes into an Amazonian village populated by the Niaruna people). The movie inspired Max Cavalera to try and record with a Native Brazilian tribe. After convincing Roadrunner Records to support the project, Cavalera contacted Angela Pappiani, at the time the communications coordinator for Brazil's Núcleo de Cultura Indígena (Indigenous Culture Center). Nearly one year after Cavalera's initial contact, Pappiani arranged for a small party including band, herself, Robinson, and then-manager Gloria Cavalera to travel to Mato Grosso, Brazil to visit the Xavante tribe and record with them. At the time, the members of Sepultura were only peripherally aware of the indigenous tribes residing in Brazil's interior.

In a 2016 interview with Nashville Scene, Igor Cavalera remembered:

Every second of that trip was insane in a very inspiring way. But there's a few things that really stand out. Like when they explained to us that the only way they wrote music was if someone in the tribe dreamed of the music. They couldn't just write a lyric or a melody. It has to be transmitted to them in a dream. From a musician's point of view, it was like, "Wow, this is a completely different way of approaching music."University of Iowa anthropology professor Laura Graham explained the role of music in Xavante culture to PopMatters in 2016:

For them, music functions as a medium for entering into other realms—whether they be other dimensions of existence or other cultures. Well before they had any contact with white people, part of their culture has always entailed that men engage the spirit world, especially through music. This happens in their dreams. Not all, but most of their music is inspired—you could say "composed", although they say received—in their dreams through encounters with other worlds. When people come and visit the community from the outside, one of the things the Xavante ask them to do is sing them a song. Music is this medium for entering into relations with others—others meaning spiritual beings or, for example, white society or other cultures. The Xavante want to be known and they want their culture to be known. They want their music to be known because they think it's beautiful and view it as a contribution to humanity. It's like, "We have something beautiful to contribute to humanity—and, by the way, here we are suffering. We want people to know who we are and that we exist." And so when they got this proposal from a musical group that wanted to come jam and share music with them, they loved it.

A spokesman for the tribe looked back on the collaboration: "We had seen pictures of Sepultura and we knew that they were different, with their long hair and many tattoos. We also knew that they had been discriminated, like we were. Because of that we were very curious about them."

Meeting the Xavante was by several accounts a life-changing experience that has continued to resonate with the members of Sepultura ever since. Igor has also said that the band identified a lot with the natives: "In a certain way, I think that we, as a band, had a lot of things in common with the Xavante Indians. We also lived on the edge of society, and our music and lifestyle is a long way from being assimilated and respected by that society."

After the trip, recording resumed with Robinson at Indigo Ranch, at the time Robinson's studio of choice. According to the same 2016 Nashville Scene article, by that point the band had amassed "an overabundance of material." Igor Cavalera remembered that it was a challenge to prevent the album from becoming "a gigantic jam that didn't turn into actual songs." He added: "It was quite a difficult record to finish. We did so much recording that the amount of stuff we had going on was quite crazy. We had to make sure not to let anything really special slip by. It was tricky to go through all of it, and it took a lot of time to find out what would work with what we were already writing."

According to Korn guitarist Brian Welch in a November 1996 interview, his "own Bigger Muff guitar pedal" that he had initially modified and then used for his band was reused to his "great dismay" for recording the Roots album.

Lyrical and visual themes

Disparate elements of Brazilian culture permeate every aspect of Roots, from the music to the lyrics to the artwork and visuals to the videos the band made for the songs "Roots Bloody Roots," "Attitude," and "Ratamahatta." The album cover features an indigenous man of the Karajá tribe taken from a 1990 banknote of the discontinued Brazilian cruzeiro, to which artist Michael Whelan added a locket with Sepultura's "tribal S" logo and a background of red roots.

Much of Roots references Brazilian culture, history, lore, and politics, either directly or indirectly. According to Max Cavalera, "Roots Bloody Roots" is "about believe in yourself, about be proud of your heritage, proud of where you come from. Really powerful but simple lyrics. So it's really about just be down with your own roots and believe in your roots". In a 1996 MTV Europe clip, Max Cavalera explained the meaning behind the song as: "Don't give in. What you believe is for life, even if people try all the time to change you. The song is about 'don't let the bastards grind you down.'"

"Ratamahatta" is "a celebration of life in Brazil's favela slums, sung mostly in Portuguese, which tells the stories of people like Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) and Lampião, the leader of an early 1900s outlaw gang from north Brazil, whose head was put on public display after he was captured". "Itsári" ("Roots" in the Xavante language) features a Xavante healing ceremony chant. "Ambush" is "a tribute to murdered South American rain-forest activist Chico Mendes". "Dictatorshit" addresses the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. "Endangered Species" addresses environmental destruction. "Cut-Throat" is about Epic Records, who the band had some trouble with during their previous album, Chaos A.D.; the last words in the song are "Enslavement, Pathetic, Ignorant, Corporations", spelling "Epic". The lyrics to "Attitude" were co-written by Dana Wells, Max Cavalera's stepson, whose death (in part) led to the events which caused Max to leave the band. Dana also came up with the concept for the video for the song, featuring Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu experts the Gracie family.

Critical reception

American newspapers like The New Times, the Daily News and the Los Angeles Times reviewed the Brazilian band: "The mixture of the dense metal of Sepultura and the Brazilian music has a intoxicating effect", wrote a Los Angeles Times reviewer. The Daily News praised the album saying: "Sepultura reinvented the wheel. By mixing metal with native instruments, the band resuscitates the tired genre, reminding of Led Zeppelin times. But while Zeppelin mixed English metal with African beats, it's still more moving to hear a band that uses elements of its own country. By extracting the sounds of the past, Sepultura determines the future direction of metal".

Specialized heavy metal critics also reviewed the album positively. Martin Popoff, author of the book The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal, ranked Roots as the 11th best metal record of all time. "This is a spectacular metal and futurist hardcore LP", wrote Popoff, "a masterpiece, accomplished by a band with an enormous heart and an even larger intellect". Kerrang! magazine awarded Roots second place in the list of "100 records that you have to hear before dying". In 2001, Q magazine named Roots as one of the 50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time. Rolling Stone Brasil named it the 57th best Brazilian music album. Rolling Stone contributor Jon Wiederhorn gave the album three stars out of five and said, "Sepultura play a violent game of sonic overload... the band uses its catharsis as a creative force, funneling torrents of noise into a tunnel of hate" and called the album "a refreshing step forward in a genre full of bands that are creatively bankrupt." Music critic Robert Christgau gave the album a negative "dud" rating. Looking back on the album 20 years later, PopMatters contributor Saby Reyes-Kulkarni described Roots as "inarguably one of the most radical [stylistic] departures from convention in heavy metal history," an album that "blew the doors open on our perceptions of metal and so-called 'world music,'" adding that "we haven't heard anything quite like it since." In April 2005, Decibel inducted Roots into the Decibel Magazine Hall of Fame, becoming the third album overall to receive a coveted spot in their Hall of Fame.

Legacy

Shane Mehling of Decibel, commenting on the album's nu metal sound, likens the reaction from the metal community to the Electric Dylan controversy and writes that "there's still plenty of raw emotion about what that record did to heavy music." Mehling himself deemed the record "a massive blow to metal purists, some of whom had already been disappointed by Sepultura moving away from thrash on their previous album, Chaos A.D. The smolder of Korn's increasing popularity may have worried some, but Roots was like Nero downtuning while Rome burned." Greg Whalen of Terrorizer, who was a fan of Sepultura, recalled that Roots "was like someone took a fish and slapped me across the face with it. It was the most reprehensible thing. They could write these amazing riffs and technical parts, and they just dumb it down to lowest common denominator status. And it almost physically hurt me."

Speaking to Kerrang! in 2008, Max Cavalera looked back on Roots:

Roots came from a blurry dream I had about going to the rainforest. Wine may have been involved. In the end, when we actually went into the forest to record, it was unbelievable. The whole album was a huge personal journey for me, and as a Brazilian, it felt as an incredible achievement. Everyone was inspired and Igor was at the top of his game. The percussion was crazy and we worked with so many great musicians, in the end coming out with a 15-minutes drum jam that someone likened to a crazy Brazilian Pink Floyd. When we took the album to Roadrunner they loved it except for the title. They thought it would sound like a Bob Marley tribute album. We explained it to them, and thankfully they got it.

As for the Xavantes, both their leader at the time of the band's visit (Cipassé) and Pappiani agree that Roots helped the tribe gain some visibility, to the point that people would actually identify them as Xavantes instead of just calling them "indigenous people". Pappiani noticed an increase in people's interest for information on the tribe and their music.

On March 25, 2021, French heavy metal band Gojira released the single "Amazonia", a song about anti-deforestation of the Amazon and the protection of Brazilian indigenous peoples' rights. Shortly after its release on April 15, frontman Joe Duplantier in an interview with Blabbermouth.net was asked his thoughts about comparing "Amazonia" to Sepultura, to which he said:

I go, "Yup." And it's a compliment, and there is no shame here. And we ripped them off, but we didn't do it on purpose. But we realized it right after. We were, like, "Oh, that sounds like SEPULTURA. Ahhh, whatever." It's a tribute to Sepultura — how about that? It's about Brazil. It's about the Amazon. It's tribal.

Brazilian UFC fighter Alex Pereira uses the song 'Itsári' as his signature walkout music before his fights. Commentators have noted the connection between the song and Pereira's indigenous heritage.

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni stated of Roots in 2016, "we can still only point to a handful of acts that have even nibbled at cross-continental mass appeal by blending metal with music that strikes Western ears as comparably remote and alien", noting the Armenian, Assyrian, and Sumerian cultural influence on Melechesh; as well as the Taiwanese cultural influence on Chthonic. Alien Weaponry have also been compared to Roots-era Sepultura due to their usage of Māori culture in their music, stemming from their own Māori heritage. Drummer Henry de Jong said they were not aware of Sepultura before writing their first song in the Māori language, but Youtube commenters compared them. de Jong found it strange seeing how similar they were despite being years apart and not knowing what Sepultura had done.

Keith Kahn-Harris analyzed the album's influence for its 25th anniversary in 2021. He found it important for expanding the boundaries of metal into other kinds of music in the world, but considered the album's sound to cross the line from raw into half-baked at times, particularly in its integration of Brazilian music. He states "In folk metal today you find a much more seamless melding of metal and its musical others. Korpiklaani and Finntroll are not jam bands, they are effortlessly slick and do not question their entitlement to evoke their mythic ancestors. Orphaned Land and Melechesh are not incorporating Middle Eastern influences into their music, it is their music. Even bands that owe a lot musically to Sepultura, such as Alien Weaponry, sound much more comfortable in their own skin." Kahn-Harris also argued that while Roots was influential on nu-metal, it didn't entirely fit due to its influence from 80s anarcho-punk. He concluded that Roots "doesn't really map out as much new musical territory as was claimed at the time", but was nonetheless still very enjoyable. That same year, the staff of Revolver included the album in their list of the "20 Essential Nu-Metal Albums".

In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time", ranking it eighteenth. Spin ranked Roots at number 30 in their 2002 list of the "40 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time", with Chuck Klosterman deeming it "death metal as world music as universal horror-flick soundtrack" and praising it for advancing the use of native Brazilian sounds from Chaos A.D., saying Roots mixes "tribal chants, polyrhythms, and norteamericano ringer Jonathan Davis of Korn with political fury and into-the-abyss guitar."