“IT WAS ABOUT GIVING PEOPLE HOPE. IT WAS ABOUT GIVING KIDS THE CHANCE TO FEEL FREE”

When Sepultura made their debut album, Morbid Visions, in 1986, heavy metal had already begun to take root in Brazil. The country’s military dictatorship had come to an end, and Kiss had played in 1983, followed by Rock In Rio in 1985. It wasn’t all imports, mind; speed-metal act Stress released Brazil’s first metal album in 1982 and a number of cities began fermenting their own scenes.

Sepultura’s home of Belo Horizonte in the southeast was no exception, the thrashtastic offerings of San Francisco’s Bay Area and beyond inspiring a bands to create faster, nastier music that could express their hatred towards a system that had failed them. Unfortunately, this increasing profile also attracted unwanted attention from the local authorities – “I was more scared of the police than the Devil,” as frontman Max Cavalera put it in a 2016 interview with .