Metalholic recently conducted an interview with SEPULTURA frontman Derrick Green. You can listen the full chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). On working with the decision to work with in-demand Swedish producer Jens Borgen for the band's new album, "Machine Messiah": Derrick: "I visited Sweden a few years back and I was really impressed by the sounds that I was hearing come from out of Sweden, really, like the producers, and the bands that were picking these producers. There was something about the certain sound that I was hearing coming from Sweden. I started asking a lot of people questions, a lot of friends from Sweden, like 'What's going on? Who are some producers?' I thought it would be great for SEPULTURA to do something here, completely out of our element and to shoot for something totally different with this album. There's a Brazilian band that worked with Jens before and Jens had worked with many different artists all over, but this was definitely the connection that got us closer to Jens. Once we met and we started sending him demos and everything, it just connected well. Everything started to flow. Jens is a great producer because he's very meticulous. The stuff that he worked on really had an inspiration on us as far as pushing for something different for us." On the actual recording process with Borgen: Derrick: "We had written everything in São Paulo before, but we were sending him demos as we were writing. I think working with Jens definitely had an impact and being there isolated, we were very focused, everyone living under the same roof. The studio was right below us. São Paulo is a crazy city; we have a lot of traffic to get to practice or get anywhere, usually during the entire day and night, at times. It was a really a relief to not be thinking about anything, but really being focused on what we were there to do, which was to make a great album. I think it really brought us together even more, being under these circumstances, under this roof, and really going deep within ourselves and trying to pull out things we had never done before. I think the chemistry just flowed very well for us to do that, and being isolated and so focused, we were bound to do something different than we could have possibly imagined." On working with Borgen to diversify his vocals: Derrick: "It's a combination of us both. I spoke with him before and I was telling him that I really wanted to do something very different with the vocals on this album. I heard stuff he had done with people who were singing all the time on certain albums, not screaming all the time. So I felt he could really bring out something in my voice. It was a lot of fun doing that." On if "Machine Messiah" is a concept album: Derrick: "'Machine Messiah', is an idea, [it] is not about the entire the album, it's not based on that. It's definitely a theme throughout the album. It was something Andreas [Kisser, guitar] came up with. Just looking around today and looking at certain people how they're so absorbed in electronics and technology and their phone… it's almost like a new messiah has come and everyone is worshipping it. It's been here and it's controlling our lives and we feel safe with it, or security with it, we're losing our mind. This is something we were definitely noticing during the writing process and traveling the world. At the same time, there were a lot of different things going on in politics, there were a lot of things going on involving technology as far as cyber bullying, which goes on a lot, where people are just so negative. And the false news that goes on so much where people are desperately trying to put out something, no matter what, without fact checking. All of this information, a lot of the politics going on in Brazil, and this technological age we're living in were definitely things we wrote about on this album." On the deluge of "fake news" popping up of late: Derrick: "It's not just America, it's definitely in many places around the world. It's very scary. The standards of reporting in news has dropped to an all-time low. It's really disgusting. A lot of people truly believe in the news, what they see, they see it as fact. They see something on the Internet. A huge percentage of people are believing what they're seeing. It's a scary thought because you can manipulate a lot of people by doing this who are very susceptible to this 'false news.' I think it's healthy to question everything that's really put out there. The Internet has created such a mass amount of crap out there. You have to sift through it in order to find the good things that are underneath all of this crap that people are posting and throwing in there." "Machine Messiah" will be released on January 13 via Nuclear Blast. The CD's stunning cover artwork was created by Filipino artist Camille Della Rosa.
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