“At the time, we had a lot of anger, a lot of depression, the world was crazy. That song reflected what we were thinking.” How Sepultura's Refuse/Resist captured the mood of a world in turmoil - and put South American metal on the map

Sepultura in 1993.

It was a glimpse of a leather jacket on a New York subway that sparked the song that would turbocharge Sepultura’s ascent from global ambassadors for Brazilian metal to one of the most important and influential bands of the 1990s.

“I was riding the subway in New York,” says former Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera. “There was a kind of Black Panther, punk kind of guy, and he had a black leather jacket with a protest verse painted on it. At the very end of the verse, it said: ‘Protest and survive/Refuse and resist.’ I got out of the subway and went back to our hotel and wrote it down so I didn’t forget it.”