Max Cavalera was born in the city of Belo Horizonte in 1969. He helped build Brazilian metal from the ground up, alongside his younger brother, Iggor, forming Sepultura in 1984 in a country with a crumbling economy, no industry support and little global visibility.
What followed was one of the most startling ascents in metal history: a run of albums that took the precision of thrash (1989’s Beneath The Remains, 1991’s Arise), injected it with hardcore urgency (1993’s Chaos A.D.), and then detonated the rulebook entirely with 1996’s Roots, a record that fused downtuned grooves, the rhythms of Brazil’s Xavante tribe and politically defiant lyrics into a blueprint that would ripple through metal for decades.
