Sepultura's Chaos A.D. opens with the heartbeat of Max Cavalera's unborn son, recorded on a MiniDisc in an ultrasound clinic, and halfway through it the band are inside a roofless Welsh castle playing acoustic guitars and percussion while seagulls wheel overhead. Neither of those things was supposed to happen on a thrash record from Belo Horizonte, and that was exactly the point.
After two years of playing the songs from Arise, Sepultura were bored and worried about standing still. With producer Andy Wallace steering, they slowed down, tuned down, filled the record with punk, hardcore and Brazilian rhythm, and wrote about riot police, prison massacres and land wars. The result became their first US top 40 album, won Best Album at the very first Kerrang! Awards, and became a touchstone for the bands that followed, from Korn to Gojira.
Album Facts
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | Sepultura |
| Album | Chaos A.D. |
| Release Date | September 1993 |
| Label | Roadrunner (Epic in North America) |
| Producer(s) | Andy Wallace; Sepultura (co-producers) |
| Studio(s) | Rockfield Studios, Monmouth; Chepstow Castle ("Kaiowas"); mixed at the Wool Hall, Bath |
| Genre / Subgenre | Groove metal, thrash metal |
| Track Count | 12 |
| Total Runtime | 47:04 |
| Billboard 200 Peak | 32 |
| UK Albums Chart Peak | 11 |
| Other Notable Chart Peaks | Finland 4, Portugal 6, Germany 11, Sweden 11, Europe 18, Australia 27 |
| Certifications | Gold in the US, UK, Brazil, Australia and the Netherlands |
| Estimated Sales | More than 2 million worldwide |
| Key Singles | "Refuse/Resist", "Territory", "Slave New World" |
Metal in the Year of Grunge
Max Cavalera has never pretended 1993 was a friendly year for a metal band. "Everything was grunge. Everywhere you looked was grunge," he told Dazed on the album's 20th anniversary. He liked Soundgarden, Nirvana and the Melvins well enough, but he had grown tired of metal bands singing about Satan and wanted Sepultura to write about the world instead, the way Bad Brains, Black Flag and Dead Kennedys had.
Heavy music was already shifting. Pantera had slowed thrash into a heavier groove on Vulgar Display of Power more than a year earlier, and Rolling Stone would later describe Chaos A.D. as channelling grooves "in the vein of Metallica's Black Album". The news filled the lyric sheet:
- The deaths of David Koresh's followers at Waco, Texas, which "Amen" tackles.
- The police massacre that ended a prison riot in São Paulo, reported in "Manifest".
- The 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which gave Jello Biafra the idea for "Biotech Is Godzilla".
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the heart of "Territory".
- The Parental Advisory sticker era, which Max called "the age of Tipper Gore", behind "Slave New World".
"There was an explosion of grunge and nobody wanted anything to do with metal. We made a record that was very metal and also a transition from the death or thrash of the earlier records and a different way to be heavy."
Max Cavalera, Metal Hammer, 2023
Sepultura's Road to Chaos A.D.
Brothers Max and Igor Cavalera founded Sepultura in Belo Horizonte, with bassist Paulo Jr. joining a few months later and guitarist Andreas Kisser arriving in 1987 to complete the classic lineup. Beneath the Remains in 1989, their first album for Roadrunner, broke them out of Brazil, and that year they made their UK live debut at the Marquee in London supporting Sodom.
Arise followed in March 1991, the first record they made outside Brazil. They cut it in Florida with Scott Burns, weren't happy with the mix, and sent one track to Andy Wallace to see what he could do. "We were so impressed, he got the whole album," Kisser told Louder. Arise won them a deal with the major label Epic, which would distribute the next album in North America, and the band moved to Phoenix, Arizona, under the management of Gloria Bujnowski, who would marry Max in 1994.
Touring Arise for two years changed how they saw home. "We had our eyes opened by seeing Brazil from the outside, and we were alarmed at the chaos," said Kisser. "We saw Brazil for the first time as a police state." The band itself was changing too. "When we lived in Belo Horizonte, we were a full-on gang," Max recalled. By the time of the new album, "it was more like a regular band. People were having relationships and other things."
There was one more change hidden in the credits. Paulo Jr. had been credited as bassist on the first four Sepultura albums, but he later admitted that Kisser had recorded the bass on Schizophrenia and Beneath the Remains for him because he was "studio scared". Chaos A.D. was the first time Sepultura recorded as a genuine four-piece.
Writing in Phoenix
The band spent months writing in Phoenix, and their listening had moved well beyond death metal to take in Ministry, Biohazard, New Model Army and even The Mission. "It was a transitional time for us," Max said. "We started listening to different bands that we were thinking we could get influences from and put into our stuff."
"We could easily have made Arise II and plenty of fans would have been happy, and we probably would have been OK with that, too."
Max Cavalera, Revolver, 2017
They considered John Zorn and Ministry's Al Jourgensen as producers before settling on Wallace, whose CV ran from Slayer and Faith No More to White Zombie and Nirvana. Band, label and management all agreed. Wallace then did something no producer had done for them: he came to Phoenix and sat in their jam room for about three days, taking notes on every song. "We never had anyone do that before," said Max, "analyse the music, suggesting different things we could do."
Some of the album's best-known moments started here. Max found the phrase "refuse and resist" painted on a stranger's leather jacket on the New York subway and wrote it down back at the hotel. "Territory" was one of the few songs he wrote with Kisser, the pair sitting with acoustic guitars in Max's backyard, which is why its huge chorus has so much melody in it. Wallace then rebuilt the song's opening. The band had all come in at once; he wanted it to start with a tumbling drum intro and have Igor play syncopated backbeats throughout.
Max also picked a fight over tuning. Everything Sepultura had recorded was in E standard, and he wanted to drop to D. Kisser, a purist, resisted. Max's argument was simple: Black Sabbath played in D, so they could too.
Recording Chaos A.D. at Rockfield
Wallace set the terms. "I will record it, produce it and mix it, but you guys gotta go with my program," Max remembered him saying. "We're going to go to Wales and record at Rockfield Studios, then we'll go to Bath, England to mix." The band wanted isolation, and Rockfield, a rural studio near Monmouth, had already hosted Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Queen.
"We were hanging around the pubs in Monmouth and Chepstow, the same places where Geezer Butler and Robert Plant would have had a pint," Max said with a laugh. "We were living beyond our dreams."
Wallace also pushed the Brazilian angle. It was his idea to make Brazilian music and metal collide, and Max wasn't sure the two would fit. "I thought they were too far apart. But he said, 'No, you should go there.' He was right." Igor played the clattering opening of "Refuse/Resist" on a piccolo snare, a first taste of the tribal direction the band would take much further on Roots.
That opening is preceded by the record's most famous sound. Max had taken a MiniDisc and headphones into the clinic during an ultrasound scan of his and Gloria's unborn son, Zyon, and recorded the heartbeat alongside the nurses. "It was important to get that right because it's such a unique intro," he said. Zyon was born on 19 January 1993.
The castle was Max's idea too. On the way to Rockfield, the band passed Chepstow Castle, and he decided the ruins were the place to record "Kaiowas", an acoustic instrumental for an indigenous Brazilian people who, as Max put it, "committed mass-suicide to protest the government, which wanted to take away their land and religion". He told Wallace and left him to solve the logistics. Wallace got the gear and cables in, and the four of them played it live: Max and Kisser on guitars, Igor and Paulo on percussion.
"The place we did it in didn't have a ceiling and when the song starts, when you listen with headphones real loud, you can hear all these fucking seagulls flying around."
Max Cavalera, Revolver, 2017
Black Sabbath were recording at a studio just down the road, so Sepultura went to say hello. Sabbath weren't there, but Kisser admits he left with a load of their guitar picks. The visit fitted the sessions, because Sepultura were also cutting "Symptom of the Universe" for the Sabbath tribute album Nativity in Black. They wanted Tony Iommi to play the acoustic solo at the end. He wasn't available, so Kisser played it himself.
Jello Biafra was the other outside voice. Max asked his Dead Kennedys hero for lyrics, not vocals, and Biafra sent a cassette of song ideas with himself singing them. Max chose "Biotech Is Godzilla" and lifted Biafra's growl straight off the tape. Biafra was not impressed. "He said, 'I could have done a better growl,'" Max recalled. Max told him the cassette version had the right vibe and kept it.
Personnel and Credits
| Role | Player | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core band | ||
| Vocals, guitar | Max Cavalera | Credited for vocals, four-string guitar and acoustic guitar |
| Lead guitar | Andreas Kisser | Electric and acoustic guitar |
| Bass | Paulo Jr. | Also floor tom |
| Drums, percussion | Igor Cavalera | |
| Guest writers | ||
| Lyrics | Jello Biafra | "Biotech Is Godzilla"; his cassette growl is on the record |
| Co-lyricist | Evan Seinfeld | "Slave New World"; Biohazard bassist |
| Production and engineering | ||
| Producer, recording, mixing | Andy Wallace | Mixed at the Wool Hall, Bath |
| Co-producers | Sepultura | |
| Assistant engineer | Simon Dawson | |
| Assistant engineer (mix) | Dave Somers | |
| Mastering | George Marino | Sterling Sound |
| A&R | Monte Conner, Michael Goldstone | |
| Artwork | ||
| Cover painting | Michael Whelan | Cacophony, 1992 |
| Photography | Gary Monroe | |
| CD label art | Paul Booth | |
"He took the whole record under his wing and made it his, in a way," said Max, and Gojira's Joe Duplantier later singled out the mix: "Andy Wallace absolutely nailed" it.
The Songs on Chaos A.D.
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Length | Single? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Refuse/Resist | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 3:20 | Yes | Opens on Zyon's heartbeat; ends on a 20-second roar |
| 2 | Territory | Sepultura; lyrics Andreas Kisser | 4:47 | Yes | Chorus written on acoustic guitar in Max's backyard |
| 3 | Slave New World | Sepultura; lyrics Evan Seinfeld, Max Cavalera | 2:55 | Yes | Anti-censorship; title riffs on Brave New World |
| 4 | Amen | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 4:27 | Operatic vocals, a nod to Celtic Frost | |
| 5 | Kaiowas | Sepultura | 3:43 | Acoustic instrumental recorded live in Chepstow Castle | |
| 6 | Propaganda | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 3:33 | Was the album's working title | |
| 7 | Biotech Is Godzilla | Sepultura; lyrics Jello Biafra | 1:52 | Max called it "pure hardcore" | |
| 8 | Nomad | Sepultura; lyrics Andreas Kisser | 4:59 | Kisser's answer to Metallica's "Sad but True" | |
| 9 | We Who Are Not as Others | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 3:42 | Title lifted from a book about carnival freaks | |
| 10 | Manifest | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 4:49 | Spoken like a news report over feedback | |
| 11 | The Hunt | Justin Sullivan, Robert Heaton | 3:59 | New Model Army cover | |
| 12 | Clenched Fist | Sepultura; lyrics Max Cavalera | 4:58 | Followed by a hidden track of studio laughter |
Refuse/Resist
The heartbeat, the piccolo-snare tribal intro, then a riff Max still hears as a street battle. The lyrics are deliberately bare, "Discharge-oriented", in his words: Chaos A.D., tanks on the street, confronting police, bleeding the plebs. "Even today, 'Refused' feels like riot music to me," he said in 2017.
"It reminded me of a riot. Cars burning and upside down, shit spread out all over the place, chaos everywhere."
Max Cavalera, Metal Hammer
Territory
Max described it as a song about every kind of turf war, "from LA. gangs like Crips and Bloods, to drug wars in Brazil, to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine." Max thinks Wallace and Igor never got enough credit for the intro: "Andy and Iggor should get royalties for that drumming in the beginning of 'Territory,' because I heard so many other bands do it later." He points at Soundgarden's "Jesus Christ Pose" as one example.
Kaiowas, We Who Are Not as Others and Manifest
Max calls Chaos A.D. "a really strange record" because so much of it is close to instrumental. "Kaiowas" is the castle piece, which Max once described as a mix of Led Zeppelin, Sonic Youth and Olodum. "We Who Are Not as Others" repeats one line taken from a book of carnival-freak photographs Max had lying around. On "Manifest" he reads out the story of the São Paulo prison massacre "like some kind of reporter" over a wall of feedback. "So that's like yet another instrumental," he said.
Amen and Biotech Is Godzilla
"Amen" adds operatic voices in tribute to Celtic Frost and borrows lines from The Last Temptation of Christ. Max believes in God, he has said, but not in organised religion "when they just do it to make money". "Biotech Is Godzilla", the shortest track, carries Biafra's theory that AIDS was created in a laboratory.
The Hunt
Even the band can't agree on whose idea the New Model Army cover was. "It was my idea," Max insists. Kisser says everyone was into them, road crew included: Justin Sullivan had come to see Sepultura in Liverpool, and drummer Rob Heaton had visited the band in Brazil. "We could have done a Black Sabbath or Motörhead song, but that in a way would have been no challenge."
B-sides, Outtakes and Lost Songs
The Rockfield sessions produced more covers than the album could hold, and they leaked out across the singles:
- "Polícia" by Brazilian band Titãs, a bonus track on the Brazilian edition and a "Territory" B-side.
- "Inhuman Nature" by American hardcore band Final Conflict, on the "Refuse/Resist" single.
- "Crucificados pelo Sistema" by Ratos de Porão, on "Refuse/Resist" and "Slave New World".
- "Symptom of the Universe" by Black Sabbath, for Nativity in Black.
The 2017 Expanded Edition opened the vault further, adding rehearsal instrumentals of "Clenched Fist" (two versions) and "Propaganda" that the band had used while working the songs up. The tour also produced one new song. After Berlin police searched the band's tour bus on a false tip that it was carrying a cocaine shipment, Max rewrote "Antichrist" from the 1985 Bestial Devastation EP as "Anti-Cop" and the band played it live for the rest of the tour.
The Chaos A.D. Artwork
Michael Whelan had already given Sepultura Beneath the Remains and Arise. This time the band commissioned a brand-new painting built around the album's name. Whelan called it Cacophony, and the image came from a night he spent "stuck in a crowded room filled with noisy people," he wrote. "I felt trapped and driven to distraction by the commotion, hands grasping at me for attention."
Those hands are all over the cover. A figure wrapped head to toe in white cloth and bound with rope hangs upside down from a tangle of machinery, tubes plugged into the body. Below, a mechanical eye stares straight up at the figure's head while forearms reach towards it from the bottom of the frame. Behind it is a blue wall of carved faces and fossils, and steel girders frame the scene. "There's a lot of little things for people to look at," Max said. "On the machinery you can see little hands and people's faces." In 2010 Roadrunner's staff voted it No. 7 in their ten greatest album covers in the label's history.
Whelan's only problem was choosing an idea: "I could have done several paintings just on the theme of 'Biotech is Godzilla'!"
Release and Reception
The title arrived late. The album was going to be called Propaganda until Max, close to the label's art deadline, borrowed from the Misfits' Earth A.D. and added the word "Chaos". "I turned it in at the very last second. The label was freaking out," he said.
By the time Chaos A.D. came out in September 1993, Sepultura were the biggest act on Roadrunner's roster. The label spent nearly $1 million on marketing and threw a launch party at Chepstow Castle with a medieval banquet. It reached No. 32 on the Billboard 200, the band's best US placing yet and the first Roadrunner album to make the top 40, and No. 11 in the UK. It went to No. 4 in Finland and No. 6 in Portugal. The US gold disc took seven years to arrive; the UK one followed in 2002.
The Epic partnership was less happy. The label paid Sepultura little attention and put its energy into Fight and Prong instead.
The contemporary scores were solid rather than spectacular. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ and Rolling Stone 3.5 stars, while NME offered 6/10 and Q three stars. Max admits it took time: "I don't think people fell in love immediately with the album. It was a learning process." The readers of Kerrang! were quicker. At the first Kerrang! Awards, held at Notre Dame Hall in London on 13 June 1994, they voted it Best Album.
Later critics went further. AllMusic's Steve Huey called it "a remarkable achievement not only in its concentrated power and originality, but also in the degree to which Sepultura eclipsed their idols in offering a vision of heavy metal's future", adding that "there isn't a wasted or unnecessary note on the album". Rolling Stone ranked it No. 29 on its 2017 list of the 100 greatest metal albums, and Rolling Stone Brasil placed it at No. 46 among the greatest Brazilian records.
Singles and Music Videos
| Single | Video director | UK peak | Other peaks | Notable B-sides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refuse/Resist | Peter Christopherson | 51 | Finland 10, Ireland 29 | "Crucificados pelo Sistema", "Inhuman Nature", "Drug Me" |
| Territory | Paul Rachman | 66 | Finland 3, Ireland 8, New Zealand 50 | "Polícia", "Biotech Is Godzilla" |
| Slave New World | Thomas Mignone | 46 | Finland 9, Sweden 32 | "Crucificados pelo Sistema", "Drug Me", live "Orgasmatron" |
"Territory" was the first song Roadrunner sent to US metal radio, with adds scheduled for late September 1993, and its video was the first from the album. Paul Rachman shot it in Israel and Palestine around the signing of the Oslo Accords, with the band performing near the Dead Sea and getting covered in mud. It won the International Viewer's Choice award for Brazil at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
Peter Christopherson's "Refuse/Resist" video mixes live footage of the band with scenes of rioting, including the man who faced down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The single sleeve showed a protester leaping at a line of riot police, and the 12-inch came in a die-cut sleeve made to look riddled with bullet holes.
For the "Slave New World" single, Igor made a barcode tattoo on his wrist and the band photographed it. Thomas Mignone's video put skinheads with barcodes on their necks, which reminded Max of 1984. The 10-inch was a one-sided etched orange vinyl. In 2006 VH1 ranked "Refuse/Resist" No. 26 among the 40 greatest metal songs.
Touring Chaos A.D.
The tour began on 23 October 1993 with Paradise Lost opening. Max calls the 1994 and 1995 run "the best we ever had". The highlights:
- Monsters of Rock at Donington in 1994, alongside Aerosmith and Pantera. Sepultura were the first Latin band to play it.
- Minneapolis in March 1994, where live versions of "Territory" and "Amen/Inner Self" were recorded.
- A North American leg co-headlined with Pantera.
- Irvine, California, on 17 July 1994, hours after Brazil won the World Cup final in nearby Pasadena. The band went to the match and played in Brazilian colours.
- A Brazilian tour with the Ramones in November 1994.
The tour is documented on the Third World Chaos video, released on 27 June 1995, which includes the Donington "Orgasmatron", a percussion jam with tourmates Biohazard and Bruce Dickinson interviewing Max and Kisser about "Kaiowas". The band had never planned to play that song live, thinking the drumming impossible to recreate, until they saw a Neurosis video in which everyone put down their guitars and drummed. "We rehearsed it once and it was wonderful," said Kisser. "We haven't stopped playing the song live since."
Controversy: A Flag and a Ban
In 1994 Sepultura played a huge festival in São Paulo. At the end of the set, as Max held his 18-month-old son above his head, someone threw a Brazilian flag onstage, and Max held that up too. Somebody at the venue claimed he had stepped on it. "Suddenly there are 20 cops in my room and I'm being taken to jail," he told Revolver. The story grew with every retelling, from spitting to urinating and worse, and TV pundits called for him to be lynched. He spent four hours at the police station and was released without charge. "I think from that time on is when shit started going downhill for me and Sepultura," he said.
"Territory" caused trouble decades later. In 2019 Lebanon's General Security refused Sepultura entry and their Beirut show was cancelled, possibly because the band had visited Israel to film the video. Organisers were told the band were "devil worshipers" who had "filmed a video clip supporting Israel", claims the promoter denied.
Covers and Tributes
"Refuse/Resist" has been covered by Apocalyptica, Krisiun and Hatebreed, whose version also appeared on the Punisher: War Zone soundtrack. Anthrax regularly played it live while touring Worship Music. In 2010 Max's band Soulfly recorded it as a bonus track for Omen with a 17-year-old Zyon on drums, the same boy whose heartbeat opens the original. "It was Zyon's choice to cover that song," Max said.
Between the Buried and Me covered "Territory" on The Anatomy Of in 2006, and Gojira played it live on the Magma tour. Trivium recorded "Slave New World" for the deluxe edition of In Waves, and in 2016 the grandmother-fronted grindcore band Grindmother released their own version, which Sepultura shared and called "inspiring".
Reissues and Anniversaries
A 1996 US reissue added "Chaos B.C.", the remix that also appeared on Mortal Kombat: More Kombat, along with "Kaiowas (Tribal Jam)" and the Minneapolis live recordings. Rhino's two-disc Chaos A.D.: Expanded Edition followed on 6 October 2017, with a new remaster and 17 bonus tracks: the "Chaos B.C." remix, the session covers, the rehearsal instrumentals and nine live tracks, also issued as a double LP.
The album has also come back to the stage. Max and Igor Cavalera have played Chaos A.D. in full on recent tours of Europe and North America, joined by guitarist Travis Stone and Max's son Igor Amadeus Cavalera on bass. "There's a whole new generation of fans, they never got the chance to see the original [lineup] playing that," Max said in 2026.
The Legacy of Chaos A.D.
The classic lineup made one more album. Roots in 1996 took the tribal rhythms of "Kaiowas" and "Territory" all the way, then Max left the band later that year. Kisser sees the albums as a set: "To me, there's a link between Arise, Chaos AD and Roots." Max calls Chaos A.D. his favourite Sepultura record, "because we were up against it."
Its influence spread fast. Korn's James "Munky" Shaffer has said that when Sepultura released it in 1993, "that was a huge influence on us, and it's still one of my favourite records", while Max admits the first Korn album fed back into Roots. Gojira's Joe Duplantier put it on his list of ten favourite metal albums.
"To me, this was the beginning of a new wave of sound. I think this album gave birth to the whole nu-metal scene."
Joe Duplantier, Rolling Stone, 2017
Duplantier added that Gojira's first gig in 1996 "was 70 percent Sepultura covers". Max hears the record in younger bands too, pointing to the "Clenched Fist" riffs all over Code Orange's Forever. Kisser's guess is that "eight out of 10" Sepultura fans would call it their favourite album.
Things You Might Not Know
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| The jacket on the subway | Max described the jacket's owner as a Black Panther and said its slogan looked like a Malcolm X speech ending in "refuse and resist". |
| Robert Plant's welcome | Two days after the flag arrest, Max met Robert Plant backstage, who told him his face was all over the TV even though he didn't know who he was. |
| The Territory sleeve | Whelan made the "Territory" single cover in an early Photoshop class in New York, working at the back while the other students learned the basics. |
| Wales, England | The original liner notes get the geography wrong, placing Rockfield Studios in "South Wales, England". |
| Title confusion | Kisser recalls that because "chaos A.D." appears in the lyrics, people assumed it was the title of "Refuse/Resist". |
| A tiny first ceremony | The first Kerrang! Awards, where Chaos A.D. won Best Album, were held in front of an audience of just 200 people. |
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