SEPULTURA Frontman: 'The Standards Of Reporting In News Have Dropped To An All-Time Low'

In a brand new interview with AXS, SEPULTURA frontman Derrick Green spoke about the lyrical themes covered on the band's new studio album, "Machine Messiah", which is scheduled for release on January 13 via Nuclear Blast.

"'Machine Messiah' is an idea… The entire album is not based around it," he explained. "It's definitely a theme throughout the album. It was something that Andreas [Kisser, guitar] came up with. Just looking around today and looking at certain people and how they are so absorbed in electronics and technology and their phone. It's almost like a new messiah has come and everyone is worshiping it. It's controlling our lives. We feel safe with it, or security with it, and when we don't have it, we're losing our minds. This was something we were noticing during the writing process and traveling the world. At the same time, there were a lot of things going on in politics. There were a lot of things going on involving technology like the cyberbullying that goes on a lot, and this false news where people are desperately trying to put stuff out there without fact-checking it first. So all this misinformation, and the politics and technology were definitely things we were writing about on this album."

Green elaborated on how the current "fake news" phenomenon — whereby made-up stuff is masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word — influenced the lyrics of the new SEPULTURA album. "[The 'fake news' phenomenon is] not [something that can] just [be found] in America; it is many places around the world," he said. "The standards of reporting in news have dropped to an all-time low. It's really disgusting because a lot of people truly believe in the news. What they see, they see as fact. Or they see something on the Internet. A huge number of people just believe what they are seeing and that's a scary thought, because you can manipulate a lot of people by doing this. I think it's healthy to question everything that's put there, because the Internet has created such a mass of crap out there. You have to sift through it to find the good things that are there beneath this morass of lies and negativity that people are posting."

"Machine Messiah" was produced by SEPULTURA and Jens Bogren (SOILWORK, OPETH, KATATONIA, AMON AMARTH) of Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden. The CD's cover artwork was created by Filipino artist Camille Della Rosa.