SEPULTURA To Reunite With Producer ROSS ROBINSON On Upcoming Album

Brazilian/American thrashers SEPULTURA will reunite with producer Ross Robinson (KORN, LIMP BIZKIT, SLIPKNOT) to record their next album, tentatively due before the end of the year via Nuclear Blast Records. The CD will be tracked in June at Robinson's studio in Venice, California and will be co-produced by Steve Evetts, who previously worked with SEPULTURA on the "Nation" (2001),"Revolusongs" (2002) and "Roorback" (2003) albums, in addition to having collaborated with Ross on a number of other projects in the past.

The reunion between SEPULTURA and Robinson was first suggested by Monte Conner, the former Roadrunner Records A&R chief who is now the head of Nuclear Blast Entertainment, a U.S. partnership with Nuclear Blast owner Markus Staiger.

"Monte was the guy who signed SEPULTURA to Roadrunner in 1988," SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser told Diario de Pernambuco. "It's been a nice experience working with him again. He always brought a good energy to the band."

SEPULTURA's upcoming CD will mark the first time the band will have recorded an album outside Brazil since 1998's "Against".

"It will be very good to record in a studio that Ross and Steve know so well," Andreas said.

To date, SEPULTURA has new 13 songs in various stages of completion.

"We are in the process of writing and we have already stared working on some of the lyrics. I am also working on guitar solos and other ideas," Andreas explained.

Asked what fans can fans expect from the upcoming SEPULTURA album, Andreas said: "I don't know; it's hard to say. This is the first time writing with [latest SEPULTURA addition] Eloy Casagrande on drums and everything sounds fresh. You'll just have to wait to hear it. It's very difficult to describe what we're doing, but I can say that will be one of the strongest SEPULTURA albums to date. It will be definitely one of the best albums in the history of SEPULTURA."

Robinson produced SEPULTURA's classic "Roots" album in 1995. Released in February 1996 by Roadrunner, it was the band's last studio album to feature founding member and vocalist Max Cavalera.

"Roots" sold more than 2 million copies worldwide and was certified gold in the United States by the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) for sales in excess of 500,000 units.

SEPULTURA played its first show with Casagrande on November 25, 2011 in Lichtenfels, Germany.

Casagrande joined SEPULTURA as the replacement for Jean Dolabella, who left the band because he could no longer handle being away from home for long periods of time.

Eloy is a 21-year-old drum prodigy from São Paulo, Brazil who won the Modern Drummer "Undiscovered Drummer" contest as a teenager in 2006.

Asked what Casagrande has added to the band, SEPULTURA singer Derrick Green told Metal Hammer, "Definitely the fact that he's young and that energy helps a lot. He's a very disciplined drummer — he's been playing since he was seven. And he's been doing a lot of things by himself and playing with different people, and that's really, really impressive. He had a lot of things put together before we even met him; he's already done so much. And I think with us, a combination us together, it's a great learning process for him to grow and at the same time, we're learning a lot from him, so we can do this together. And this is something extremely important when you're doing a band that's been together for so long, to have this connection. And we felt this connection with him immediately. And we could tell that he was very focused and very committed to doing extremely good music."

Dolabella left SEPULTURA after a five-year run of relentless touring and two studio albums. He joined SEPULTURA in 2006 following the departure of the band's original drummer, Igor Cavalera.

SEPULTURA has spent most of the past two years on tour in support of its 12th studio album, and Nuclear Blast Records debut, "Kairos", which hit stores in July 2011.