The well-heeled suburb of North London that Iggor Cavalera now lives in is a far-cry from impoverished Belo Horizonte. It was in this Brazilian city where he and his brother would form legendary thrash/death band Sepultura in 1984, inspired by the Venom and Hellhammer albums they found on their many trips to a record shop in nearby Sao Paulo.
Sepultura are now rightly placed in the halls of heavy metal legend and every rivethead worth their salt knows the myth of how the brothers would paint spent AA batteries to recreate the bullet belts of their thrash heroes. They know too how Iggor and his brother Max would test the heavy metal world’s appetite for the otherworldly by combining their own Brazilian tempos and instrumentation with industrial and electronic elements to create a game-changing and head-spinning collision of sounds through world-beating classics of the genre Chaos AD and the aptly-titled Roots.
In his home studio there are few clues that you’re in the midst of extreme metal royalty. There’s only a tapestry blanket, thrown over a chair and emblazoned with band logos from Slayer to Iron Maiden to Manowar and inexplicably Stryper, that would reflect its owner’s former musical obsessions. "Isn’t it great?," he beams, coming in and seeing how enamoured tQ are with the textile. "Sepultura is on there somewhere. Laima got it for me from a shop in Shoreditch."
The room is otherwise the expected domain of an eclectic and music-hungry, well-travelled, playful collector. There’s a coffee table book on Devo, instruments and gadgets and production tools, signs that a Morricone soundtrack LP was being played just before we arrived and a huge television/sound system that we later learn is key to Iggor’s many forays into a YouTube or Bandcamp wormhole. As we get to business in one room, Laima is in the kitchen, answering emails regarding upcoming Soulwax shows, a band she frequently collaborates with as a performer.
Iggor Cavalera is now known beyond Sepultura. As EDM producers and DJs under the name Mixhell, Iggor and Laima have cast a long shadow of dark techno across the international electronic music scene and now in London, Iggor has found time to give birth to synth-heavy noise-rock duo Petbrick with his new musical partner-in-crime Wayne Adams of Big Lad and Death Pedals. With their debut album I fresh out via Rocket Recordings, Iggor knows that being in London opened musical doors that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. "I think London is a very special city," he says. "It’s very multicultural, very different than a lot of places in South and Central America, where we think we are multicultural but we’re not. In London, from the rich to poor, everyone is riding the tube. It’s way more diverse. My kids are being exposed to cultures way more than I was, so I really appreciate that and then by moving here it also had a chance for Laima and me to start doing more things like going to Africa with the charity In Place Of War, going to Palestine, meeting different people, producing new music, doing more projects, meeting someone like Wayne and doing Petbrick."
When Iggor sent over his choices for his Baker’s Dozen in advance of our meeting we shouldn’t have been surprised at the lack of heavy metal, but he apologises all the same. "That’s the craziest thing about these lists. I could keep going. I could change my mind a hundred times. I’m not going to do that," he says, convincing himself more than anything. "The way I approached this is to think of 13 records that represent something really strongly for me. Of course I have my favourite metal records but that would be too easy."
Petbrick’s I is out now on Rocket Recordings. Click the image of Iggor below to begin reading his Baker’s Dozen selections
