8. SepulturaRoots
Sepultura are one of the bands that influenced Skunk Anansie because there was a blackness to it. You know, it’s rock, it’s heavy as hell, but it’s groovy. It’s not just screaming in your face. There is this melody to the music. Those 90s metal albums are recorded so well, I was gonna put Kings X in here as well. It was the era of Ross Robinson, who’s this massive producer. I love heavy music but I I can’t bear music that heavy for heavy’s sake. Roots had melody and it was fucking sexy, dark and sexy, and grinding, and groovy, but really, really really in your face.
That era was the beginning of my rock thing. Bands like Incubus, Tool, Sepultura. I mean I already knew Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against The Machine, and Nirvana obviously. I really liked the American sound much more than I did the English sound but Sepultura were Brazilian so they just had another kind of take on metal, which I really liked. There’s tribal in it so it was something I identified with. I got into rock music via ska, I love ska, Buster and all that, but when I was a teenager, white boys started doing it in England. That’s how I got into rock music, my over-the-rooftop kind of journey. Then once I heard Led Zeppelin it just got heavier and heavier and heavier. I have to say that Ross Robinson era, that was one of the best metal periods because there was a blackness to it. Don’t forget, it’s all from black music. The National Front used to listen to ska all the time; you want to kill us, cut us up, beat us up, but your music taste is us.
