SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser is featured in a new interview with David E. Gehlke at DeadRhetoric.com. An excerpt is available below:

Dead Rhetoric: The big vocalist search in 1997 and 1998, was your head spinning from all the submissions?

Kisser: "Oh yeah, definitely. Right after Max left at the end of ’96, back in January and February of ’97, me, Igor (Cavalera/drums) and Paulo (Pinto/bass) got together and started writing new stuff. We didn’t want to play any old stuff. We didn’t want try people out on something like 'Refuse/Resist'. That would be too easy, so we wanted to see the new guy singing something he never heard before; we wanted to see his input and his ideas and his possibilities with the vocals. We took eight to nine months just as a trio. We had the idea of staying as a trio, me being the singer and I even took vocal classes and tried to do demos, but I sing like crap (laughs). I was the first singer of Sepultura that received a 'no' (laughs)."

Dead Rhetoric: I’ve seen and heard you do backup vocals – you don’t have a bad voice.

Kisser: "I can use my voice fairly well, I can scream, but to be a singer and to embrace it, it’s much more than having a good voice. You have to embrace something different. I am a guitar player. I didn’t want to lose my guitar playing time just to embrace something that I am not. I don’t want to force the situation. The trio time was great – we didn’t do any live shows or anything, but we were practicing and trying out stuff, putting our heads in place, without making any big decisions with the turmoil that was going on. We resolved everything with Max, we signed all the papers, he’s out, he didn’t want anything to do with Sepultura. He left, and we started looking for a new singer. Then when Derrick came at the beginning of ’98, he moved out to Brazil, and we started our journey."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Sepultura recently released a video for the track 'The Vatican', featured on the band's new album, The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart.

In his exclusive track by track for the blog DP no estúdio com o Sepultura, Andreas Kisser described the song 'The Vatican' as “one of the tracks that has some death metal influences, whose lyrics tell the story of how the Vatican was created, filled with blood, orgy, murders, corruption, adultery... it’s one of the most evil and perverse lyrics I ever wrote.”

And the guitarist was right, 'The Vatican' is not only one of the best songs on the album, but also one of the most brutal songs in the history of Sepultura. The clip presented today, directed by Rafael Kent and Okent Films team, does justice to the melodic and lyrical context of 'The Vatican', presenting a daring, defiant, oppositional, and considering the subject matter, potentially controversial videographic record.

Andreas Kisser believes that the clip represents very well the music and lyrics. “It shows various obscure facets of the church, from corruption to pedophilia, a dark side that many people like to ignore. The actors were very well selected, all with strong and striking expressions. The video tells the story of a priest who wants to leave the church because of all this dirt, and suffers pressure from the inside not to leave. It’s rather heavy and tense”, he reported.

For the video’s director, Rafael Kent, the clip had to show, aesthetically, an environment that referred to the Catholic Church, which, in his opinion, was achieved without any need to record or reproduce a temple. “We tried to have some visuals that resembled environments from the Church but were not directly in the Church. The filming also accompanies this aesthetic; we looked for darker and more obscure scenes giving the impression that the kind of thing that happens in the clip and story are things that happen on the sly”, he said.

The video was recorded in a building in downtown São Paulo-SP and the recordings were made in less than 24 hours. “First we went after a location. In fact we had already filmed there before, Trackers, located in São Paulo. It’s an old building and has various environments. Really nice spot. We recorded in a night, we arrived at Trackers at 4pm and left in the morning. I went to bed at 6:30?, said Rafael.

The director demonstrates awareness that his video could generate controversy and be criticized, as it boldly exposes topics sensitive to the Church, and a society whose formation is grounded in Catholicism and Christianity. “The lyrics speak of how the Church dominates man’s mind, how many years of domination through faith have passed, and the bloody past of the Church... We all know dark moments in the Catholic religion. One of our concerns (or bets) was ‘let’s bet on how many places the clip will be banned’. I believe that regarding prohibition, backlash, and so on, this video clip comes with it all”, he reflected.

The director, however, seeks to justify his work, highlighting that the theme, though delicate, has been increasingly debated in the public sphere. “It is a controversial subject, but which today is part of our life and the news. How many times has the Church had to apologize before its faithful as to certain attitudes of the priesthood?” he asked.

Watch the clip and draw your own conclusions...

The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart is streaming in its entirety below:

BraveWords' review of The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart can be found at this location.

Album trailers:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: