12/25/2023 0 Comments Point blank band“We were asked to play at the Dynamo Festival in Eindhoven, Holland in June 1995. But a year later they got an offer that they simply could not refuse. They never saw themselves as a band, and were ready to move on, having hammered their brutality straight through the dormant cerebellum of the music business. I can’t remember why that idea got dropped – it’s just so cool.”īoth Cavalera and Newport were sure the album was to be a never-to-be-repeated one-off. It was gonna read: ‘Now with 10 per cent more hate than any other record.’ It was a piss-take on all those consumer goods that seem to boast they’ve got more caffeine or whatever than the rivals. We also had a great idea for a sticker to go on the sleeve. We were gonna make the title ‘1000 Percent Hate’, but then it got changed along the line. Even Cavalera cannot actually recall the logic. Once he’d explained what it did, the idea that we were musically doing something similar appealed to me.”Įxactly why the pair decided to make Point Blank the album title is lost in the mists of time. “I had never heard of a Nailbomb, until he mentioned it. If Cavalera was responsible for the sleeve photo, then it was Newport who came up with the title for the project. Roots Bloody Roots: the inside story of the 12 months that tore Sepultura apart.But we insisted that had to be the image.” I found that in a book – we went through lots of books looking for appropriate images – but some of the people at the record company were a little freaked out by it. The only problem they seemed to have was with the photo we used on the cover. On the contrary, they let us get on with things. “Despite what we were doing not being commercial Roadrunner never interfered. It was, moreover, a record that seemed to delight the label. The Point Blank album was released in early 1994, and immediately blew up a storm, with its unaffected vitriolic blast furnace emotion. We only found out later that the Bad Brains had done it first,” says Max referring to Bad Brains’ ‘Sacred Love’ from their ‘I Against I’ album which singer HR had to record by phone from jail. “At the time, Alex and I thought we’d done something new with the phone chorus. I was screaming my guts out down the phone, while all these ‘normal’ people, like chefs, were wandering past. So, Alex suggested what seemed to us to be a novel solution – that I sang the stuff down the phone! It was a crazy idea, but it worked. Now, this was in the time before MP3s and emails really existed. He called me up, and asked when I could do it, but I wasn’t due to go back home for a while. Alex was in Phoenix doing the Nailbomb record, when he realised that he needed me to do the chorus for the song. “I was in Wales working on the mixes for the Chaos AD record with Andy Wallace. Newport also came up with something of a surprise approach for the chorus to the song Sum Of Your Achievements. We got the live feel sorted, and Alex also got to put in those samples. That’s the reason we got in Igor and Andreas from Sepultura, plus Dino Cazares of Fear Factory and Ritchie Bujnowski, the guitarist with a band called Wicked Death. So, we came to the understanding that there would be a mix of both on the album. I was into the hardcore of bands like Discharge, and I could never imagine them being ruled by machines. “To me, it should have had a live feel in the studio. “Alex was more into samples than I was,” says Max. But there were distinct differences in the way the two men involved approached music. Principle influences on Nailbomb were bands like Ministry and Godflesh. Nailbomb: Sepultura’s Max Cavalera and Fudge Tunnel’s Alex Newport (Image credit: Roadrunner) Alex wasn’t impressed – and complained to Gloria.” One day, I’d gone through a whole bottle of rum by 4pm. In fact, there were times when I was so drunk that I don’t actually remember doing things. What did I do? Fuck shit up, and get real drunk. He was the knob twiddler, the real producer. I guess that Alex and I took different views on the record. But back in 1994, it was all very different. “That may sound a bit odd when anywhere can be turned into a studio. “We were genuinely excited by the thought of going into the studio,” explains the guitarist. Suddenly, what was just a bit of fun between two musicians who shared a similar love of underground sounds, took on a more serious air. I always maintain that Gloria was the brains behind what we did then.” “But he was the one who pushed the two of us into turning this into a record, and got us the deal with Roadrunner. “She’s one of the big surprises in all of this, because I never thought Gloria would have any interest in what we were doing,” says Max.
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