It had been way too long since the last time Bay Area thrash veterans Death Angel were in Australia previous to their last visit in 2014 alongside Kreator so it’s especially exciting to see the band return down under in 2018, this time with Brazil’s top metal act Sepultura. Armed with some new songs off 2016’s “The Evil Divide”, there was much to talk about as we catch up with guitarist Rob Cavestany to talk about the upcoming shows, the latest with Death Angel and his take on a certain legendary thrash band retirement.
Andrew: Hey Rob how are you?
Rob: It’s going well! How are you Andrew?
Andrew: Doing very well! So I heard that you just came off a massive tour with Testament and Annihilator, how was it?
Rob: Incredible, what a lineup! It was a North American thrash pack meeting Europe, it was incredible.
Andrew: Yeah I would imagine it would be. So what are you guys up to now? Are you guys taking a break or are you back on the road again?
Rob: No we don’t get back on the road until we come down there. I’m just over locking myself in the laboratory in madman mode writing new riffs.
Andrew: Nice and I have a few questions about that but before that, it is exciting to see you coming back to Australia! I guess it was 4 years since the last time you were here with Kreator?
Rob: Man time does fly! It feels like 2 at the most, it went by way too fast and it’s been way too long. We are very excited to come back down there, that last tour with Kreator was awesome.
Andrew: This time you are coming with Sepultura who are another legendary band so this is another great lineup. You guys must have run into each other and did tours together in the past right?
Rob: Absolutely, we have known each other since the 80’s. Recently we’ve done a lot of shows together, we always end up in festivals together in Europe. A couple of years back we did a full on North American tour, 5 weeks in North America so we had a lot of time to bond and hang out and have a few laughs. We get on great with those guys, we have a lot of chemistry together, personally and musically I think. The type of music with Sepultura and Death Angel on one package is definitely a crushing blow of metal.
Andrew: I’m a huge fan of both bands and with Sepultura, they’ve had a huge amount of changes over the years. Do you still follow what they do at the moment because it’s quite different to what they used to do back in the 80’s?
Rob: It is but I think they are fucking awesome! I can’t get enough of Eloy [Casangrande], their drummer who is incredible. He is one of my favorite drummers out there, when we play live with them I just watch Eloy and go, ‘Wow dude this guy is a monster on the kit’. They just got that heavy groove, they lay down this heavy, tribal groove and I love it. Andreas’ [Kisser] tone and the way he plays is just killer man, I totally love them.
Andrew: Yeah it’s great stuff so to see you guys together on tour, we are looking forward to it. So it’s been a couple of years since you dropped the last album “The Evil Divide”, are you still playing a lot of songs from that album or have you moved on from that now?
Rob: Absolutely no! There are songs on “The Evil Divide” that are permanent fixtures in our set so at this point our set is well rounded from all our albums, we pretty much try to get something from every album inside of our set. We are still playing “The Evil Divide” because it is our latest album and the most freshest thing we’ve done and we love to play these songs but we balance it out and play classic songs alongside the new ones.
Andrew: It must be getting difficult at this point in your career with each new album to put together a setlist, do you find it difficult or do you find it easier because you have more to choose from?
Rob: No it’s difficult but it’s difficult in a fun way, it’s a fun problem to have in having more choices to put in there. Thankfully our new material is well received, as well received as our old material. We have material from the 80’s that we are originally known for and it’s always been that we don’t want to be stuck to the idea that we’re a novelty act living off of the first 3 albums. So as much as our old school fans want to hear something from those first 3 albums, which we do play, but we’re pretty adamant about pushing our current material to the point where it seems as if by the crowd responses at the shows that they want the new stuff as much as the old stuff which is really cool to see that. So because of that, anything from any time period of our albums have fun with the interplay of the songs in the setlist of a different era.
Andrew: It must feel good to have a really good response to the newer material because you do hear about bands sometimes who struggle to get fans to really check out and get into a lot of the newer stuff because they only want to hear the older stuff. Admittedly the last couple of albums I think have been some of the best albums you have ever written so I guess it’s a testament to the experience and just how passionate you guys are about writing new songs.
Rob: Thank you, glad to hear that you recognise that. That’s definitely the goal and to each his own, I’m not trying to say this exactly but it seems from my perception on what I hear, some people just put out an album so that they have a new album that they can go back out on tour and it’s almost an excuse to go back out and play the same set with the old stuff again. It’s definitely not about that for us, we play everything that we’ve ever done into any album that we’re currently working on. By the time that album is created and all the work and all the blood, sweat and tears we put into that thing, we’re going to play the songs from that album. That’s our current sound and what we’re doing and the concept we’re backing and progressing our current self, that’s what we’re all about and what we’re going to focus on. We’ll play a selection of older songs but we’re definitely about our current stuff so I’m glad that it’s being accepted.
Andrew: You mentioned earlier about being back in the studio and coming up with some new material for the next album, How’s it looking so far?
Rob: It’s looking great, I’ve gone into a writing frenzy recently so I’ve been crawling out of the studio as the sun comes up. Seeing that light after being in there for so long but it’s satisfying. I’m actually really excited because the other guys in my band haven’t even heard this stuff yet, they just know that I’ve been in there coming up with stuff for us to get in the studio and jam on it. I ran into Will [Carroll] our drummer last night at a Queens Of The Stone Age show in San Francisco, we all haven’t seen each other in the new year as we’re taking a break from each other, and I was excitedly telling him that I started new material and we got to pick a date and the two of us head to the studio and start jamming on it!
Andrew: Looking forward to hearing these new songs! Before I let you go I have to ask you about the news of Slayer calling it quits, everyone in the thrash metal world has been asked about this. What are you thoughts on this and does it make you think of your own longevity and mortality with your band?
Rob: It does all of the above! My thoughts are that some of us could see this coming for various reasons, we’ve spent a lot of time with Slayer in the fall of 2016 on the North American tour with Slayer and Anthrax. Those guys are fucking legendary of course, they’re even at the top of their game. I’ve hardly seen them so tight, putting on such an amazing show and production, everything. However, they’re tired man! They’re a little older than us and you can see that at some point you’re just going at it to a point that it’s going to come to an end and I can tell that they would want to not fizzle out. They would rather go out while they’re still fucking awesome. I didn’t expect it to be this soon but I expected it sooner or later so it wasn’t really a total shock even though it is heartbreaking because yeah, they’re Slayer and they’re going to go on forever just like anyone else does. Like I want us to go on forever but there’s that and then there’s reality so at this point my thoughts on that are I hope that we can play on one of the legs of this tour, it’s going to be an amazing tour and I hope to support those guys one more time before they aren’t tourable anymore.
As far as how that makes me feel about our band, unfortunately as the days go by, eventually you have to realize that there’s going to be that day for every one of us not to mention all these legendary musicians dying. They’re really done and you’re never going to get these people back and they’ll never be able to be replaced. It’s what’s happening to all our gods of music and you look at your own band and you just gotta think, ‘I’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to do what whatever we did up to this point’. So all that leads me to think about how vital every moment is with your band and one day you’re going to be looking back on the old days that you had with this band and running around the world doing all the stuff that we did and it won’t be too long from now when that’s going to end up happening. So we just take every moment of it for how precious it is, I think it makes everything that much more intense and it’s going to make the music we create that much more intense and our shows. We don’t take any fucking moment of it for granted, you might not even call it quits. It might call it quits on you because it happens to people so you just never know and the way to take that is to just make the most of every moment and put in everything you got it because at one point, it will be gone.
Andrew: Yeah you just never know but hopefully Death Angel will be around for many more years to come! Thanks for your time, really appreciate it and we are really excited to see you back in Australia this year.
Rob: Thank you for having me. Thanks for the support and can’t wait to see you guys out there in May.
SEPULTURA (With specials guests Death Angel) Tour Dates
Tuesday 15th May – MELBOURNE, 170 Russell
Wednesday 16th May – ADELAIDE, The Gov
Friday 18th May – BRISBANE, Eatons Hill Hotel
Saturday 19th May – SYDNEY, The Metro Theatre
Sunday 20th May – PERTH, Capitol
Tickets From: https://metropolistouring.com/sepultura-death-angel/
