The worlds of electronic music and heavy metal intersect every so often. Korn’s 2011 album The Path of Totality featured production by Skrillex, Noisia and Excision, and even Slipknot’s DJ Sid Wilson has done work in the genre. Now comes news that former LCD Soundsystem honcho/current DFA Records boss James Murphy has been convinced ex-Sepultura drummer Iggor Cavalera to form “a metal version of the White Stripes” with his brother Max.
Cavalera has been helming the emerging Brazilian electro-rock act MixHell with his wife Laima Leyton, and Cavalera Conspiracy with his brother Max, the guitar player and lead singer who helped him found Sepultura in the early 1980s. (Max also fronts Soulfly who just released a new album, Savages.)
Speaking with The Guardian, Iggor explained, “James Murphy approached me with the record idea, but eventually suggested some others. To start with, he wants only the two of us in the studio, like a metal version of the White Stripes. He also wants nothing but the two of us on stage. He basically asked me to get rid of the rest of the band. Cavalera Conspiracy has four members and two records. Murphy asked us to start from scratch as a duo. According to him, ‘this will come to be the heaviest record of our careers.’ He promised me that.”
Duos in metal are rare (especially ones produced by a DJ/producer like Murphy), but if anyone has the bravura to pull it off it’s unquestionably the Cavalera brothers.