Roots

Max Cavalera got the idea from the film At Play in the Fields of the Lord and persuaded Roadrunner to back a recording with a Native Brazilian tribe. About a year after he first got in touch with Angela Pappiani, the communications coordinator of Brazil's Núcleo de Cultura Indígena, a party that included the band, Pappiani and the producer Ross Robinson flew to the Xavante in Mato Grosso. The band flew in four small planes, according to PopMatters. Igor Cavalera recalled the Xavante explaining that they only write music if someone in the tribe dreams it. When the generators ran out, they had just captured Itsári. The Xavante also set one condition: Sepultura could play around their sound but not alter it.

Back at Indigo Ranch the band had too much material, and Igor said it was hard to finish. Carlinhos Brown guided and arranged the ensemble percussion. Max played berimbau, Kisser played sitar, and Brown and David Silveria of Korn joined for Ratamahatta. Jonathan Davis, Mike Patton and the turntablist DJ Lethal appear on Lookaway. Robinson had produced Korn's first two albums. Igor said Korn and Deftones influenced them, but that there was a lot more going on, including Brown and Patton. The album ends with Canyon Jam, a hidden 13-minute instrumental, which the first vinyl pressing left off. The cover shows a Karajá man taken from a 1990 cruzeiro banknote. Max said Roadrunner liked the album but worried that the title would sound like a Bob Marley tribute.

Roots went to 4 in the UK and 27 on the Billboard 200, and has sold over two million copies. The Los Angeles Times said the intensity never lets up, and the Chicago Tribune heard the mosh pit meeting the jungle. Decibel inducted it into its Hall of Fame in April 2005. Saby Reyes-Kulkarni of PopMatters called it one of the most radical departures from convention in heavy metal history. Keith Kahn-Harris of The Quietus, revisiting it at 25, praised its rawness and called Ratamahatta the stand-out, though he found the album's raggedness grating.