A few years back, Foo Fighters frontman and ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl calls Sepultura's Roots album "the heaviest music you've ever heard in your life." Now in an interview with Mojo, he discusses the album a little bit more, and says that he's got his friend Jimmy to thank for obtaining a copy of the album.
Interestingly enough, Grohl also says Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic wanted Sepultura to open for the band at some point, but it never quite happened.
"When I was young, my best friend was Jimmy. We were discovering music together, but we split paths around the time I discovered Devo and he discovered Loverboy. That’s not exactly a two-way street. So as I was buying my GBH singles, Jimmy ordered a record by Metallica.
Three weeks later, I get the phone call: ‘Dude, get the fuck up here right now.’ He had just got the cassette of ‘Kill ‘Em All‘. That’s where Jimmy and I met in the middle. At one point he discovered Sepultura— ‘Arise‘ was the first one he got. I loved them. The first time they played Seattle, they were just ferocious. It wasn’t that groomed heavy metal aesthetic; there were dreadlocks everywhere and the guitars were tuned down to Z.
[Krist] Novoselic [Nirvana bassist] started getting into them too, and at one point we entertained the idea of having them open up for Nirvana. It never happened… Then ‘Roots‘ came out, produced by Ross Robinson and mixed by Andy Wallace: sonically the most powerful album I had ever heard. Made everything else sound like a flea fart.
That record became the gauge for every studio album Foo Fighters did for ten years. ‘That sounds pretty good, but see how it stands up to that Sepultura record…’ There’s no way we ever got anywhere close. But it gave you perspective — this is heavy. What you’re doing? It’s okay, but this is heavy."
Here's hoping Justin Timberlake made Foo Fighters get to that level of heavy recently on its upcoming album… because hey, stranger things have happened.
