The Grasshopper Lies Heavy - "Territory"
Written by Sepultura

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is
James Woodard - Guitars, Vocals
Steven Barrera - Drums
Mario Trejo - Bass

For Papa Bear

Recorded Saturday, November 28th at the Woodard Estate in San Antonio, TX.
Edited and mixed by Ali Jaafar / Ecstattic Studio in MPLS, MN.

Sepultura was such a huge part of my journey of discovery in heavy metal as a teenager. Listening to Chaos A.D. for the first time as a smooth-brained 15-year old likely changed the trajectory of my life. It didn’t help that that night was also, fatefully, the first time I ever smoked weed. I laid in my friend’s bed at 3 am, high as a fucking kite, wide awake, not able to feel my face, listening to these men-machines pummel out these chugging rhythms and shredding out these atonal, discordant guitar solos with such Rolex-like precision that at points my THC-soaked childbrain could barely discern if we were even listening to human beings performing music anymore. Was it some kind of industrial death machine? Was it the actual sound that the tank from the Voivod album cover would make as it accelerated towards creating oblivion? At that moment, while my teeth and tongue vibrated from the psychoactive chemicals raging through my squishy virgin brain, I knew that Sepultura were completely unfuckwithable. I bought a B.C. Rich Warlock guitar the next year. It sucked.

It’s fun revisiting records I loved as a kid. I hadn’t listened to Chaos A.D. for over a decade when I gave it a spin about 2 years ago, while on tour with the boys. It immediately resonated with me hearing it again after so long. It was a lightning strike directly into the lizard part of my brain, shot directly from my past life as a teenage heavy metal dumbass. I was surprised by how much Sepultura informed and influenced my guitar playing and songwriting much later in life, and not as an active listener. The way Andreas Kisser’s solos would squeal and shred ear drums with dissonance. The stop-start rhythms and the incessant chuggy caveman drums. The brutal vocal performance paired with woke and meaningful lyrics. This stuff is so deeply embedded into my brain that I’m pretty sure when I’m in some retirement home at 80 years old with dementia, I will still remember this album like the back of my hand. It was probably the weed.