Sepultura's most popular song, their lead singer Max Cavalara told us, "It's about believe in yourself, about be proud of your heritage, proud of where you come from. Really powerful but simple lyrics. So it's really about just be down with your own roots and believe in your roots." (Here's our full Max Cavalara interview.)
The riff on this song is the guitar version of a mantra, which is something repeated over and over to instill it into your consciousness. Mantras need to be simple and concise, so that's how Max Cavalara wrote the riff. "'Roots' is full of these really minimalistic ideas that were really simple and powerful. Sometimes it's the harder songs to write which are the easiest. The simplest songs are harder to write than complicated songs." Max adds that the song is in B tuning, and can be played on one string.
The title and chorus of this song are an homage to the Black Sabbath song "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath." Max Cavalara is a huge Sabbath fan, and cites Tony Iommi as his favorite riff-maker.
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