SAN FRANCISCO -- Two brothers who founded the biggest metal band to ever surface from South America revisit their past when Max and Iggor Cavalera play the earliest music they recorded as Sepultura at the Great American Music Hall Monday.

Guitarist/vocalist Max and drummer Iggor were only teens when they founded Sepultura in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte in 1984. While the group was initially inspired by the more traditional metal sounds of Black Sabbath and Motorhead, the Cavaleras took the band in a more extreme direction after Max discovered the blasphemous proto thrash-metal sound of British trio Venom.

The two musicians went on to discover acts from the emerging thrash and death metal scenes of the United State and Europe, emulating the furious sonic assault of rising bands like Celtic Frost, Megadeth, Exodus and Kreator on their earliest recordings. After their raw, self-released debut EP Bestial Devastation in 1985 (a split album with fellow Brazilian headbangers Overdose) and first proper full-length Morbid Visions the following year, Sepultura began to lean more towards the thrash end of the metal spectrum.

By the time the band issued Schizophrenia in 1987, Sepultura had settled into its classic line-up rounded out by guitarist Andreas Kisser and bass player Paulo Jr. and scored a deal with noted metal imprint Roadrunner Records. Their follow-up effort Beneath the Remains two years later would stand as a quantum leap forward in production and songwriting. A brutal musical assault that found the brothers forging their unique style, the album would be hailed as a thrash classic and helped introduce Sepultura to a far wider global audience.

The improved production and more focused songwriting showed the path forward on the band subsequent efforts, which would take even more dramatic sonic departures. Arise in 1991 mostly stuck to the death/thrash metal template of its predecessor -- many fans hail the recording as the group's finest hour -- but showed Sepultura branching out with elements of industrial and punk.

Chaos A.D. in 1993 introduced slower, harder-swinging tempos that would later lead the album to be celebrated as a pioneering groove-metal landmark. The politically charged global metal effort Roots in 1996 went even further afield, adding traditional Brazilian percussion with contributions from guest musician Carlinhos Brown while exploring the plight of indigenous people in their native country.

Unfortunately,  the sudden death of Max Cavalera's stepson while the band was touring in England brought a head conflict within the band over the band being managed by the guitarist's wife. When the band demanded she be fired, Cavalera left in what would be one of the more acrimonious rock group splits of the decade.

Sepultura hired a new singer and soldiered on, while the estranged Cavalera would found his new band Soulfly, issuing a string of celebrated albums with a constantly rotating cast of support musicians. The guitarist would eventually mend his relationship with his brother Iggor, leading the pair to start Cavalera Conspiracy in 2007 with guitarist Mark Rizzo (Gojira guitarist and leader Joe Duplantier would play bass and guitar on the band's 2008 debut, Inflikted).

While Soulfly remains Max Cavalera's main outlet, Cavalera Conspiracy has still managed to put out three albums including it's most recent Napalm Records salvo Psychosis in 2017. Max and Iggor have offered their loyal fans a rare gift in 2017 with their Return To Roots Tour. Marking the 20th anniversary of the landmark Sepultura effort, the two principle forces behind those songs played the classic Roots album in its entirety along with additional Sepultura gems. The show was a raging sold-out success, with an especially crammed San Francisco concert at now defunct club Slim's featuring a guest appearance by local rock legend Mike Patton who reprised his vocals on the tune "Lookaway."

Five years later, the Cavalera brothers returned to San Francisco for another retrospective tour, playing the songs from the seminal albums Beneath The Remains and Arise for two blistering shows at the Great American Music Hall. While Max would turn his attention back to Soulfly for a new album (Totem) in 2022 and more touring, that same year Cavalera Conspiracy shortened their name to simply Cavalera and released re-recordings of Sepultura's raw earliest recordings: the debut EP Bestial Devastation and the band's first proper full-length, Morbid Visions. The new recordings earned wide praise for their mix of improved sonics and still brutal intensity and the subsequent tour playing that material was met with ecstatic reviews. 

Cavalera's re-recording project continued last year with the band releasing a new version of Schizophrenia on Nuclear Blast Records in June that included contributions from Max's son Igor Amadeus Cavalera on bass and lead guitarist Travis Stone (Pig Destroyer, Desolus). That line-up will deliver another ferocious live performance of classic early Sepultura songs when the band's current Third World Trilogy Tour comes to the Great American Music Hall on Monday.

Supporting Cavalera will be rising Oakland metal trio Necrot. The band started in 2011 by talented Bay Area death metal players Luca Indrio (the band's bassist who also plays in Acephalix and Vastum) and Chad Gailey (who also plays drums in noted local outfits Mortuous and Atrament), with guitarist Sonny Reinhardt (Saviours, Vorlust, Watch Them Die) joining the following year.

In 2017, Necrot released it's proper debut album Blood Offering on the label, garnering widespread critical praise for the corrosive collection of punk-tinged death metal. Since then, Necrot has only raised it's profile with appearances at major festivals like the Northwest Terror Fest and Psycho Las Vegas as well as a five-week tour of Europe. The band has since released two more efforts: the punishing Mortal in 2020 and last year's Lifeless Birth, which finds the trio moving into more progressive and experimental territory without losing an iota of its apocalyptic fury. Oxnard, CA-based crossover punk/thrash band Dead Heat opens the show.  

Monday, Feb. 24, 6 p.m. $30-$35