#maximum hedrum

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Over the past 16 years, the Cleveland-born bellower Derrick Green has created an indelible image of himself in the minds of headbangers as the frontman of the long-running Brazilian metal squad Sepultura. To fans of the band, he’s a wide-eyed, gravel-throated totem, who looks entranced as he barks out classics like “Arise” and “Choke.” But now, to complement his demon-possessed persona in Sepultura, he’s showing off another side of himself. “I wanted to do something that people would never recognize me as me,” he tells Revolver from his home in São Paulo, Brazil, where he’s working on a new Sepultura album. Then, with a laugh, he says, “I think I’ve succeeded.” This new side of Green is that of the sunglasses-wearing, checker-suited sex-jam crooner of the electro R&B group Maximum Hedrum, which he cofounded with N.A.S.A. producer-DJ Sam Spiegel. On their just-released self-titled debut, the pair has crafted 13 freaky, funky sci-fi-influenced songs about sex, robots, and having sex with robots. The album features guest appearances by funk legend George Clinton, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, Beastie Boys producer Money Mark, and Beverly Hills Cop score composer Harold Faltermeyer. It’s about as far from Sepultura as Green could possibly get—”Ph.D” is a song about a woman with a Ph.D “in sexuality”—but as the music proves, and as he reveals with the excited way he talks about Maximum Hedrum, he’s had fun finding this new side of himself. [Read More]

Q: A lot is happening in Brazil right now with the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. But on the side of these events there have been a lot of protests because of the money that is invested in these events while many Brazilians are struggling to live. Is this something that touches you? Is this something that also feeds your own anger as an artist? DG: I’ve been living in Brazil for a while now, and it’s something I’ve noticed when I first moved there. What was frustrating was the lack of education, the lack of people who really know what’s going on in their own country and being frustrated with things like high crime, politicians elected by the people completely robbing the people… There’s a new middle-class in Brazil, a lot of money coming in from outside, and a lot of money being produced… I think it’s a good start with the protests, and people starting to slowly wake up and realize what’s going on. But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. People are very positive in the way that they’re like “OK, this is a good start”, but it has to continue, you know? It has to be followed-up. It’s been so many years with corruption and fucked up shit going on there that it will take many years to get better, it just doesn’t happen overnight. And they don’t have that history of revolting and getting to the streets; it’s something that happened a lot in South American countries but not so much in the culture of Brazil. And it doesn’t happen that often. A lot of times people have the attitude: “Ah, it’s OK, don’t rock the boat, I don’t want to fuck anything up…” and not saying anything. So, finally, people are starting to say that it’s time to rock the boat, and there are some fucked up things and it’s important to say something. But they’re learning this now. I think it’s going to take a while for them to make some serious changes, have a leader who can voice the opinion of people and to really educate a person who can go against the people who are robbing, who do know the law and who had been manipulating it. There are a lot of things that can be done and that need to be done, but it’s going to take time. Q: You now have an Electro Funk project called Maximum Hedrum which sounds very surprising for an extreme metal singer! Can you tell us more about it? DG: Absolutely! My mother was a music teacher, and I started at a very young age learning about music, classical music, gospel music… And I love the art! I was approached by a friend of mine, Sam Spiegel, he’s from LA, and he has written a bunch of songs and had ideas he’d been writing with this guy, Harold Faltermeyer, who was a big 80’s writer for a lot of soundtracks from Top Gun to The Beverly Hills Cop… He was pretty central at the time of synthesizers. Him and Georgio Moroder, they were like neck and neck, writing a lot of stuff for movies. Anyway, he had this idea, my friend Sam came to me and said: “I have this project; we should try to do something. I really like your voice.” And I wanted to show my voice in a different way. And I’ve never done that or recorded anything like that before. And as a musician, I was like: “Man, I’m an artist, I should show the different sides of my voice and explore it.” And so with this, I could really explore it. Electronic music is something that I wasn’t familiar with. I like certain things, electronically, and I thought that it was interesting to create in that style. It was something I wanted to do just because I wanted to expand, to break out and try something different. And I think that had an impact in making an even heavier, metalized, album. It’s kind of funny, but it brought about a lot of different ideas and it pushed me to use the diversity of my voice with Sepultura. It’s something that’s still going on. With Maximum Hedrum, we’re going to play Rock In Rio the same day as Sepultura (Laughs), in a different stage. And we’re doing touring as much as possible when we can, just really kind of blowing people’s minds, just trying to do something that’s out of the ordinary, not typical. So, I love doing that!

Da Homies!

note this is not the full version but it's the only version with visual pleasure find the full version on youtube will you

Please accept my headcanon.