“WE WAnTED TO bE THE biGGEsT mETAL LAbEL in THE WORLD”

MONTE CONNER, ROADRUNNER THEN-HEAD OF A&R, HAD MASSIVE AMBITIONS

The early 1990s was fast becoming a turbulent time for metal. Grunge and alternative rock had stolen the spotlight, and six-string heroics, gut-punching riffs and flailing hair were seen as passé. The success of Pantera aside, metal’s days as a mainstream force seemed numbered. Except that wasn’t quite the whole picture. On the fringes, exciting things were still happening. Death metal had outgrown its gore-obsessed adolescence and headed into more melodic waters. A new wave of Scandinavian black metal bands were causing mayhem in the name of Satan. Brazil’s Sepultura were waiting in the wings for their shot at the big-time. And on both sides of the Atlantic, an underground record company was on the verge of becoming one of the most powerful and influential record labels of the decade.

That label was Roadrunner Records, and 1993 would be its watershed year. From its beginnings as a cradle of death metal, Roadrunner exploded into metal’s mainstream thanks to a trio of key albums – Sepultura’s Arise, Type O Negative’s Bloody Kisses and Life Of Agony’s debut, River Runs

Red. It would be at the vanguard of rap-metal, 90s hardcore and nu metal. By the decade’s end, it was home for everyone from Slipknot to Nickelback.

“Our goal was to be the biggest metal label in the world,” says Monte Conner, Roadrunner’s former head of A&R and the man who signed Sepultura, Machine Head, Slipknot and countless others. “I felt like we were leaders and innovators.”

Founded in Holland in 1980 by Cees Wessels, Roadrunner started out licensing albums by artists as diverse as British jazz-rocker Robert

Wyatt and hardcore punk pioneers Black

Flag. By the mid-80s, they had pinned their colours to the metal mast, picking up albums by Metallica, Slayer and Mercyful Fate, and opened an office in New York. Their first breakthrough release came in 1987 with King Diamond’s Abigail, but it was their focus on the late 80s death metal scene that helped give them an identity as a cutting-edge underground label.

“We were still very much an underground metal label in those days,” says Monte.

“But we were in clear ascent, due to the label’s massive success in the death metal world with bands like Obituary, Deicide, Fear Factory, Suffocation and others, but mostly due to Sepultura emerging as a major band.”

Sepultura were one of the hottest bands of the early 90s. Formed in

Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1984, they were signed by Roadrunner for their second album, Schizophrenia. But it was their brutal third album, 1989’s Beneath The Remains, that brought them to worldwide attention. By the time of its follow-up,

1991’s Arise, the Brazilians were one of the few metal bands in a position to take on the incoming grunge hordes.

“We weren’t scared of grunge or alternative rock,” says Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser. “We loved Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, we took influence from that scene.

And I think they felt the same about us as well. We would see [then-Nirvana drummer] Dave

Grohl wearing

Sepultura t-shirts.”

For Roadrunner, it was apparent