INTERVIEW: Max Cavalera – Soulfly

Led by the legendary Max Cavalera, Soulfly are set to release their devastating new album ‘Ritual’ on October 19th via Nuclear Blast. With more new material in the arsenal and a world tour planned ahead, there was much to talk about as we catch up with Max to find out more on the album.

Oliver: How are you doing today?

Max: I’m doing really good man, how are you?

Oliver: I am also really good. I’ve had a good listen to the new Soulfly album and, yeah, it’s fantastic. I was wondering, were you writing with a specific theme in mind for this one?

Max: Well first thank you for liking the record. Yeah, I think we went in on this one with a bit of a preconceived idea what we wanted to do with it, at least in my mind I had this idea of this kind of “tribal death thrash” concept, which is to mix tribal grooves with death, thrash metal and make a full record of it. So we went full on on that, the whole record is full of that. There’s a lot of really killer grooves but a lot of ultra cool aggressive fast stuff, all combined with a lot of tempo changes and a lot of different ideas, really killer solos. I think it’s the most complete Soulfly record we’ve ever done. I think this is the real face of Soulfly, in Ritual.

Oliver: Yeah and I think you’ve definitely captured that and looking at some of these songs, they’re fantastic. When you’re in the recording studio, do you like to create a certain ambience to try and capture that feeling?

Max: You know, studios are really strange places, cause they’re really cold environments, you don’t have a crowd. Most of the times it’s really gear, you’re just surrounded by electronics and you have to kind of visualise. You have to play right there with your friends, with your bandmates, but also you have to kind of close your eyes and visualise that you’re in front of ten thousand people and that’s kind of the trick, that’s kind of how I do it. So a song like “Ritual” I imagine playing in front of thousands of people, everybody jumping when the guitar comes in it’s like a siren, a call to arms. We create atmospheres with that in mind, so when we go on tour hopefully that will happen (laughs). Eventually, but it’s really tricky because there’s nobody in the studio and even though you do have some kind of magic moments where you just kinda high-five each other, like ‘Oh that so sick oh god this part is going to be great’. Especially when I finished the vocals on Ritual, me and the producer were hugging each other, high fiving each other, cause we knew we got something cool. We knew we found we did something that is gonna stay for a long time and people [are] probably going to like it. There is a couple of moments like that, but a lot of it you have to visualise after it comes out, and that’s what we go for.

Oliver: Excellent yeah, cause I was kind of wondering, when you’re in the studio environment if you have any particular warm up routine to try and get yourself in that environment.

Max: No just jamming. I bring a lot a lot of riffs from home, I write like a maniac before the record so I write thousands of riffs. So I bring all these riffs with me and just all day man and the musicians I just throw the riffs at them, see what happens. Some of them stick, some that don’t. If you feel good about a riff, we start a song with that and then we’re like ‘We need more riffs’, we add more stuff to it and we keep adding depending on the vibe of the song. But this record is really cool because there’s some songs on there that are like two songs in one, like “Under Rapture” has Ross from Immolation, it’s almost like two songs in one. We have the first part of the song with like a groove beat and then at the end of the part where Ross sings is almost like it could have been another hardcore quick fast song. But we ended up putting two in one and it actually becomes a really interesting song where we do something like that. But there’s not really much warm-up rituals. You know, jamming most of the time. Sometimes we jam our own stuff, sometimes we jam other people’s music to break the ice. Sometimes we jam some Slayer and some Motörhead, just like loosen up and then we go right to the riffs and start writing.

Oliver: Excellent. Actually yeah, you mentioned working with other singers on this one, so what was it like working with Ross Dolan and Randy Blythe?

Max: Real great, man. You know Ross I’d chosen him from the beginning. I wanted to work with him before I’d even entered the studio. We did a tour with Immolation, I love them man. I wanted Ross so bad on the album or on a song and he was like really set for the record and I wrote that part specifically for him and he did a great job. Now Randy was a bit different. Josh is really good friends with Randy and they work together all the time and I told Josh ‘Whenever you see Randy, show him some of the stuff. If he wants to sing on any of it, be my guest, it’ll be great’, and Randy fell in love with Dead Behind The Eyes, which is like the Hellraiser song on the album, you know, Cenobites and all that, and [he[ gave a great deliverance of the vocals. Randy’s really cool, I love his story. I read his book and he’s a really interesting character in the metal world. Very respected, so it’s really cool and that is going to be a big song for us, as a single. It’s been played in the radio in America here and all the underground radios, so yeah it’s going to be an instant Soulfly classic.

Oliver: Oh yeah, cause Dead Behind The Eyes, that’s one of the songs that got released on Spotify prior to the album release and I was wondering if the band has any particular strategy when it comes to streaming, like the current environment for streaming music.

Max: No we kind of let the label do that. We don’t really pick that, I mean I was hoping they would pick Dead Behind The Eyes, but they first picked Evil Empowered, that was the first one they played from the record and that was cool because it’s a really cool track. Really kind of double bass, aggressive thrash. And then they put out Ritual, which was cool. I kinda wish they would have saved Ritual for the record just to have a little bit of a surprise for the fans, but they decided to put it out early to build excitement anyway. And then Dead Behind The Eyes, which is the one I really love. So I think yeah those three are the only ones they put out before the album comes out. The record comes out in nine days [October 19th], so I’m pretty excited to see what people think after they hear the whole record. You know you guys get to hear it first before anybody else but everybody else has to wait, but yeah it’s cool. We kinda work with our label on those things. We’re trying to do a video, I’m trying to get them to do a video of Dead Behind the Eyes and I was hoping to do a video for Feedback too as kind of like the Motörhead song on the album. Do like a low budget cheap made “do it yourself” kind of skate punk video kind of thing. We’re hoping we can do all that, it’d be really cool.

Oliver: Yeah awesome, cause when I was listening to Feedback it really did feel like a good Motörhead song.

Max: Almost like a cover, right? Some people thought it was a cover song (laughs).

Oliver: Yeah!

Max: It’s not but it’s really drinking from the Motörhead Cool-Aid hard (laughs). We drank that Cool-Aid hard and you know I love Motörhead, the whole outlaw imagery that they had and the rebellion that they had, ‘specially that era of Ace Of Spades, Iron Fist, No Sleep ‘till Hammersmith, those are classic records and I just wanted to challenge myself, see if I could write a kinda song like that being such a big fan of Motörhead like I am. So I just went and did it and like said, ‘Fuck it let’s just do it, see what happens’. It’s cool, a lot of people really like the song on the record, so it’s kinda nice to get a little bit out of my comfort zone. Not my real bread and butter that I normally do. I’m really used to tribal grooves, thrash and death metal, but Motörhead was a different beast altogether. But I really think it came out cool man, I’m really happy.

Oliver: Man I certainly agree. I’ve actually got a quick question about the previous album as well, because I’m calling from Australia and I can’t help but notice that one Mr Matt Young from King Parrot is on one of the songs, Live Life Hard. I was wondering how that came to be.

Max: Yeah we met, I listened to them first, I got really interested in them and they were just a really cool grindcore Australian band and we ended up meeting and I ended up asking him to sing. I heard he was a big Sepultura fan and turned out he was, big time and it was killer, I love Matty’s voice. We ended up touring together after that. We did a European tour, it was great. Every time they come around here I go see them, they’re always great live. Real fun, real nice Australian blokes, really out of their minds. But fun, really fun guys and Matty did a great job on the song.

Oliver: Excellent. I’ve got a little question about Killer Be Killed, so I was wondering if you’ve got plans for a new Killer Be Killed album.

Max: We do man, we’ve actually already did a demo of ten songs we already worked on and it came out great. We kinda recorded in a boombox, old school you know like old, old black metal style boombox recording. Sounds like total shit but I can tell it’s going to be good. It’s got a good feeling. And that’s the thing about Killer Be Killed, it doesn’t need a lot of rehearsal. It’s not like a band that needs to prepare a lot before going into the studio. A lot of the magic we leave it for the studio because it comes out naturally. That’s how the first record was made, probably eighty percent of that record was done in the studio, we just brought all the ideas to the studio and just patched it up in the studio and created the shape in the studio. Yeah next year whenever I have a break from Soulfly touring I will definitely get together with the other guys and hopefully Troy [Sanders] is a little bit freer next year from Mastodon and Greg [Puciato] is not doing much and we can get this thing done next year, it’ll be great.

Oliver: Yeah that sounds awesome and I’m sort of wondering, with all these projects you have on, how do you find the time?

Max: Yeah I mean it’s fun man, it keeps my life interesting and it’s a challenge to make them a little bit different from each other. I mean Cavalera (Conspiracy) is quite different from Soulfly and Soulfly is quite different from Killer Be Killed and I just kind of jump from one to the other and I’ve just kinda got to re-adjust my state of mind to whatever project I’m in. Right now I’m in full Soulfly mode with a record coming out and we’re going to start touring next year, beginning of next year. Hopefully we’ll come down to Australia, really really love to bring Ritual to Australia. But yeah just jump from one to the other man. You know it’s like you kinda press a button in your head and you’re in Killer Be Killed land and that’s all my brain thinks (laughs). Or you’re in Cavalera land! So it’s all Cavalera. So I just go from one to the other, man. It’s cool.

Oliver: Oh yeah I can imagine. When you come to Australia, how to you deal with the time difference? Cause that’s quite a big jump.

Max: Yeah the jetlags are pretty hardcore but, I mean, once we’re there it’s all good, we’re ready. I love playing Australia. We did the Killer Be Killed shows there, were great last time. It was the only time Killer Be Killed ever played live, was in Australia, so you guys were real lucky. The rest of the world was very jealous of you! Never got to see Killer Be Killed. So yeah I’m looking forward to next year, I hope we can come down with Soulfly or Cavalera or something, it would be really cool to be back in Australia playing. I love the fans there, we got a lot of great fans, seems like they love what I do there and we look forward to coming back.

Oliver: Awesome and I’ll be there when you come!

Max: Right on brother!

Get the album on iTunes HERE.