MAX CAVALERA Announces Name For New Project With Brother IGOR

Metal Hammer writer Jerry Ewing spoke to SOULFLY/ex-SEPULTURAMax Cavalera about his new collaboration with his brother Igor (ex-SEPULTURA).

Metal Hammer: Who made the first moves to get in touch between you and Igor?

Max: "Igor made the contact. I was touring Europe doing a lot of festivals and I got a phone call and someone passed me the phone and said, 'It's your brother,' and I almost had a fucking heart attack. I hadn't talked to my brother in like ten years and this guy hands me the phone like it's the pizza man! He just said, 'What's up, man? I gotta see you.' I hadn't even thought about a project at that time. But we kept in touch and later on I told him I'd written some songs with him in mind and did he want to come over and play. They don't fit anywhere else, not SOULFLY, not SEPULTURA. It wasn't like I was asking him to join SOULFLY, it was something new and fresh. Like a new beginning of our lives. He liked it very much and that's where we are at the moment."

Metal Hammer: That must feel pretty good?

Max: "It feels really cool. It's something we've both wanted to do for a very long time. We had to go through this ten year period and it's something that we couldn't force. I was very patient about it and just kept doing my thing, SOULFLY and stuff, and Igor was doing his."

Metal Hammer: Have you got a name for the project yet?

Max: "Yes, it's called INFLIKTED. It's a real metal/punk thing. Anyone who knows SEPULTURA will know we were pioneering in terms of introducing metal fans to bands like DEAD KENNEDYS, working with Jello Biafra before he did anything with anyone else in metal. I love metal but me and Igor also love hardcore and punk, so it's coming from that mentality."

Metal Hammer: So can we expect some pretty extreme sounds?

Max: "Very punk, very hardcore, but also metal too. You'll hear stuff and you'll know it's coming from songs like 'Arise' and 'Beneath The Remains'. I've even done some death metal stuff 'Morbid Visions'-style which I haven't done for ages. Everyone was into it and it was such fun to record that shit. And we did fun stuff like a POSSESSED cover, 'The Exorcist', but we did it in a more punk style."

Metal Hammer: How worried are you that people will look at you reuniting with Igor and jump the gun by assuming it's some kind of SEPULTURA reunion?

Max: "I tried to do this as naturally as possible. If you play together and that's the way the music comes out then you can't really change anything, even if you wanted to. There's a natural fucking energy coming out of both of us playing together. It's something I have no control over, because we have both worked on different things for many years and learned different stuff. Using the first drum track, that's something I wish I would have done with SEPULTURA so many times. Things like 'Refuse/Resist' or even 'From The Past Comes The Storms' from 'Schizophrenia', the best take was the first one but we re-recorded it and screwed it up. I listen to the album and then the tapes and the first take was so much better, so much more powerful. So my attitude [with this] was to try and capture that, but everything else is natural man. But you do hear a lot of SEPULTURA and SOULFLY, and also in what Igor drums on but that's understandable."