MAX CAVALERA Says PAULO JR. Didn't Play Bass On Any Early SEPULTURA Recordings

Cody Thomas of Revolver magazine recently conducted an interview with Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, SEPULTURA). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Revolver: A few years ago, you reunited with [your brother and former SEPULTURA bandmate] Igor to form the CAVALERA CONSPIRACY. You two have a new album, "Blunt Force Trauma", coming out in March. Is it as straightforward as the last album?

Max: Yeah, it's even more. Marc [Rizzo, guitar] was saying, "Some of this shit sounds like CANNIBAL CORPSE." Igor's playing really good. His playing reminds me of when he was in SEPULTURA, top form. Like in "Arise" or "Beneath the Remains", and he was going super-fast and just killer energy from the drums. We wanted to make shorter songs, so a lot of the songs are a-minute-and-a-half or two-minutes long and kind of feel like "Raining Blood" a little bit when you listen to them, which is also different for us. We had one guest song with Roger [Miret] from AGNOSTIC FRONT. He sings in a song called "Lynch Mob" I think he's probably my favorite vocalist out of the whole New York hardcore era.

Revolver: Since we're talking about SEPULTURA, what influenced the beginning of that band?

Max: There was a band in Brazil that made us really want to get serious about starting a band. They were called DORSAL ATLÂNTICA and they were like the Brazilian VENOM. Really heavy, super-Satanic, painted faces, inverted crosses in their forehead and shit. Just crazy shit live. And we were like, "Dude, we've got to get like those guys. Those guys are brutal." That was one of the inspirations that made me go, "If they are Brazilian and they are doing it, then we can do it."

Revolver: SEPULTURA in their current lineup recently announced they'd be playing the album "Arise" in its entirety. But weren't you the primary writer for SEPULTURA around then?

Max: At home I did the same style of writing I do with SOULFLY. I give credit to the guys. Igor came up with a lot of the original beats, like to "Territory". As we got better, he played better. The only musician that didn't improve much at the time was Paulo [Jr., bass]. I think the first album he recorded for was "Roots". Everything else was me and Andreas [Kisser, guitar] doing the bass because he couldn't really play that good. But we were friends, so we were like, "Yeah you can stay in the band, we won't kick you out. When we play, we'll just turn you really down so nobody hears."

Read the entire interview from Revolver magazine.