MAX CAVALERA Wants To Collaborate With OZZY OSBOURNE, JAMES HETFIELD

Dave Borgioli-Jones of NZRock recently conducted an interview with Max Cavalera (SEPULTURA, NAILBOMB, SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

NZRock: So the new CAVALERA CONSPIRACY album "Blunt Force Trauma", its heavier, its faster and its more aggressive than the first CAVALERA CONSPIRACY album. Was that the aim?

Max: Yeah, we wanted to make a more brutal and more direct album. We loved the work that was done on "Inflikted", but we thought we could take a step further into the heaviness and the brutality. I thought it was a good time for that, we felt very strongly about making a stronger album with a somehow heavier feeling to it going through all the songs. So we just went for it. It was an idea that came up in the studio and we just decided to go with it. So the first half of the album was a lot of fast songs and a lot of kind of like hardcore thrash metal and then the other half had more like a groove vibe. And then when you put the two together it made it into a good album. So it was a combination work between the fast stuff, the thrash stuff and the groovy stuff and then you have the basic CAVALERA material.

NZRock: You seem to have perfected the art of creating a crushing wall of sound in your music. What's the secret?

Max: I think the secret is how you record four guitars. In the old days we only used to do two guitars and now we do four, so you get two guitars on each speaker and you get two different sounds of the guitar so you create some kind of wall of guitar sound. And by having four different kinds of distortion because you have four guitars, you combine them all together and then you get something really super extra heavy. And that's my goal with SOULFLY and CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, it's to try to create the heaviest guitar sound but which is still clean so you can still hear the notes so it's not just noise. So you still hear the proper notes but it still is a wall of guitar sound and I think I'm getting pretty close, I think the CAVALERA CONSPIRACY "Blunt Force Trauma" album is the heaviest guitar sound I've got on an album and I'm really happy with the sound of it.

NZRock: You've worked with many musicians over the years. Who would you still like to work with but haven't had the chance yet?

Max: Probably Ozzy Osbourne and James Hetfield. Ozzy is, of course, the Godfather of metal and BLACK SABBATH and his solo career. I've played with him many times and I know him personally, but I've never got to actually ask him to record anything yet. But I think at one point the chance will definitely come. I would also like to do something with James Hetfield because I love old METALLICA and I've always been a big fan of the thrash that METALLICA brought and I like James' vocals. I thought a thrash song with me and James singing would have been really cool, too.

NZRock: When you look back over your whole musical career, what are you the most proud of in terms of recordings that you've done?

Max: Well, of course, I'm really proud of the SEPULTURA work because we broke internationally and we came out of Brazil. And "Roots" was one of my favorite albums of SEPULTURA and we explored the Brazilian roots on it and it was really exciting to do that. I'm also really proud of SOULFLY because when I left SEPULTURA, I had to start over again with SOULFLY and it wasn't easy. It was a really hard beginning and we had to create everything again from scratch. The first SOULFLY album is huge to me, it was a great album to me, and it was the album which defined my career, if I was going to continue playing or not. That first SOULFLY album is a career-defining moment of my life and I owe a lot to that record. I love the way that record turned out and it's really powerful. SOULFLY took off from that point on and I got to continue to making music.

Read the entire intervew at NZRock.