SOULFLY's MAX CAVALERA: 'I Love Working With Different People'

Peter Hodgson of the I Heart Guitar Blog recently conducted an interview with Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, ex-SEPULTURA). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

I Heart Guitar Blog: How would you describe "Enslaved" compared to the last [SOULFLY album], "Omen"?

Max: It's more extreme. We have an extreme metal drummer who joined the band called David Kinkade, who comes a school of death metal playing. He comes from a band called BORKNAGAR and they're a death metal band from Norway. He plays with double bass and blast beats. A very extreme way of playing. We actually built those songs around him. I was very influenced by that, so some of the stuff even sounds like old MORBID ANGEL and old DEATH and SUFFOCATION. So it's really going to surprise a lot of people. It's a very extreme SOULFLY record, the most extreme SOULFLY record of all of them. The most extreme record we've done for all the times.

I Heart Guitar Blog: Dez Fafara from DEVILDRIVER and COAL CHAMBER is on the new album.

Max: Yeah! We wanted to have two different people so we ended up going with Dez from DEVILDRIVER, who is a friend of mine. He's in a great band. I love DEVILDRIVER and I love his voice. It was time to work together. We were on the same label and it was the perfect time to do something together. And we also did a song called "World Scum", which was done with Travis from CATTLE DECAPITATION, which is one of my favorite new bands, a new school of death metal coming out of America. They're from San Diego and they're super-heavy. Travis put down some really amazing vocals on that song. He's great, y'know? Two killer guests to have on the album. They're going to make the record even more interesting for the people that are going to hear it. On the last record I had Greg from DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN and Tommy from PRONG, which was also killer. And on CAVALERA we had Roger from AGNOSTIC FRONT. So we just keep trying get together different guests and keep the tradition alive of having guests on the record. It's cool, it's fun. It's something that I do with SOULFLY and CAVALERA and it's a big part of my career, working with different musicians. I love working with different people. They're all my friends, and I'm a fan of their music and I get to work with them in the studio. It's been a dream for me working with everyone I've worked with. Tom Araya, Sean Lennon, Corey Taylor, Chino from DEFTONES… everybody I work with has been amazing and I really look forward to working with more people.

I Heart Guitar Blog: One thing that's really cool about the CONSPIRACY and modern-day SOULFLY is that you bring back the thrashy, intricate kind of guitar playing that was so cool in SEPULTURA.

Max: That's why we have Marc Rizzo on guitar. He's very talented. He can really do different stuff. He's an amazing guitarist in SOULFLY and he does really cool stuff with CAVALERA. The first CAVALERA album was full of his leads, and on the second album I wanted him shredding but I also wanted him to come up with some sounds, different noise effects, and not just shredding, because people get tired of that. So he did some of that, and I think the combination of that with the thrash songs and the fact that the album is shorter — it's only half an hour long, you can hear the whole record at one time without getting tired of the record, and I think it goes back to albums like [SEPULTURA's] "Arise" or [SLAYER's] "Reign In Blood" that are only about half an hour long. More simplicity, more brutality, trim all the fat, take the extra stuff out, keep it brutal and in your face. And that's the style of the CAVALERA. I think I like that about it. Something about playing pure thrash without restrictions, without rules, that is really cool. It's very liberating for me. And when I play with Igor, I just want to play fast, which is that vibe me and Igor have. It grooves. We go heavy on the grooves, and when it's fast and thrashy we're gonna go all the way. But CAVALERA is really a combination of my sound and Igor's sound clashing together, which is the sound we formed in SEPULTURA.

Read the entire interview from I Heart Guitar Blog.

"Gladiator" audio stream:

"World Scum" video: