Soulfly

(Roadrunner)
An interview with Max Cavalera
by Scott Hefflon

I heard you messed up your knee and went to the hospital…
Yeah, that was a week ago, but I’m home now. But I have a big cast on my leg because they don’t want me to bend my knee yet. I should have that off in a week or so.

How did you get hurt?
It’s actually the second time I’ve had surgery on the same knee. The first time it didn’t work, it didn’t heal right. This time, they put a pin in my knee to hold all the ligaments. They tear apart when I jump around on stage. I’ve been touring for the last ten years, almost non-stop, and I’d never really checked in with a doctor. My knee was the first to be sacrificed, but with this pin, I should have ten more years of jumping before me.

But jumping for Soulfly, not Sepultura. Do you still have any ties whatsoever with the band?
No, aside from I still play the Sepultura songs I wrote. And if they ever want to do an album that represents the time I was them, I’d like to be involved so it doesn’t turn out like shit. But as far as the band personally, I want to spend my time with Soulfly. I don’t want to talk shit about them because I don’t care. I’m back in full force, and want to let people know Soulfly is the shit.

So there are hard feelings, but you don’t want to get into it?
I don’t want to act like them. If they want to try to turn fans against me by talking shit about me, that’s their way of doing things. I’m not going to do the same. I want to look to the future and play my music. I want to use my time in a positive way.

Your own brother, Igor, is still in Sepultura, and you’d been together with the same line-up for over a decade…
Fourteen years. But I look at Ozzy, he was in Black Sabbath longer than I was in Sepultura, and now he’s been solo longer than he was in Black Sabbath. I talk to Ozzy all the time, and he’s really helped me through this time. He helped me all last year after Dana (Wells, Max’s stepson) died, he and his family have been really supportive of my family. I’ve known Ozzy for years and I’ve always respected him, but after this, I hold for him the highest respect.

You’d put together your new band long before you came up with the name Soulfly. What does the name mean?
Soulfly is a spiritual name for the souls of those who aren’t here with us anymore. They’re flying around me as I play my music, they’re my inspiration. For me, playing music is a spiritual experience.

And the music you’re now playing is a combination of purging demons and inner spiritualism.
I’m taking metal to a whole new level, I believe. We can use words like “spiritual,” “faith,” “hope,” and “God,” without sounding preachy, or like white metal or something. I don’t have problems saying I believe in God and I have hope. Just because I play heavy music, who says I can’t be a spiritual person? Who makes those rules? In a way, I’m breaking the rules of my own game, the metal game.

Actually, if I remember correctly, Black Sabbath was a pretty spiritual band.
A lot of the great bands are more spiritual than people think. The media tries to tag heavy music as an unintelligent form of music, but that’s not true. Music is religion to me. I thank God every day that I’m able to do this. In a way, I believe He wants me to play music to help people. I read a lot of mail from people, people in jail, and I think I even help people who’re locked up. I think that’s good. In a way, that’s coming from a higher power. Unlike pop music which is here today, gone tomorrow, heavy music fans stay for a long time, sometimes forever. Once you develop a bond with your fans, for many years you see the same faces, over and over. It’s really a great experience. In many ways, they’ve become almost like family. I don’t think that happens as much in other types of music.

Marcello, your bassist, had been a roadie for Sepultura for many years.
Ten years. Before he was a roadie, he bought my first album, and he asked me to sign it. That was on my first tour. We go back to ’83.

Were you still in Brazil at the time?
Yes. Most of his life, he’s been with me and Sepultura, so having him in Soulfly is very special, it’s a very good foundation. It’s not like starting a new band with all new people I don’t know. He and I really go back.

And you have Jackson of Chico Science, your favorite Brazilian band, drumming for Soulfly, plus guest appearances of other members…
They were a really interesting group, and they really helped shape Soulfly into even more of an interesting heavy and percussion-based sound, even more than Roots. They play what are called slave drums, and they’re played with a lot of intensity, passion, and power.

And you have a lot cameos on Soulfly: guys from Chico Science, Fear Factory, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Dub War, Cypress Hill…
Yeah, I’m the Wu-Tang Clan of metal. It’s a cool idea, bringing the whole scene, all my friends, together. The fans get a really exciting album with so much stuff on it, I think it’s really good and really different. On the next album, I won’t do that, I’ll do something different, but for this one, it makes it a powerhouse album.

And it’s long, too. You like long albums.
Yeah, I had so much inside of me I needed to release after Sepultura, it needed to be that long. And when I listen to the album, I don’t think it’s too long. I go into a trance until the end. I hope people are able to enjoy it like that. I’d rather have an album that’s long, so if people don’t like it they can skip through it, instead of making it too short. A lot of albums these days are really short. They seem to write it for the money, and then they don’t have to work so much. Music, to me, isn’t work – I can write songs every day, and it’s still as much fun as it was 15 years ago. The album comes out long like that because we enjoy music so much, we cannot stop writing, we cannot stop playing, and we need a producer to press the stop button and say, “Hey, guys, stop already. You already have a whole album.” It’s long, but I don’t think it’s too long. I think every song has a reason for being there.

It definitely works into a groove, and you can kinda trance out to it.
I believe an album should stand the test of time. I look at albums like Led Zeppelin IV, Black Sabbath’s Sabotage,Bob Marley… Those are special albums that time could not destroy. I want to write an album like that. I’m not saying my album is like Led Zeppelin, but I at least try to get the same kind of vibe. Years from now, I want people to listen to Soulfly and have people say, “Wow, this is really a trip.” And like Led Zeppelin, I think Sepultura should change their name. We always said that if someone dies or leaves, the band would not continue. When John Bonham died, they didn’t continue the band. I always thought that was a huge sign of loyalty, to the band and to their fans. But it didn’t work that way in Sepultura. I left and they decided to continue with someone else.

Who do you see as being able to fill your shoes and sing your songs for Sepultura?
Nobody, really. It might sound egotistical, but I don’t really know of anybody. Most people would be Max Cavalera rip-offs. They might get that deep voice sound, but it doesn’t come from the heart and soul, so it doesn’t come across the same way. They’ll probably just get someone who can imitate what I do, but they won’t be able to move on to new things that way I have.

Perhaps they’ll create a whole different band.
That’s why I think they should change the name. Perhaps they should get Dio to sing for them.

I hear your son in the background. So you’re a real family man, huh?
I really love kids, and I really try to bring up my kids up right. Even though it’s a crazy life when they go on the road and they see all this chaos, on a tour bus, going city to city and all that shit, still I try to give them the best education and be the best that a father can be.

How many kids do you have?
Two. One’s two and one’s five. My two-year-old has diabetes so he travels with me all the time so I can give him insulin shots. So he is really close to me.

You take the whole family on the road?
We’ve been doing that for many years because Gloria, my wife, is our manager. Igor, my two-year-old, is with me, but the other needs to go to school.

Gloria managed Sepultura as well, right?
Yeah, for eight or nine years.

And you’re working with Ross Robinson as producer again, right?
Yeah, he did Roots with us. And for two songs, “Umbabarauma” and “Bumba,” we worked with Mario Caldato, the producer for the Beastie Boys, because we wanted to try something different.

How was working with Mario?
It was awesome. We got along really well. His family is from Brazil, even though he lives in L.A.. He speaks fluent Portuguese, so we found a bond right away. I had no idea when I first met him through a friend of mine, but he started talking in Portuguese, and I was like, “What’s up with that?” When I was putting together the album, I asked him to do two songs. “Umbabarauma” is the next single because people think it’s one of the coolest songs on the album.

“Umbabarauma” is quite a name for a single. That’ll look really interesting on the charts.
Not even Brazilians can say it.

What’s it mean?
It’s an African soccer player. The whole song is about soccer. Actually, it’s a cover song of a Brazilian artist from the ’70s, George Ben, we just decided to do our own version of it. Can you hold on a second? I have to get the door…

Are you on crutches?
Yeah, and it’s a pain in the ass to walk. But I have a long career ahead of me, and I don’t want to fuck up my knee in a way that can’t be fixed. But the music drives me nuts, and I just go crazy on stage.

Is that a shift of focus? Looking toward longevity?
I look at people and bands I respect a lot, like Ozzy and Santana, people who’ve been doing this forever, and I use them as my role models. I want to make music for a long time. I look forward to that. Music is all I love, man, it’s all I love. If I don’t play music, life is pointless.

When you were younger, were you more self-destructive, and destructive in general?
Oh yeah. I did all kinds of shit, but at some point, you have to say, “What the fuck?” You’ve got to wise up a bit. I’m 28 now. My fucked up time was when I was 20-21, living in Brazil, doing anything I wanted. But then you smarten up. You don’t come into this world to party, there’s something you’re here to do. You should enjoy life, of course, but you should do things with your life that people can remember you for.