Q & A: Max Cavalera (Soulfly)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

FROTH and Fury Fest is taking a huge leap this year – and one of the main drawcards will be the mighty Soulfly.

With their 13th album Chama released just last week, Max Cavalera’s main musical vehicle will be stirring the pits at both legs of the festival and at shows in between.

Just over three months out from their Australian assault, we settled in with Max to discuss Soulfly’s latest release.

Hot Metal: Hey Max, it’s going to be awesome to have you back here again next year for Froth and Fury.
Max Cavalera: “We’re looking forward to starting the new year with a banger!”

HM: It’s a hell of a festival and sure to be a great tour, as well.
MC: “We’re very excited as well. Both Nailbomb and Soulfly are both very cool shows, very different from each other. It’s a cool way to start a year for sure.”

HM: The new record sounds as angry as I’ve ever heard you.
MC: “I keep hearing that! I didn’t know it was that angry! It’s energetic. Maybe my vision of energy, to other people, sounds like anger! But you know, it’s cool. I like the energy of the record.”

HM: The Sex Pistols did say that anger is an energy, and you seem to have plenty of both of those things!
MC: “That’s true! That’s true!”

HM: It’s definitely a throwback to some of the earlier Soulfly records.
MC: “Yeah there’s a nod to the beginning, especially the percussion side of it. Some of the riffs, some of the songs like “Storm the Gates”, the title track “Chama”, ‘Favela/Dystopia’ has Brazilian percussion, tribal beats. But there’s other cool stuff, like ‘No Pain = No Power’, ‘Nihilist’ … One song I really like is ‘Always Was, Always Will Be’, which is influenced of course by Australia. The title came from you guys, from Aboriginal philosophy. I liked that name a lot and I’m glad I got to use that for the title of the song. It’s kind of experimental. It has drum machines and things like that, a lot of noise and downtuned guitars and shit like that.”

HM: I saw the title and immediately realised where it came from. What was the philosophy behind the track itself? Is it a comment about dispossession?
MC: “I remember when I was there last and I was watching a documentary on TV that was all about Aboriginal culture and lifestyle. I liked that, and I wrote down the name in one of my books and thought, I have to remember that when it comes time to make the next Soulfly. I think it connects … the record has an indigenous vibe going. It starts with ‘Indigenous Inquisition’ and it goes through the whole record, plus there’s the story of the Chama within the record, written by my son Igor Amadeus. It’s a very cool fiction story. I love the name, I think it’s powerful. It’s experimental, I sing in Portuguese in it and I think it’s crazy in combining Aboriginal, Brazilian and North American in the same record. I think it’s quite interesting.”

HM: I think it’s something that should be represented more – the story of indigenous cultures and bringing them together that way. It’s certainly very powerful and definitely is something that gives the record its energy.
MC: “I hope so! The source of the energy was my going back to the beginning of Soulfly, when I was inspired by a lot of tribal elements and heavy grooves that I really love. This new record has that, but it also has a lot of noise, as well, throughout the whole thing. It’s a cool combination of tribal and technology together.”

HM: It’s very tidy too – it has what it has to say very quickly
MC: “Yeah we felt that in today’s age people’s attention span is shorter. Even mine! Even my own. I can’t listen to the first Soulfly all the way through because it’s an hour and 15 minutes! It’s too long, man! It’s too long. The thought process behind Chama was to make it shorter somehow, so that when it’s finished, you feel like putting it back on and listening to it again, rather than, ‘Is this thing ever going to be done?’”

HM: You’re a long way into the Soulfly catalogue now. Does that become a challenge when it comes time for touring set lists?
MC: “It is a challenge, but it’s also exciting as we get to have a variety of songs to choose from. We can always go to deep cuts from some of the records like Dark Ages or Omen, Enslaved or Prophecy. Then you’ve always got the fan favourites – “Prophecy”, “Eye For an Eye”, “Jump the Fuck Up”, those are going to be there. I think it’s exciting, plus the one thing Soulfly does is we don’t play the exactly same setlist every night. We change from night to night. At one point I was just calling songs out from the stage, without even looking at the setlist, kind of what like James Brown used to do. That’s cool, to have a band that’s ready to do that. To call a song out at the spur of the moment and have them ready to do it. For me it makes it so much more interesting than doing the same setlist every night, because it can get robotic, almost like machinery. Like factory work! It doesn’t feel like that with Soulfly, because it’s much more free. We just go with the flow.”

HM: There was a period where you seemed to be very busy on a lot of different bands and projects. Have you been more focused on just Soulfly recently?
MC: “I think so. Once this record comes out, I’m going to be pretty busy with Chama next year. I’ll still do a little bit of touring with Cavalera, but mostly it’s going to be Soulfly because we have a new record and we’re going to try and do a proper world tour where we can go everywhere.”

HM: Is Australia going to be the first leg of that?
MC: “We have a US tour that’s going to be in November. The record comes out next week, and then we do the US, and then it’s Australia! It’s going to be pretty exciting. Straight up vibing from the album, people are going to be fresh from hearing the record. We’re pretty excited. It’s always cool to have a new record to play to mix with the old songs. That’s always cool. It’s good to be out a few months after the record too so people have got to know it. I’ve been out on tour a little before an album, and people don’t know the songs, they don’t really know what’s going on. But by January, people will have had the album for a couple of months and they’ll be familiar with the material, so it should be fun.”

SOULFLY + NAILBOMB + SNOT AUSTRALIAN TOUR 

JANUARY 24: Froth and Fury Fest, Perth (no Snot)
JANUARY 26: Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane
JANUARY 27: Enmore Theatre, Sydney
JANUARY 30: The Forum, Melbourne
JANUARY 31: Froth and Fury Fest, Adelaide (no Snot)