Max Cavalera Talks Soufly Album, Cavalera Conspiracy Tour + His Autobiography

Max Cavelera was the guest on Full Metal Jackie's weekend show. The rocker has been balancing Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy and Killer Be Killed over the past year and he speaks with Jackie about his various creative outlets. He also shares his thoughts on what made Sepultura so special, dishes about his autobiography and lays out his plans for the coming year. Check out the interview below.

How are you?

I'm doing alright, how you guys doing?

Doing great. Happy to have you on the show. Cavalera Conspiracy Pandemonium of course out in stores now. Max, you've been a part of quite a few bands -- Sepultura, also of course Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy and Killer Be Killed. Creatively, why is it so important for you to have so many different ways to express yourself?

It's fun. I always loved playing with other musicians. When I was with Sepultura we did a lot of collaborations with other people and eventually that landed into my first project which was Nailbomb. A lot of people really like Nailbomb a lot. It became a cult record. We eventually killed Nailbomb, me and Alex, we didn't want to do too much with it. Then, throughout the years, everything just changed.

I ended up leaving Sepultura and creating Soulfly. Later on I got reunited with my brother so I created Cavalera Conspiracy and the last thing that came along was Killer Be Killed, which was an invitation I got from Greg from Dillinger Escape Plan to create this group and make some music with him. I always enjoy and have fun with the music. It's more music for the fan, the more the better. I don't think theres a limit on what you can do. I think it's up to you whatever you want to do and I just thought, it's kind of cool and exciting to not be just in one band but have a bunch of different things going on.

You performed Pantera's "Walk" on the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise. Do the albums that you loved back in the day still make you excited when you hear them now?

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I love the song, it's one of my favorite riffs of all time. In fact, I asked Terry Date, which is our producer of our last Soulfly album, Savages, because he produced Pantera when they made "Walk." I asked him, 'Did you guys just have a heart attack when that riff came on? Did time stop in the studio?' To my surprise he said no, it was in the middle of a bunch of other songs. They didn't even notice that it was a special song. But, I love that song. It was so cool to do that at the 70,000 tons of Metal Cruise. It was a lot of fun singing those lyrics, Phil's lyrics are great. For me, it was an honor. It was cool to give a little tribute to Dimebag, as well.

Max, if you never got into music, what other ways do you think you would have creatively expressed yourself?

Probably crime or drugs, no, [laughs] just kidding. I don't know. I always liked art related stuff. I like a lot of painting. I actually do a little bit of my own, t-shirts and things like that in the back of the bus. They're not really good, but still kind of a cool hobby. So it would be something related to art. I love artwork and I think that's the kind of stuff that I'm into. Either artwork or lately I've been reading a lot of books. I got into books lately and it's been really cool to read a few different biographies. Since I did my own biography, I became interested in reading other people's biographies. So I read Ozzy's biography. I read Lemmy's and it was really cool. Mostly artwork, that's what I like the most.

What made Sepultura so special that people hope you and your brother would rejoin the band?

Oh, I don't know. It's one of those things, one of those bands that just kind of happened. It's not every day a band from Brazil comes out on the scene like that. I think we made a big impact, especially since we were from Brazil which is a country that was not popular for heavy metal. We put Brazil on the map of heavy music in the world. I think a lot of people like that, a lot of people are connected to that, especially in the Latin countries. We're still very respected. There's a huge fan base in the Latin countries for a lot of fans of Sepultura. I think, what we did was pretty cool too. We never repeated ourselves. At least with me, the records that I made with them, we tried to keep them different. We kind of never looked back, always looked forward and you can see the difference from the records from Beneath the Remains to Arise to Chaos AD and then Roots. They're all different records. We were never afraid to take a new step and a new direction.

When you worked on your autobiography with Joel McIver, what did you realize for the first time about your life and career by looking at it as a comprehensive whole?

A lot of crazy stuff. A lot of wild episodes. Starting from my own childhood in Brazil, to stuff that I was born into, like my mother's religion. Right before my father died, he took me to be baptized at the Vatican, crazy stuff like that which doesn't happen to a lot of people. Then, of course, there's the music. It's a huge part. Music became like a salvation for me. If it wasn't for music, the odds of becoming something in Brazil were very minimal. So music really saved me from a lot of trouble and I think me making the book was really cool looking back at all this stuff.

There's a lot of funny stuff, like puking on Eddie Vedder and pissing off Lemmy and then there's a lot of sad stuff like the split from Sepultura and the death of my father, the death of Dana. It's a full book, a lot of insight went into making this book. I have to be thankful for the people involved too. Joel did a great job, Dave Grohl did a great intro for the book. Everybody really collaborated and made it a great book for people to read.

There's going to be some Cavalera Conspiracy touring coming up in the coming months. What else can we expect from you in all the projects your involved with?

There's a North American Cavalera tour. I think it's with CoC and Death Angel and Lody Kong, my kid's band. Then I'm finishing the work on the new Soulfly, which is our tenth record. The record was recorded in LA with Matt Hyde who did Slayer's God Hates Us All and Deftones, among others. I gotta go finish singing on this record. All the music is done. The vocals are not quite done yet. Then hopefully there are some festivals for Cavalera Conspiracy in Europe like Hellfest, Download in England. Then hopefully a huge Soulfly tour because the record comes out in August.

Thank you again!

Thanks to everyone over there, thanks for all the support. Say metal, everybody.

Many thanks to Max Cavalera for the interview. As stated, Cavalera Conspiracy is touring with Corrosion of Conformity, Death Angel and Lody Kong at these locations. The band's Pandemonium album is available here. And look for new Soulfly music and touring coming later this year. Full Metal Jackie’s weekend show can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com.