SOULFLY - Hate Songs
Written by: Cat D - Sense Music Media | Thursday 1st September 2022
SOULFLY Prepare to Go Back to Where It All Began
Sometimes, great things can happen under pressure. When Max Cavalera created the first SOULFLY album, he was still reeling from his departure from SEPULTURA and had no idea what to expect. The end result was a debut album that he still holds up as one of his best, and he credits Australia with being the first country to fully embrace the band. New album Totem was a child of similar adversity, crafted during the wild uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. And SENSE’s newest contributor, Cat, was feeling the pressure too, when we threw her in the deep end and had her do her first interview ever with one of her musical idols. Ahead of SOULFLY’s return to Australia for both the GOOD THINGS festival and several headlining shows - featuring FEAR FACTORY shredder Dino Cazares - she spoke to Max from his home in Phoenix, Arizona…
So what’s the reaction been like to your new album Totem?
It’s been really good. I think it’s a record that a lot of fans really embraced, because a lot of people wanted me to go in that direction. The album kind of marks a return to form for me, to my old ways of songwriting that I did in the 80s, which is, like, short songs, but full of different time signatures, and a lot of ripping solos – really crazy, fast solos – and really energetic drumming, and a lot of very heavy riffs. That’s kind of what made me famous, was those songs, you know? I broke ground with those songs, and I’m returning to them on Totem. It’s a return to that era of making these two-minute, three-minute, short but amazing kind of songs that just sort of kick you in the face … It’s all that, this album. It’s not trying to be anything else but “kick you in the face.” [Laughs] … If MMA, Mixed Martial Arts, needed to be turned into music, Totem is the best [companion] to it. It’s like an MMA fight. I went for that, anyway. I wanted a full energetic record … I was not trying to be a fancy artist with the avante garde ideas. None of that bullshit. I want to go right to the jugular, you know? [Laughs]
It felt great to make the record like that. To me, it was very comfortable. It’s what I do. I said to somebody the other day, “THE BEATLES had a gift to write love songs, and I have a gift to write hateful songs or angry songs!” Embrace what you have, you know? Embrace what gifts you were given, you know? My gifts are angry, powerful, energetic songs. The whole record is very much connected to nature and things like that, which I think is very cool. In a metal world, where a lot of stuff is satanic, or some of it is political, it’s kind of cool to have a record that is none of that, but it pays homage to nature. I always look at nature as a god, you know? I think in this fast-moving world we’re living in, with electronics and digital and the internet, sometimes we’ve got to put the phone down and just enjoy nature around us, and feel the power of nature, you know?
There’s something spectacular about getting out in nature.
Yeah. I’m in awe of it. Where I live [Phoenix, Arizona] it’s a desert, it’s beautiful … it’s like Jim Morrison, THE DOORS, desert-type stuff. I grew up in Brazil, which is very tropical and full of rainforests and oceans and beautiful mountains and jungles. The one thing I’m blessed with, playing music, is that I get to visit the world. I get to see all the different natures of the world. I’ve been to Siberia, Africa, Middle East … I’m going back to Australia, which is great. I cannot wait to be there in December. It’s going to be amazing. To go to Uluru is one of my dreams – my bucket list – so maybe one of these days I’ll get to do it.
You guys have got two headlining shows alongside GOOD THINGS coming up…
Yeah, we’re very excited for that. We’re doing that, we’re doing some of our own headlining shows … [At] our own headline shows, we get to play a little longer, we get to experiment more with the setlist, try to play some stuff people are not expecting, but I love the festival vibe too. SOULFLY does great at festivals, so it’s going to be amazing just to do both.
Are there any bands that you’re looking forward to checking out at GOOD THINGS?
Of course, DEFTONES, I’ve sung with them, you know? They’re involved in the beginning of SOULFLY. In fact, the name SOULFLY is in one of their songs, Headup … hopefully I’ll get to do that with them live. I’d like to check out BRING ME THE HORIZON, that would be great … Definitely when I heard that DEFTONES was on board, I was like, “Yes, it’s going to be great!” [Laughs]
It sounds like it’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to go. Everyone down here is pretty pumped!
Yeah, I know Australia will never let me down. I can always count on it. All the festivals that I’ve done there, they’ve been nothing but pure crowd savagery. It’s amazing. You guys are animals, in a good way! [Laughs]
[Laughs] I suppose that’s a good thing … I hope!
It’s a great thing. It’s great. That’s the way you listen to metal music! The best way to embrace metal music is with an open mind and don’t really give a shit about what’s going to happen to you … just let it happen! Go and have fun! The SOULFLY set is perfect for that.
Dino’s touring with you guys. Is he going to be coming down here as well?
Yeah. We figured he’s very much loved in Australia. You guys love FEAR FACTORY, and you haven’t seen SOULFLY with Dino, and there was a chance to do that. Next year, we’re probably going to have somebody else play guitar with us. We decided to come one more time in Australia and show SOULFLY with Dino, which is a very epic thing, a very unique thing. We’ve done an American tour with him and people loved it. I loved it as a fan – I’m a FEAR FACTORY fan, and I’m a Dino fan. Stuff sounds great with him. He just has that crunchy guitar sound, and he’s just a great guy to be around. He’s got all these cool metal stories, and he’s always positive. He’s a positive guy, and he’s a legend, so it’s great to have a legend onstage with us. It’s going to be a blast, I think.
Random question – what do you think happens when we die?
I like to believe in reincarnation. I like the idea that we’ve been here before, and we’re going to come back, although we don’t exactly truly remember. It’s kind of comforting knowing that it’s not totally over, and in a way, you’re going to kind of come back, but you don’t really remember. I don’t remember my old life, but I kind of feel that, if that’s true, if I was here before, that’s kind of cool, and I guess, when I die, I get to come back again as something else. In the meantime, you get to try to enjoy this life as much as you can, because we really don’t know. It’s a wish, and I hope that this is what happens – reincarnation – but nobody really knows, right? I just don’t think it’s just blackness and it’s over.
You’d like to think there’s more to it, hey?
There’s too much mystery and weird stuff that happens, especially in the spiritual world, that I believe that there is more to it. I think death is kind of just the beginning, actually. There’s a lot more to come after that. We leave the physical world, but we enter the spiritual world, which is probably a whole another dimension. We just have to wait … hopefully wait a long time! [Laughs]
You guys have spent your whole lives on the stage. What are some of the most vivid memories that you have from over the years?
I have great memories of just some incredible shows where, a lot of times, it was kind of hard to even concentrate on what I was playing, because the crowd was so amazing. Like, we had a circle pit with a thousand people doing a circle pit, it’s a force to be reckoned with. You don’t see that shit every day. I think, it’s a metal thing. You don’t see that in pop shows. It’s our own thing. We have that. It’s ours … I think the tours that I’ve done, sharing the stage with people like OZZY and PANTERA and MINISTRY has taught me a lot. One of my favourite memories is actually my kids, very young, I think they were two or three years old, and they were sleeping in guitar cases with OZZY singing in the background. I’m just sitting there, drinking a glass of wine, watching OZZY with my kids sleeping in guitar cases. That’s a true rock ‘n’ roll family dream come true. It was amazing. Sharing the stage with so many great names like that is great, and it makes me want to keep doing more, because I know there’s more of that in the future.
Looking back over SOULFLY’s discography, what albums stand out as the highlights for you, and why?
The first one, for sure. It was the most difficult one to make. That one cannot be beat. I don’t think I’m ever going to be in the same frame of mind again. It was a crazy place to be. Just getting out of SEPULTURA and starting something new … it was a mindfuck. It was crazy. I kind of threw caution to the wind and made the record that I wanted to make, and if people liked it, good, if they didn’t, whatever, I don’t care. It was like I lost hope. I had no hope, and I had no fear at that time [laughs] … I wrote No Hope No Fear because of that. That’s probably one of them. I think Prophecy is another one … I think I have to put Primitive there, because the good thing about it was the amount of guests. It was like a hip-hop idea on a metal album. Almost every song has a guest.
I was sixteen when that came out. It was crazy awesome.
Yeah, it was like, “I don’t care if there are too many guests.” Like, “Listen, I got into metal because there’s no rules, so don’t tell me there’s rules in metal. Fuck you!” I love metal because we make our own rules, and I don’t pay attention to what some people say about that. We create our own rules. So Primitive was totally off the wall, it had all these guests, but it was amazing working with all these different people. I thought it was great. The album was actually gold here in America, and it makes me very proud. I think Prophecy was another difficult record to make. It had a whole other band. Everybody left after 3 and I had to start over. And I think Totem is definitely one of them. It was difficult to make too. It was created during the pandemic … It was not the right time to make a record. It was very chaotic. We were very unsure of what was going to come out. But I think, because of that … when you make art under pressure, good shit comes out of it. I don’t know why. [Laughs]
SOULFLY play the GOOD THINGS Festival in December, and several headlining shows still to be announced. Stay tuned!
Totem is out now.
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