FEATURED INTERVIEWS                          

Cavalera Conspiracy

The conspiracy is real. It has been years in the making and now the truth is out.
By: Gian Erguiza - - May 29th, 2008 - 4:41 pm PST



The Cavalera brothers were apart for some years after going their seperate ways in Sepultura. They have now found each other to make music once again and boy is the metal world in for a treat. Backed by Joe Duplantier of Gojira and Marc Rizzo of Soulfy, Cavalera Conspiracy is what you'd expect from the foursome: Mayhem, Metal and more Metal. Fuck Art Lets Kill.

Hey Max, how are you doing?!

Hey how are you doing, where you calling from?

I’m calling from Burbank.

Right on.

So how are you bro? What’s going on and how’s everything on your end?

I’m doing alright man, getting ready to tour. I’ve been writing some stuff man, pretty busy, finishing up the Soulfly, getting ready to do this tour with Igor with Conspiracy, so I’m keeping busy on this side of the world.

You are one busy man alright!

Yeah, it’s good though. It’s all music stuff man so its good. Big news man, me playing with Igor is a huge thing and being on tour for the first time in more than ten years, I’m really really excited and I’m really looking forward man.

Well thank you for answering my first question! I was about to ask you about that. So, how does it feel to be back, making music again with your brother and what was the hardest thing about being apart from your brother and not making music?

Well, it’s really great to be back, making music again, mentally, brotherly and the other part of it was actually like we’ve always been together. I missed him as my brother but I also missed him being a partner in the band. I mean we grew up together, made Sepultura together, I missed all my years with him, the real important 15 years with Igor. You know we’re something like the Van Halen brothers you know? Something really strong. Those ten years apart were really hard and of course, I made Soulfly and I’m glad that Soulfly made it through but, there was always something inside of me that wanted to get back to making music again with Igor…..We’ve got this special magic you know? There’s a metal bond that I have with Igor. Conspiracy is full of that! It’s like one of my favorite records, its full of thrash, full of heavy stuff, heavy thrash and heavy grooves and I’m so glad to be playing that again.

Yeah I know. Inflikted man, when I heard the album, it made me want to shit my pants! I’ve been waiting for you guys to get back together and to hear you guys together again is fucking great! Hey was that you guys jamming out right now?

Right now? Right now I’m just by myself. I was actually writing music right now, I write music all the time. Anytime I have some ideas, I like to get my guitar and record it. We’re getting ready for the tour, actually, next week I’m going to Spain to do one Soulfly show with two new Soulfly songs which someone is probably going to film and put it up on Youtube and people can see it! After that man, it’s with Igor. We’ve got two Cavalera Conspiracy tours coming up that kicks off in Europe and goes everywhere. We’re going to do all the big festivals down there and come back to the states and do a headlining tour which I am very excited to do with a lot of cool places. House of Blues in L.A., Anaheim and other cool places. We’re also going to go crazy on the set list with so many good shit to play with some people wanting old Sepultura, Nailbomb, and we’re going to play the entire Conspiracy record, all 11 songs plus the other stuff.

Man, you are real busy! When I heard that there was a new Soulfly album coming out while you guys were doing the Cavalera Conspiracy stuff, I mean, you blew my mind! How do you balance your time?

I do it all the time. It’s one of a kind. It’s not something people want to take up but it’s not like I do it every year or I’ll go crazy. Don’t want to over do it but every ten years, I’m allowed to that I guess so, love the challenge! I’m telling you man, it’s been great! I don’t know, you know it felt like the right time to do something with Igor and right after the Conspiracy record I jumped right back into the studio with the Soulfly guys and almost without any intermission. It gave a boost of energy to Soulfly and Joel’s playing better, Mark’s playing better almost like the heard the Conspiracy CD and thought to step it up. The new Soulfly CD we stepped it up and I’m really really happy with it and the people that have heard it are happy with it as well. It’s heaviest one, the craziest one, and it’s coming along great! We’re coming out with a ton of music this year, I can’t wait!

Speaking of the timing, where do you guys stand in the musically landscape? You know you’ve got thrash, death metal and all sorts of different metal, even, Christian metal. Where do you guys fit into the musical landscape and what are your thoughts on the current metal scene?

You know, I don’t really care for the names and visions. I listen to a lot of different stuff you know like I like a lot of old thrash, death metal…..Morbid Angel is one of my favorite bands, Napalm Death who was just here last week. I’m also into newer stuff like Gojira, Dillinger Escape Plan, Throwdown, a lot of good bands out there man. Of course some old shit man, Celtic Frost, Kreator, and Destruction. I also hear the influence of Sepultura with some newer bands and Soulfly and it makes me very happy that something good came out of it and influenced the people. Man, I’m just blesses and happy to be alive, I’m not supposed to be dead by now but shit I’m still playing you know?

Well, I tell you my man, we’re glad you’re still alive and making music, we fucking love hearing it! Now let’s go back to Inflikted. You know hearing the album and listening to it, it’s very brutal. Where did you guys draw inspiration from while writing this album? Well, I kind of had a concept for the record. Not like a Rush concept but a little bit like a rule that we can do anything to this record just as long as it stays true to the roots of Max and Igor metal and that includes, thrash, death metal, punk, and as long as it stays true to that. I told Igor, “No Hip-Hop, No DJ’s.” I even told myself, “No Reggae,” although I love Reggae, I’m not allowed to bring it into this shit. You know I was kind of a dictator and prejudiced about some of the things because I really wanted to make a Metal record. We wanted to give the fans and the people the Max and Igor that they’ve been waiting to hear for so long. So that was my main focus and that’s why it turned out to be so brutal, so straightforward. So people have even criticized it for being too Metal. We’ve read a few reviews and we we’re just like “Fuck You.” There’s no such thing as being too Metal.

I agree and fuck them as well! Well let me ask you this, has the album exceeded your expectations or have you guys accomplished what you guys have set out to do so far?

We’re not going to really know until we tour. Sometimes you don’t really know until later, that’s the funny thing about music and how the music thing works. There’s been songs and albums that I did that took years for people to realize and actually appreciate more than when it first came out. You’ve got songs like ‘Territory,’ ‘Slave New World’ or ‘Refuse Resist’ that didn’t take off in the beginning. I feel, having only played one show so far, we played four of the craziest tracks like ‘Bloodbrawl’ and I could kind of see what this was going to evolve but when we played the crazier ones, we would get three mosh pits going on at the same time and I don’t know where that stands in the mosh pit charts but that’s good enough for me!

You don’t get that much mosh pits going on these days except for big shows and to me, if you are spurting three mosh pits at the same time, you are absolutely killing it.

Yeah I love it man, it’s great! Sometimes though it’s a torture, I had to wait for a whole year to tour and now we’re finally going to tour. I guess it’s worst for the fans to wait a long time to see Me and Igor together but now is the right time to see it live. I’m really really ready for this tour.

Speaking of your fans, how do you guys interact with your fans and how do you keep up with them, basically how much do you owe to your fans in this point in time?

Man, I like to meet my fans live, I don’t do too much internet. I know we’ve got some great guys out there doing a great job on the web site but I’m not a web site person. I like to meet them in person, shake their hands and talk to them, put the mic in their face and have them sing that shit with me live. When I’m on tour, I do get to meet them and I really like to hear them and know what they’re thinking, ask them what they want to hear, and even criticize, talk some shit like “What we should or shouldn’t do you or they’ll say things like play this shit tomorrow.” I love that.

"Those ten years apart were really hard and of course, I made Soulfly and I’m glad that Soulfly made it through but, there was always something inside of me that wanted to get back to making music again with Igor…..We’ve got this special magic you know?"

That’s cool, that’s the kind of interaction you want from your fans or else it just becomes business. Like places making burgers man. It shouldn’t be like that man, it should be like, it should be real, it should be like your together on this. I cannot do this on my own without my fans, there wouldn’t be any reason to play.

Hey Max, do you ever pay attention to the music charts or what’s going on the radio?

Well, not really but unfortunately there’s a lot of college radios playing Metal and then you’ve got XM, Sirius, Hard Attack, Liquid Metal….I do know those and love to listen in because I get to hear a lot of new bands that I’ve never heard before. If I think something’s good, I’ll go out and buy their record, find out who they are and that was the case with Warbringer. I guess they’re from Southern California I believe and I really like their CD and I went out to buy their record after I heard it on the radio on Xm, Liquid Metal. I don’t really know what’s on the charts and these kind of stuff. Most of the time it’s this Mariah Carey type of shit and I can’t do it. At least Hootie and the Blowfish inspired me to write a song to talk shit about them.

That’s good to know! I never really knew you wrote a song about them and I hate them so that’s fucking awesome!

Yeah it was on the first Soulfly. But the Conspiracy record actually has a line in it about Fall Out Boy, which is another band I fucking hate so we’re talking a little shit about them too. Nobody can escape our anti-emo, poser radar.

Well I’d hate to say it but there is actually no room for crap.

People always ask me why I don’t like this or that band and you know what man? I’ve been playing for about 30 years and when I started, I was born into thrash Metal. Like the first band that Igor and me grew up with, when you start a band, it was Slayer, Metallica, Kill em all’ and so I guess that’s why we don’t have much tolerance for bands like Fall Out Boy. It’s like get that shit out of my face. So you know, we’re a little bit radical and I’ve never changed from that. I listen to different music of course you know like I try ot put different instruments into Metal but yeah, when I listen to Pop shit, yeah, I don’t want anything to do with that shit.

I agree, I can’t stand that shit myself. So from the Inflikted album, which one do you think is the dark horse of the album or which song speaks to you the most?

As far as the crowd is concerned, I think the faster ones they like more like ‘Hex’ or ‘Nevertrust’ would be the ones that people would go crazy for. As for me, I really enjoy playing the song ‘Inflikted,’ the first song off the album. I think it’s a classic Max song with all of the elements and ingredients. On that song we used old classic Sepultura song, classic Soulfly song so it’s really characteristic of me, it’s really mine. The chorus, the arrangement, that’s definitely a Max song all the way through. It’s really fun to play that one live.

I agree on that one, that’s actually the the ass kicker of the album. Let me ask you this man, with all of the shit talkers online and I know you said that you don’t really go online that much but when you go online and read around, you’ll see people talking shit about different bands or so and so is not heavy enough, blah, blah, blah. Have you ever come across someone talking shit about Cavalera Conspiracy and what can you say bout that?

Well, unfortunately, it’s inevitable. I remember when we did ‘Morbid Visions’ which was the second Sepultura record, which also was a full on death metal record all the way through, we got into some fights in Brazil saying that the record was lame and shit and that they only liked our EP before that. Well, anyway, at that time, we beat the fuck out of those guys and we’d brawl outside of venues. So I don’t know man. I think some people just need to talk shit out for whatever reason and it’s almost like that they need to that.

It’s almost like tough guy syndrome.

It’s a weakness actually and they don’t know how to deal with that so they attack you and try to put your shit down. I don’t care man, I’m my worst critic. When I’m being lame, I know I’m being lame and I’m my worst enemy. Most people do have to talk shit and I’m pretty open. You know sometimes I say ‘That’s fucked up or that’s fucking lame,’ but sometimes I do admit that I fucked up by taking it there and I’m not like some guys who never admit that they fucked up. When somebody talks shit for no reason, fuck that man. If you say it to my face, I’ll probably put up an argument you know what I’m saying? You better have a real good reason why you don’t like something. Don’t be ignorant.

I agree man and thank you for being real. Anyways, I know you said you’re not big on the internet but the internet is taking over the music industry and album sales are down. Do you think that the internet is helping music or killing music? Metal music in particular.

I’ll tell you the truth. Somebody said something about the whole bootlegging and getting free songs and well, to be honest with you, 90% of the music is so shitty especially in pop music with all the pop bands so yeah it should be free. When you get a copy of some shit like that, it should be free!I don’t know, I like to support the music I listen to. Like if Napalm Death came out with a new album, I would go out and buy it since I know that my $15 dollars will get up to the bands hands and will help them continue and I’d like to see them continue since I’m a fan. I don’t want to see my favorite bands break up cause that just sucks, especially if they broke up cause they didn’t make any money. I’m really the wrong guy to ask about this. I don’t really know how the internet really works so I still buy CD’s. I still travel with CD’s believe it or not you know, I go to the airport and the fucking security guys always tell me ‘You need a fucking Ipod so you don’t have to carry all of this fucking shit with you.’ Man, I carry like 300 CD’s when I go on tour! I’m like a dying breed! I find it difficult to update myself but little by little…..my son just got me and Ipod so I’m trying to put some Metal shit into it right now.

Perfect. Thanks for being honest about the crap music man, a lot of people shine it off and dodge the question.

We shouldn’t fucking pay for that right?

Right. I agree! Anyhow Max, I’m going to let you off the hook. I know you’re busy with everything but before I let you go, do you have any additional comments or shout-outs?

Well, thank you for the interview and I’m not sure that I have the dates for you but to anyone that comes up and wants to request anything, just come up to me and ask me for it. Throw it at me, I’m up to play anything! I just want to go out on tour with Igor and have some fun and play this music that I love you know? I want to thank everyone for the support, especially the fans, I really really appreciate it.

Very well. And we thank you for always putting out quality music and not crap.

Alright man, thank you.

Alright Max, we’ll see you on tour!

See you on tour!



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