As I write this, Max Cavalera's new band Soulfly are playing as part of the resurrected Big Day Out festival, and they'll be coming to sunny Australia as well. To celebrate this fact, Roadrunner Records have released a mini-album of live tracks and remixes called Tribe, the credits of which list Jackson Bandeira as guest guitarist on the studio tracks. This seems a bit cheeky to me, given that Bandeira was actually the band's full-time guitarist when the Soulfly album was recorded. Still, that was until Logan Mader quit Machine Head and was installed in Bandeira's place when the latter quit Soulfly. The irony being that Mader's checked out of the band now as well, just when he was getting his first full-time credit, so now the band's up to their third guitarist… and he might only be with the band until the tour's over, in which case they'll soon be up to number four. Poor Max. Soulfly's not exactly off to the steadiest of starts.
But then again, his old outfit Sepultura had a bit of a rocky beginning as well, and in interestingly similar circumstances—they did their first EP and album, then ditched first guitarist Jairo T. in favour of Andreas Kisser. The main difference, of course, is that Kisser's still playing with Sepultura, which is more than can be said for Max. Being a recent convert to Sepultura, I've only caught up on the details of the split in similarly recent fashion. As so often seems to be the case, money appears to have been behind the problem… in that Max had married the band's manager early in the 1990s and the other three band members felt that Mrs Cavalera was cutting a better deal for hubby than she was for the rest of them. The fact that Mamma Cavalera's 21 year old son Dana Wells got murdered in mysterious circumstances in late '96 obviously didn’t help either.
At the end of that year, Max and Gloria were either pushed or they jumped (which of the two will probably remain obscure). Therefore, Sepultura found a new vocalist while Max found a new band, and both Soulfly and the Derrick Green-enhanced Sepultura put out albums in 1998. I'm not going to draw any comparisons between the two here—as great as the temptation is (and how bad must it have been for music critics faced with the two, never mind fans of the band[s]), I don't particularly want to do that. But I will consider the Soulfly record in a more general light.
Now, when you're packing the musical background and baggage that Max Cavalera took with him after the Sepultura split, there must be a certain pressure. If nothing else, people are going to want to know how much the new project sounds like the old one. Please bear in mind that I haven't yet heard a great deal of Sepultura's work. I've got the Roots album (the last with Max) and the Against album (the first with Derrick Green), as well as the B-side/live compilations Blood-Rooted and The Roots of Sepultura. What I know of the band's pre-Roots work comes from the live and alternate versions on these last two records. Still, there's enough there to get a feel for what they were doing back then.
The Roots of Sepultura is particularly interesting, since it included the Roots album alongside the compilation disc. The latter featured the band's very first demo from 1985, a tune called "Necromancer", one of the most truly shithouse recordings I’ve ever heard. Inaudible bass, barely-there drums, and ill-defined guitars, all reduced to a monolithic gritty grey mess. It almost makes the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat sound hi-fi. The primitive studio conditions hampered the first few albums, but soon they found themselves with an overseas following and so we finally come to Roots in 1996—bright, shiny and clean, the sound of mid-90s America rather than mid-80s Brazil.
And though they were only teenagers when they started—baby brother Igor behind the drumkit was only fifteen on that "Necromancer" demo—they were still pioneers of a sort in the death/thrash metal realm. When Sepultura put out their first EP in 1985, that whole area was just starting to open up, so they were there early. And being kids and not yet geniuses, they tended to imitate more than innovate at first. But it seems that by the time of Roots, they were trying to lose the more obvious metal clichés and move into more interesting areas of heaviness by incorporating traditional Brazilian elements. So their following was well-earned. Hell of a time to lose your founding member, therefore.
So obviously people must've been wondering how Soulfly, once Max convened that band, would sound in comparison to Sepultura. And having heard the Soulfly album, and going on what I know of Sepultura, I'd have to say the answer is—a lot. Possibly it even sounds a bit more like Sepultura than they do on their own new album.
Max's note on the back cover of the CD booklet calls the album a "work of passion". And whether or not you necessarily like his music, you could rarely if ever accuse it of being half-arsed. Lyrically and sonically, Max always sounds like he's throwing himself into his work completely. It rarely lets up much. But it's not exactly an attractive passion. Soulfly is pretty vengeful stuff, a punishing bit of work. Two tracks, "Bleed" and "First Commandment", are specifically directed at whoever was responsible for the death of Dana Wells. What interests me about Sepultura is how a band can go from all the usual Satanic clichés to dedicating albums to God without any apparent irony. Soulfly carries its dedication to God right on the back cover below the track listing where you can’t miss it. Cf. "Prejudice": "To kill Satan and give God the glory". But the lyrics of "Bleed" should convince anyone who may doubt that Max loves his enemies, good Christian though he may otherwise be. Cf. "Bumbklaatt": "I got time for revenge/And you aint got tomorrow". Not exactly the prescribed turning of the other cheek. (Still, Christianity in theory and practice never have been exactly identical.)
Elsewhere, the exploration of Brazilian tradition continues. Max plays his berimbau on a couple of tunes, while a number of other tracks feature tambores and other native percussion. "Tribe" is prefaced by a field recording of a Brazilian folk song, while a similar thing happens at the very end of the disc. "The Song Remains Insane" ends with Chico Science recounting an old Brazilian folk tale. And lyrically you have tunes like "Quilombo" or "Bumba" on Brazilian themes. Not unlike Roots. In fact, quite a lot like it. (Except that Soulfly didn't borrow a whole tribe to provide massed percussion as Sepultura did. And continued to do on Against with that troupe of Japanese players.)
Let's name names. The uncharitable might write off "Tribe" as a rewrite of "Roots Bloody Roots". The title of "Umbabarauma" might recall "Ratamahatta" (though since the words were written by one Jorge Ben and not the band, we should perhaps excuse that), and there’s a moment in "Bleed" which strongly recalls Carlinhos Brown’s ingenious vocal performance in that song. The line "Our root you can never erase" recalls a similar sentiment in "Born Stubborn". DJ Lethal, who guested on "Lookaway", returns here on a couple of tunes. And frankly, "The Song Remains Insane" utilises the very same lyrics as "Attitude", just set to different music. "Arise again/I believe is the only way" are the last words to the first song on Soulfly. If you'll excuse a bad pun, Soulfly is perhaps less "Arise again" that "Roots again".
So Soulfly is a record with a number of inescapable similarities to Roots-period Sepultura. But Max Cavalera himself must have known he'd find it hard to shake the ghost of Sepultura past. Indeed, he wrote it himself in "Born Stubborn" on Roots: "These roots will always remain". Perhaps by virtue of having Max as vocalist, Soulfly were doomed to wind up sounding like Max's former band. When you get a distinctive voice like that Cavalera growl fronting a band for more than a decade, the association must be inevitable when the voice moves elsewhere. And when you've spent the last decade or more making that type of music, it must be a battle to escape from something you’re so immersed in. Possibly if he weren't in the band, it would probably sound a lot less like Sepultura—who, I'm led to believe, they do live covers of. And why not, since Max wrote most of the songs.
If you take on its own terms, as everything should ideally be approached, Soulfly is a pretty good record. There's a bit more to it than merely an extension of Roots. The tunes are worthwhile, the potential for headbanging is high, "Umbabarauma" could make them a fortune if they'd sell it to a TV sports show for a theme, and I like the swipe at Hootie and the Blowfish in "No". Perhaps the remixes on the Tribe disc point a potential way forward from there. All told, it's a good starting point. And ultimately, could Max have done much else than what he did do? After all, I suppose it would've been asking a bit much for him to do an album of experimental drum 'n' bass. Or a selection of easy-listening classics or sweeping Celine Dion-style ballads. Can you imagine Max Cavalera singing "My Heart Will Go On"? Me neither. Though it'd be something to behold, that's for sure.
Anyway, be all of that as it may. Sepultura still seems to have life in it yet. After all, they still have age on their side (Andreas Kisser, the oldest member, turned 30 in 1998) which fellow thrash pioneers Metallica and Slayer don't, however hard they try. They got time on their side and if Derrick Green settles in nicely, then I suppose we'll be able to expect a good few years more from them before they degenerate into helpless self-parody. Best of luck to them in the meantime. And best of luck too to Max Cavalera's Soulfly; he's got time to develop a bit yet, so let us not be unduly hasty in writing him off. (Which is another thing I don't want to do. Whatever reservations I may have about Soulfly, I still like it.). If he can just get a guitarist to stick it out for more than a few months, he should be OK…
I found this article here and i take no credit for it.