Dead Rhetoric: Yeah, it does seem like everything that you had said then, is even more true now. Which is kind of sad in some ways.
Cavalera: It is, but that’s reality. Like the song says…”Hate is reality. Don’t you know God hates?” That sample was taken from a Jerry Springer like show. Alex was recording – I was like, “What the fuck are you doing? This is live TV.” He said, “I know, but they are having this big, racist argument; something good is going to come out of it.” So I was like, “Ok” and we kept watching it. Then bam! The guy says that line and Alex recorded it right there from live TV. It was so amazing. He got it perfectly – you can’t get it any better than that. That instinct to get something out of TV like that – it was so cool. And it was so powerful for “World of Shit.” It was perfect.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve done a lot of album-centric tours lately – does it help to keep things feeling fresh? For example, you aren’t doing just a ‘greatest hits’ setlist, you are doing something more specific.
Cavalera: I look at it as being a good way to go into the future. We have to keep one foot in the past. Revisiting the albums like Roots and Point Blank is having that foot in the past, and being proud of what we did. There’s a nostalgic feeling that comes with it that’s really good. It’s cool for a lot of fans that weren’t around when these albums came out. A lot of fans weren’t even born when Roots came out. They went to the shows and loved it. A lot of people weren’t around when Nailbomb came out, and they are going to come to the shows and check it out. I think it’s cool to remember. At the same time, I have one foot in front of me. There’s a new Cavalera Conspiracy album coming out in November, which is called Psychosis. It’ a beast of an album. It’s my favorite Cavalera album that I’ve ever done. We have a new Soulfly album coming out next year. We have a Soulfly/Nile tour around April.
So we go both ways – for an artist, I think it’s cool to be able to do that. At my state, I’ve done so many records. It’s really cool to go back and revisit them. It’s a real cool thing to have, that other artists maybe can’t do. I have the chance to do this, because I have so much stuff out there. It’s a lot of fun to go back to those old records and playing them again. I think Roots was a lot of fun, and the Nailbomb album is going to be even more fun. It’s even more suited for live performance and powerful, even more than Roots. It’s in your face, heavy electric music. You look at your past but move towards your future. It’s a cool combination.
Dead Rhetoric: Does it help to circle things around and help provide some sort of drive and spark to move ahead with your current writing?
Cavalera: For sure. Psychosis was recorded right after getting off the road from doing Roots. So we were still high on the energy of the tour. Like, “Even though that tour was amazing, let’s go into the studio and kick some ass.” Even though sonically, it has nothing to do with Roots. It’s a completely different idea – Psychosis is more about my love for the mixes of death metal and thrash metal, which was done in Beneath the Remains and Arise. I love this mix – I think it’s an incredible and powerful mix when you put death metal and thrash metal together. This record is really about that. Plus, the noisy stuff right now, like Nails, Full of Hell, and Gatecreeper…whatever we are listening to right now.
So yeah, coming out of the Nailbomb tour, I’ll go right into writing the Soulfly album, so it’ll help the new Soulfly somehow. It gets filtered into it – the energy, the adrenaline of it. We bring that into the studio and want to create more stuff that will make more people react like that when they hear those songs. I think that’s kind of what’s cool about it. You hear the reactions to the Roots and Nailbomb tour, and you want more of it – you want that energy from the crowd, so I figure I better more shit with that same kind of power. It’s a big thing to come out of those tours and go right into the writing mode.
Dead Rhetoric: These albums have a good 20 years on them – do you find that you are seeing several generations of fans when you do special shows like these?
Cavalera: Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people at my shows whose age difference is wild. You have the old farts – the guys that were around then and are near their fifties and survived the ‘80s and ‘90s and remember all of it. Then there’s all the young kids, even as young as 7-8 years old sometimes. It’s amazing. And they love this stuff – even though they weren’t there when it happened, they totally understand what it was and embrace it. Sometimes even more than the people that were there. They’ve only seen it on YouTube and that’s it, or read and saw pictures of it. So they get to go to the show and be connected to that. It’s funny sometimes there’s a father and a son. Sometimes the father is Sepultura fan and the son is a Soulfly fan, and I’ll fuck around and ask, “Has your dad shown you some of my old shit?” [Laughs} And the kid will say, “Oh yeah, I know all about Arise and Beneath the Remains. It’s really cool, I love it.” So then I go the other way around and ask, “Have you shown him some of the Soulfly shit I’ve been doing?” So that’s cool when different generations come to the show.
Dead Rhetoric: So to wrap up, you’ve got two new albums coming out in the future – Cavalera Conspiracy obviously much sooner than Soulfly. Is there anything else going on, in your rather busy schedule?
Cavalera: I hope I have time to make a new Killer Be Killed. I really love the first album. I thought it was a great album. I think it’s a project that can expand and have a really cool future. We can make some really interesting music. I love the mix of my, Troy [Sanders], and Greg’s [Puciato] voice together. It’s a unique thing. Apart from that, I’m not looking for anything else. Maybe I’ll get something else going later on. But now I’m busy with the Nailbomb tour and then writing the new Soulfly for next year, and waiting for the Cavalera Conspiracy to come out. Hopefully we’ll get to tour a little bit for that. I’m in no hurry. I take the time to get it right. Even the Soulfly record. I don’t know when it’s going to come out. It might be towards the end of next year. That’s still okay. I’ll take the time to make sure it sounds the way it should – get the parts right, get the guests right, get everything around the table.
At the same time, we’ll keep growing and keep touring, which is great. I love getting out there. I’m a tour dog, and I love the tour life. I don’t like staying home too much, I get bored quickly. After two weeks at home, I’m dying to get out. It’s been a week since I got back from Australia, and I’m itching to get out. It’s going to be fun going back on the road.