Max Cavalera lives for riffs. He goes to sleep every night thinking about them, wakes up in the morning to pick up where he left off and most likely dreams about them in between.
Just listen to any of his creative exploits – from six game-changing studio albums with Sepultura, 12 efforts with Soulfly, four with Cavalera Conspiracy, two with Killer Be Killed, another two with Go Ahead And Die, plus one with Nailbomb – and you’ll hear how far that obsession has taken him.
Since moving from Belo Horizonte in his native Brazil to Arizona in 1992, he’s been finding riffs in the desert that surrounds him with – many would agree – resounding success. As it turns out, the Salt River Valley (often referred to as the Valley of the Sun) is a prime hunting ground for the neck-thickening metallic structures he’s built a fruitful career out of.
“Sometimes I walk around in the desert in search of them,” he tells Guitar World from his home. “I will leave the house to clear my head, come back and sit down with my guitar, and the riffs will just pour out of me. I find my best ideas in the desert. They are all there waiting for me… and there’s a lot of them!”
He’s so excitable about the idea of stalking these recurring musical ideas, it’s almost impossible for him to construct a sentence without the word ‘riff’ in it. “Everything I think about is in terms of riff,” he continues. “I’m completely in awe of riffs and I don’t think they get the credit they deserve! A lot of players talk about the solos, but the riff is the seed; it’s the foundation.
“It’s the first thing that goes in, like the first brick in a house. The riff masters are always my favorite players. So I’m obsessed with the idea of being a riff person, a riff man, a riff vortex. Yeah, man… it’s all about the riff.”
Easily one of the most prolific metal riff-writers of all-time, it will surprise very few that Cavalera has music to promote. On this occasion, it’s the second full-length from Go Ahead and Die, titled Unhealthy Mechanisms.
The band is completed by his son Igor Amadeus – who shares guitar, bass and vocal duties – as well as drummer Johnny Valles. Together the power trio blur the lines between death metal, hardcore and crust punk.
It’s a sound Cavalera half-jokingly refers to as “full of piss and vinegar” and one that allows him to retrace the excitement he had for underground music as a teenager. “We started this project for fun,” notes the metal legend.
“No expectations. I just wanted to jam with my son and make music that would almost turn me back into a teenager, tapping into all those raw feelings I had as a kid. We made something cool, coming from the more extreme side of metal.”
As he goes on to explain, every project he’s in will have a different “musical intention.” For example, Killer Be Killed – the supergroup he formed with Mastodon’s Troy Sanders and The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato in 2011 – is the perfect vehicle for his more melodic ideas to manifest.
Soulfly, much like Sepultura, is dependably groove and thrash-oriented. And then there’s Go Ahead and Die, which he loves using as an outlet for “caveman riffs” that pay homage to early black legends like Celtic Frost and Venom, as well as punk influences Discharge, GBH and Extreme Noise Terror.
And, as Cavalera himself points out, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. “I can hear a punk influence when I listen to those early Celtic Frost albums,” he grins. “Especially on Morbid Tales, where the D-beats were straight out of a Discharge record.
“That’s what we were trying to do on our first record. On the new one we’ve expanded our minds a little more. The influences are broader – it’s more adventurous stylistically.”
This time round, Cavalera mainly stuck with an ESP James Hetfield Snakebyte signature, going into a mixture of Mesa/Boogie, Peavey and Marshall amplifiers. Despite owning an array of ESP guitars with his name on the headstock, there was something about the Metallica model that cut through with remarkable ferocity.
Interestingly, for the first time in decades, Cavalera chose to string his guitar fully, instead of abbreviating down to just four. “Believe it or not, I’m actually doing solos,” he chuckles. “I’ve never done that shit before!
“But it’s not like flashy solos; it’s more like noise, similar to Piggy [Denis D'Amour] from Voivod – lots of whammy bars and dive bombs. I call them ‘camouflage solos’ because I’m not a soloist. Usually I don’t even have enough strings!
“For so many years I’ve been using four, but this time I actually put the other two back on. It’s all about being creative with your instrument. Don’t dismiss anything! There are no rules and everything goes. I can record on the shittiest amplifier in the world or something that’s top of the line, whatever brings the right vibe.”
And while we’re on the subject of riffs and tone, the Brazilian metal legend talks us through the 10 guitarists who shaped his sound and approach to guitar.
1. Eddie Van Halen
“We’ve got to start with Eddie! I’m a huge Van Halen fan. They actually came to Brazil around the early to mid ‘80s. It would have been the very early days of Sepultura, or maybe just before that. I became obsessed with buying cassettes of live Van Halen bootlegs. I liked those even more than the records because they gave me a different experience.
“I loved the records, of course – but you could feel the band on these bootlegs even if they were really shitty recordings. Some were from the soundboard but a lot of them were people in the crowd holding a cassette player; there were no phones or internet back then.
“I had quite a big collection, maybe around 40 tapes, as well as a book full of band photos. You could say I was obsessed; they were my first band crush! Unfortunately I missed that show; I was too young and my mother wouldn’t let me go. I was really upset about that.
“But my obsession continues to this day. Eddie is one of the most mesmerizing creative forces of all time. I got to talk to his son Wolfgang not long ago when we did some shows together in Europe, and tell him how much his dad meant to me. He had no idea! He never put me and my music anywhere near what his dad was doing. He was such a nice guy and watched the whole Soulfly show from the side of the stage.”
2. The Edge
“That guy is a scientist when it comes to playing guitar. I’ve been a huge fan for a long time. In fact, a lot of the lyrics on Sepultura’s Beneath The Remains album were influenced by U2’s War record. I remember reading all the translated lyrics and feeling so inspired – so the anti-war songs like Stronger Than Hate and the title track came from Bono’s lyrics.
“The Edge is a great example of a guitar player who isn’t afraid of using technology. I mean, he uses and abuses pedals. Sometimes there’s not even a real solo or melody there and sometimes there is an actual part.
“I think The Fly has one of his best solos. A lot of the delayed shit he does with a clean guitar, like the intro for Where The Streets Have No Name, that’s mind-blowing shit to me. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking, ‘Fuck, this is so cool!’ He’s definitely one of the most inventive guitar players ever.”
3. Link Wray
“This one isn’t from my younger days; it’s more of a recent discovery over the last 10 years. I fell in love with Link’s sound and ended up digging deep into his whole catalog, buying a bunch of those records on vinyl. Then I found out he was Native American, which made me love the guy even more.
“I wish I could have met him. I would have loved to collaborate with him, but unfortunately he passed away. When I found this out I freaked out – Rumble was the first instrumental song that was banned by the radio in America because it created riots. I was like ‘Fuck, that’s so amazing!’ How do you write an instrumental song that gets banned? I want to know! But those three notes just shake the room. It’s one hell of a riff.
“Quentin Tarantino ended up using his music on some of his soundtracks, but I still think Link Wray is very underrated. Not enough people talk about him. I Ioved the leather jackets, Native American necklaces and the whole rockabilly vibe. But getting banned for an instrumental song means he’ll be in my books forever!”
4. Fast Eddie Clarke
“Fast Eddie showed us you don’t need to be a virtuoso to have fun and sound good. A lot of those riffs were made up of simple chords, coming from the punk side of guitar. That’s why Motörhead were loved by metalheads and punks the same. A lot of punk rockers hated heavy metal but they still loved Motörhead, and vice-versa. Everyone worshipped that band and they became a very sacred thing.
“Whenever I picture Fast Eddie in my mind, he always has that long hair and the bullet belt. It was the beginning of thrash, when you think about it. That’s where Metallica got all their shit! It was all about bullet belts and musical speed.
“Ace of Spades is as iconic as a riff can get. One chord with those three descending notes, that’s all you need! He was such a perfect guitarist for that band because he looked cool, he was funny and he could rip through those riffs. My favorite Motörhead line-up, like most people’s, is Fast Eddie and Philthy Animal Taylor with Lemmy.”
5. Chuck Schuldiner
“He was arguably the creator of the death metal sound that is so popular these days. That scene has flourished into a huge movement. I was a tape trader with Chuck for many years. I was in Brazil so we’d send each other letters, shirts and everything. I’d hand-print Sepultura shirts for him and he’d wear them in photo shoots.
“We only met once or twice; the first time was in Florida. He came by while we were making the Arise album. He saw the cover and said, ‘That looks like a seafood nightmare!’ because of the crabs holding the brain. It made us all laugh. He said, ‘The first thing you thought of was seafood? You guys are crazy!’
“But what a development through his career, from where they started in the late ‘80s to the later stuff in the late ‘90s. If he was alive today, he’d be playing this killer progressive metal that would be blowing all our minds.”
6. Ritchie Blackmore
“It’s probably quite an obvious one, but I just love Deep Purple. They’re so underrated in metal. They should be up there with Sabbath and Zeppelin. Listen to early stuff like Hush and it sounds like a ‘60s song. Then you hear Smoke On The Water, which is probably the most famous riff of all time and the one we all learn first.
“Ritchie was special because he combined the classical symphony shit he picked up from Beethoven with heavy rock. There’s this really cool video called Deep Purple Doing Their Thing that you can watch on YouTube. It’s a live performance where Ritchie is just shredding!
“I actually met him during the Sepultura days. At first we were in a circle with a bunch of people and he wasn’t interested in talking to anybody. But the minute I asked, ‘Do you like football?’ he said, ‘Yes – come with me!’ and took me to the corner of the bar. We talked for two hours, and whenever people came over to bug him, he’d say, ‘Get out of here! I’m talking to Max about serious stuff. Leave us alone!’
“We chatted about Brazilian football and English football, things like David Beckham and Manchester United. That was a crazy experience I’ll never forget. My bandmates got jealous, asking how I did it. All you need to do if you meet that guy is talk football!”
7. Bob Marley
“This is something different from a whole other area of music: he was such a revolutionary with that guitar. He was a master of composition; a full artist in every way. He could write these amazing chords and memorable songs that will live forever.
“I had a huge Bob Marley phase that lasted many years. I collected all his stuff. I even went to Jamaica three times and visited his grave. I got to work with his graphic artist, Neville Garrick, on three of the Soulfly records. He would tell me all the stories over many hours of talking about him.
“I love how Bob Marley described his guitar as a machine gun. It’s like that famous Woody Guthrie quote, ‘This machine kills fascists!’ It’s cool how he looked at it like that, like a weapon. He was a great player – maybe not in terms of solos, but more in terms of songwriting and finding the right chords.”
8. David Gilmour
“This is another late discovery for me, but when I fell in love with Pink Floyd, it really taught me a lot. Those records are really amazing – especially the later stuff, after they split with Roger Waters.
“My favorite album is actually The Division Bell, which is hugely underrated. A lot of people don’t talk about it, but the solos on that album are amazing, just so melodic. [David Gilmour] always plays the right note with the right delay. It’s all about the ambience rather than the flashiness. He’d know when to play and when not to play.
“A Momentary Lapse Of Reason is another brilliant one, too. David Gilmour is an outstanding guitarist. There’s no need to be that flashy when you’re that tasteful.”
9. Johnny Ramone
“He’s another player who showed us simplicity can be great. Three chords can be all you need. I had a chance to meet him when we toured with The Ramones in Brazil. We hung out a little bit.
“One of my best memories is actually seeing all four of the guys with their leather jackets watching Sepultura from the side of the stage. I walked over to my brother and said, ‘Look at that – it’s like an album cover!’ because they were stood in a line with their jackets, arms crossed, nodding their heads while watching us play. You can’t make that shit up! It was so cool.
“They’re brilliant songwriters. Like Bob Marley, they showed us you don’t need to be Jimi Hendrix to be good. There’s a different way to play guitar that’s more about songs and groove than technique.”
10. Tony Iommi
“He wrote the Bible for metal and we’ve all read it a thousand times! Choosing a favorite Sabbath riff is so hard. It could be the opening of Cornucopia, but Symptom of the Universe probably wins. That first riff with the chugging always makes me think, ‘Game over!’
“We had a chance to cover it when Sepultura made Chaos A.D. and it was the hardest cover we ever did. I was so nervous because Sabbath is something sacred. You’re not supposed to touch it, like some kind of religious artifact.
“I met him when Sepultura opened for Sabbath in Europe and he was such a nice guy, taking pictures with all our kids. I read his book, Iron Man, and it was really powerful stuff. If you’re reading this and need some inspiration, go buy that book! He goes into the accident he had early on, almost giving up playing guitar and then decided not to, eventually becoming the architect of the heavy metal sound.
“I love Tony’s solos. They’re great. But at least for me, it’s all about the riffs. To have come up with that stuff before anyone else, he’s probably not even human. He probably comes from outer space, man!”
