Soulfly (1998)
Produced by Ross Robinson and Richard Kaplan at Indigo Ranch, Malibu
Engineered by Richard Kaplan, Chuck Johnson, and Rob Agnello
Mixed by Andy Wallace, Steve Sisco, and Ross Robinson
Mastered by George Marino
Max Cavalera left Sepultura after making Roots and started a new band, Soulfly. He told Ultimate Guitar in 2019 about the origins of the name: ‘Many tribes — I did this research — in South America and Africa and even North America, believe when they make music, they are evoking the spirits of their ancestors through the music and their souls are flying around them when they are playing their instruments. A lot of them even believe — this is where it gets really crazy — the animal sacrificed to make skins for the drums, even the spirits of the animals get out through the drumming. It’s really deep. It’s a cool name; it’s a positive name. I wanted to do something different. Like I said, I tried for a year to find a name and I had all these names that sounded like SEPULTURA, but it would just be a copy. I just went the other way. SOULFLY is as different of a name as it can get from SEPULTURA. I’ve tried to do things in a little bit of a different way and that’s how it turned out.’
As he told Louder Sound in 2019, it all began with Deftones: ‘It was a really weird time for me. It was my first album since leaving Sepultura and the first album after the death of my stepson, Dana. The first thing I did after that was work with Deftones, who were friends of Dana. They were there at his funeral — Chino was actually one of the pallbearers. They invited me to sing the song Headup on Around The Fur, and that is when I came up with the word ‘Soulfly’ [‘Soulfly / Fly high / Soulfly / Fly free’]. It all just started from there.’
And thus he found the name for his next project, which was released in loving memory of his stepson. ‘Six months before, I was angry about Dana, angry about Sepultura. I’d been living in a dark room, drinking and taking drugs and I was done with music. My heart was too broken to think about it — I just told everyone to fuck off, and that I just wanted to get drunk. If it wasn’t for Deftones, I don’t know what I would have done. It was tough and hard to make, but it was great catharsis and a great therapy for me.’
His experience recording with Deftones didn’t end his struggles, as he told Kerrang in 2008: ‘It was so hard to start over, having been in Sepultura for so long. In fact, it was harder getting Soulfly going than it was getting Sepultura started. Coming into a whole new situation underneath the shadow of Roots was a huge challenge for me, and most people thought I was nuts. Plus, we made a conscious effort not to sound like Sepultura. My choice of musicians took me away from straight metal and into a vibe that embraced a lot more, while still being heavy. Part of the magic was working with some of my all-time favourite Brazilian musicians and that really pushed me to write some great and some very different sounding music.’
Cavalera returned to Indigo Ranch with Robinson, Johnson, and Kaplan. He assembled a new band — Roy Mayorga of Nausea (and later Stone Sour and Ministry) on drums, Marcello Dias of The Mist on bass, and Lúcio Maia of Nação Zumbi on lead guitar. All of them also contributed backing vocals. This lineup didn’t last long — Maia and Mayorga were gone by their next record, while Dias left after their third. I’m guessing Max isn’t the easiest guy to work with, as the band’s lineup is constantly shifting to this day. The lineup on this album is rounded out by a huge array of guests — ¾ of Fear Factory, Fred Durst and DJ Lethal, Chino Moreno from Deftones, Benji Webbe of Dub War/Skindred, percussionist/vocalists Jorge Du Peixe and Gilmar Bolla Oito of Nação Zumbi, and Los Hooligans.
The forces get especially especially large on the two tracks with Los Hooligans, ‘Bumba’ and the cover of Jorge Ben Jor’s 1976 track ‘Umbabarauma’, where they put together an entire choir featuring percussionist Eric Bobo (of Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill fame), producer Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys/Seu Jorge), Robinson, Johnson, and more. In short, there are a lot of musicians on this album. Roughly every other song sports a listed guest feature — musical community is a big part of what this record is about. As with Max’s previous 3 records, this one was mixed by Andy Wallace (though Robinson contributed to the mixing of 5 of the tracks this time around). The album sounds great — the drum and bass especially. It’s got a similar sonic character to Roots, with a fat low end, but the high end is a little more aggressive this time.
Cavalera’s quote above stating that he was trying not to sound like Sepultura is puzzling, as this largely sounds like a whole album of the fast songs on Roots. Yes, it’s faster, more aggressive, angrier, and less diverse, maybe with a little more electronic music influence in some of the grooves… but it’s still got the same basic extreme nu metal sound with strong Brazilian music influence, percussion breaks, and the occasional blast of hardcore. There’s a berimbau intro on ‘Tribe’ (as on ‘Attitude’ from Roots) and a group of people singing on the hidden track ‘Sutao Das Matas’ (similar to the field recordings on Roots). There are a lot of riffs based around two notes a tritone apart, or power chords on the first 3 notes of a phrygian scale or chromatic scale — the usual stuff. The grooves aren’t as compelling as they were on the previous record, partially due to the faster tempos, and so they mostly can’t redeem the tired riffing this time around.
Remember how I said that Roots was carefully sequenced to avoid monotony? This is not — and it’s a whopping 67min long. That’s not to say there’s no diversity. The mellow instrumental title song breaks things up in the middle of the record, while the speedy hardcore song ‘The Song Remains Insane’ is on the other end of the spectrum. The textures change up for ‘Umbabarauma’, which sports a distinctively 90s slightly swung drum loop and fuzzed-out guitar tones. The verses of ‘Quilombo’ dial back the heavy guitars and highlight the percussion — though Cavalera still yells over it. Several of the songs have quiet intros, outros, or breaks, which are the main source of variety here, but the core songs quickly start to feel repetitive.
Get Frog’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Some of the jam sessions here are quite cool, even getting a bit psychedelic at times — I wish the album focused more on that side of the sound. It feels like a bait and switch at times — ‘Bumba’ opens with a brief spot of jazzy guitar, only for it to be cut off by distorted guitar chugging on a single note. It cuts to just percussion on the chorus, but then returns to another 3-note phrygian riff. The riffs are by far the least interesting part of this record — it makes me wonder what it would’ve sounded like if the metal had been ditched entirely. However, closing instrumental jam ‘Karmageddon’ isn’t all that interesting, either, so maybe that answers that question — some of the quieter bits may just seem interesting due to contrast. Nonetheless, I get a feeling of missed potential here. There are hints of cool ideas scattered throughout the album, but they all get sidelined.
The lyrics overall cover the sort of ground you expect from Cavalera— prejudice is bad, find who you are, learn to be yourself, and own your power, etc. As with Roots, not all of the lyrics on this record are in English, but the English lyrics tend to be pretty simple and on the nose. The opening song ‘Eye for an Eye’ was originally meant as retaliation against Cavalera’s old bandmates in Sepultura, but Robinson convinced him to rewrite it as a more positive song. Robinson, encouraging positivity? He must’ve really not wanted to burn the bridge with potential clients… In any case, it opens the album with a statement of intent: ‘I am what I create / Believing in my fate / Integrity is my name / All that I am doing can never be ruined / My song remains insane.’
‘Fire’ is a tribute to Chico Science, opening with a news clip about how Max was arrested for violating Brazil’s flag laws by tripping on and thus accidentally stepping on the Brazilian flag onstage. ‘Quilombo’ is a tribute to the 1600s Brazilian anti-slavery resistance leader Zumbi. The verses have a heavy reggae vocal delivery, and the chorus is my favorite heavy moment on the album, with Benji Webbe scatting over a bouncy riff. Webbe also spices up ‘Prejudice’, another groovy standout song.
‘Bleed’ is a tribute to Max’s stepson: ‘We were all still suffering, still bleeding, from his death. It was built on this really cool groove, but it was the lyrics that made it really heavy. Lyrics like ‘See a mother cry, see a brother cry’… that’s the shit that went on in my house. I would walk around and see Gloria crying and I would see the kids crying. It was fucking a rough time, man. I had to put it into the song. And then I started thinking about the way that he died. I wrote ‘What goes around comes around, you better realise, you kill life, you kill life, why, why’ — it was a really pissed-off and angry song, man.’
And what better way to grieve than with a guest rap verse from Fred Durst? ‘Ross had just worked with Limp Bizkit and he said that he thought they would be perfect to add something to the breakdown bit at the end. DJ Lethal added all these really cool scratch sounds on top, but Fred just wrote the lyrics right there on the spot. It was electric. I think it’s one of the best things he’s ever done. We were all super-excited, especially as the stuff he was saying was so pissed off. He didn’t know Dana, but he really tapped into the message of the song. It was a sad song to do, but it was really angry, too, so that was exciting. I think that’s why it succeeded so much; that honest anger really spoke to people.’
The song opens with a quiet spacey intro where Cavalera whispers ‘What goes around comes around’ before exploding into a bouncy riff at a faster tempo. The tempo change is a cool trick, making the riff feel momentarily quite exciting — but this fades quickly, and monotony sets in. Cavalera and Durst quickly trade off screaming ‘BLEED’ in the chorus. The second half of the song is mostly a slow breakdown where the Bizkit guys take over, and some fun drum processing gives it more hip-hop flavor. A fast outro with berimbau and scatting finishes things off. It’s not exactly my idea of a heartfelt tribute — the fact that this is a straight up angry song shows the emotional limitations of this style — but at least it seems like Cavalera got what he needed out of it. For me, though, it doesn’t effectively communicate his grief.
Max’s lyrics weren’t exactly amazing before, but they’re deteriorating here. For example, here is an excerpt of the lyrical masterpiece ‘No’: ‘No motherfucking Hootie & The Blowfish / No radio songs / No bow to none / No follow none / No poli-tricks / No judge me / No fuck around / No trust no one / No criticize / No fake smiles’. Or how he addresses a hater on ‘Bumbklaatt’: ‘Talking shit all your life / No integrity or pride / Fucking mind full of lies / You fake / You waste / You fuckin’ piece of shit Bumbklaatt’. His constipated delivery rarely helps lines like these.
This was the last time Cavalera worked with Robinson. I’m not sure what caused the split, but he did say this to MetalSucks in 2013: ‘Ross hasn’t done anything good in a long time. He had spent the last ten years without anything except Vanilla Ice or some shit like that, which I was like totally disappointed, you know? It’s like, ‘What is he doing? What the hell is he doing recording with Vanilla Ice, man?’ You know, … that’s not cool.’ An odd thing to say, given that said Vanilla Ice record came out the same year as this one, well before the window of time Cavalera is referring to. Granted, Robinson’s work did become far less influential starting around 2004, so he’s not entirely wrong. Stay tuned for more on that front…
Robinson evidently felt the same towards Cavalera, as he told Metal-is.com in 1999 when asked if they’d ever work together again: ‘No, I don’t think so. Max and I have a great connection, but again, the Adidas rock thing… Me, as a fan, I want them to be hardcore and full metal, no funky stuff. As long as he would do a funky thing, which is bizarre, I can’t do it. There are parts of the last Soulfly album that I feel kind of embarrassed by. When I hear it, it just doesn’t feel right to me. That record was kind of thrown together and the band members weren’t in the band. Max had a couple of riffs and stuff, and we built the record around it. The new album that I heard is very Adidas rock. I can’t even listen to it, it cringes me up, and to me, it’s so dead and so uncool. It’s cool that he does it, and there are a lot of people that are gonna jump around to his music, that’s cool. But me, personally, I’m just so not down with that genre.’
In short, if you want to hear a worse copy of Roots with less variety, you should check out this album. The music feels a hair stripped down from Roots — there are less interesting guitar noises, less dynamics and tempo variation… it feels a little smaller in scope, less ambitious. If you adored Roots, you’ll probably get something out of this album — but if you just liked it well enough, like me, or disliked it altogether, you probably won’t find much for you here. For whatever it’s worth, this isn’t considered one of Soulfly’s better records — Cavalera only stuck with this nu-metal sound for their first three albums, then returned to more of a thrash/groove based sound. They have yet to hit their stride here.
