CAVALERA CONSPIRACY
MAX AGGRESSION
by Mark Hebblewhite
It finally happened. After 12 years of bitter estrangement Max and Igor Cavalera are reunited and making music. Rip It Up cornered Max and found out that age has not wearied him. He’s still as pissed off as ever.
“This album is a statement it says Fuck Art: Kill Everything,” spits Max, when asked about the lyrical inspirations that drive Inflikted, the rampaging return album from the Cavalera brothers.
“I can’t stand it when good bands get all arty and pretentious: and I admit that I’ve been guilty of that at times too. So with this album it’s like ‘whatever you are for: we are against’. This is an album with real punk and metal attitude but it also gave me a chance to do some really cool things with my vocals – like on The Doom Of All Fires where I use my voice as a percussion instrument.”
The metal world was absolutely shocked when news of the Cavalera brothers rapprochement was announced. The bitter feud, which began when Igor sided with his Sepultura bandmates and fired their then manager - and Max’s wife - Gloria, had reached Jacob and Esau proportions. So how the hell did Max and Igor manage to bury the hatchet after a running war that lasted over a decade?
“It starts with our brotherhood, and whatever happened in the past you can’t change that,” Max says. “Back in 2007 Igor contacted me and we were able to re-establish our relationship. Then it happened that Igor had left Sepultura and wasn’t even really playing the drums. I realised I wasn’t 100 percent happy because I really wanted to play with my brother again. So I said, ‘Let’s do a record together’ and he was all for it.”
“I had already written much of the material and knowing that I was going to play with Igor again kept my creative fire burning.”
And was there, or is there, any talk of reforming Sepultura?
“Look, never say never, but now is definitely not the right time. I’m just happy to be playing with Igor again in the Cavalera Conspiracy project.”
 While Cavalera Conspiracy may seem an obvious title for the brother’s efforts, the moniker is actually a quickly devised Plan B. Max had originally wanted to call the group Inflikted but when he found out it was already in use, he fell back on the ‘conspiracy’ option.
“The whole Inflikted concept actually dates way back to our Arise tour when we were down in your part of the world,” he reveals. “It comes from a voodoo ritual we saw when we were in Indonesia. I’d seen similar things back in Brazil but this was far more evil – people would inflict pain on themselves, it was like a real devil ritual. Anyway, I loved the concept and Inflikted stayed with me all these years.”
Having finally unleashed the Inflikted concept the Cavalera brothers have melded different styles from their past. Over 11 tracks we hear Soulfly’s groove, Sepultura’s fury and an industrial edge that wouldn’t have been out of place on the now infamous Nailbomb project. According to Max it’s all about staying fresh.
“Coming into this project there were obviously expectations about how it would sound. That’s why we were determined not to make a ‘Sepultura copy’ album. We wanted something that was really aggressive and brutal. This record is our metal conspiracy against all the ‘Fall Out Boy emo shit’ out there and all the people out there who didn’t believe in us.”
Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted is out now through Roadrunner.

It’s been an eternity since a Sepultura album featured both Cavalera brothers. If you’ve never bothered to delve back that far, here are the holy trinity of ‘Cavalerised’ classics to grab.

Beneath The Remains (1989)
This is the LP that rocketed Sepultura to international prominence. Produced by death metal maestro Scott Burns, Beneath the Remains was a breath of fresh air in a thrash scene that was quickly becoming dull. Sepultura were mean, hungry and brimming with punk rock attitude and tracks like Mass Hypnosis caved in skulls the world over.

Arise (1991)
More polished than Beneath the Remains, Arise was the mark of a band maturing in confidence. Blowing away anything that the big four of thrash were doing, Sepultura mixed death and thrash metal in an increasingly complex framework to create an absolute masterpiece. From its bleak - and peculiarly Brazilian - socio-political outlook through to Max’s distinctive style, this album remains a high point in the annals of metal.

Chaos AD (1993)
Metal purists were left shaking their heads in bewilderment when Sepultura returned with Chaos AD. The band had been wearing hardcore and punk rock T-shirts for years, but no-one expected them to actually follow through musically. No, it wasn’t Arise Part II, but it was something just as powerful. With a guest spot from Jello Biafra and a trip into their collective Brazilian heritage on Kaiowas, Chaos AD was a left field surprise that just got better with age.