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There’s a bit of a return to the old Soulfly sound of the earlier albums, with a lot of the ‘groove’ creeping back in to the sound. Was that a deliberate approach this time around?

“Yeah, I think there is a little bit of a return to that, but not dramatic. The record to me is just really exciting, you know, it’s like a really cool record. It does celebrate 20 years of Soulfly. So, we did try to get some of that spirit back from the beginning in tracks like ‘Ritual’ and a little bit on ‘Bite The Bullet’. But I think overall the record just has a lot of older stuff, like ‘Dead Behind The Eyes’, ‘Under Rapture’, and ‘Feedback!’. It’s a really exciting record and I think it might take more than one listen to absorb everything, there’s a lot of stuff going on. But, I’m very pleased with the result. It’s a solid Soulfly record. I mean, all the real true Soulfly fans are gonna love this one.”

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The album opens with Navajo chanting before letting rip into the blistering title track ‘Ritual’, which really sets the tone for the rest of the album.

 ‘Feedback!’ is a fast and heavy rock track that is very reminiscent of Motorhead.

“Yeah, feedback has a Motorhead vibe. We hope we can do a little fun video for it. I think it would be really to have us dressed up as Motorhead and playing the song like a tribute to Motorhead.

But yeah, the record just kinda goes in all different directions. You know, we have tribal grooves, death metal, thrash metal, even a little bit of black metal. It’s cool; it’s the stuff I listen to and all my influences. I wear my influences on my sleeve. I’m not afraid to show them in the songs and everybody that knows me all throughout my career; all the influences have been pretty much shown on all the records. So, I don’t shy away from the influences.”

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Soulfly albums have always included incredible collaborations with the “who’s who” of the heavy music community; and ‘Ritual’ is no different.

“Yeah, on this record we have the great Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God), who doesn’t need any introduction. He’s a great guy from a great band. I like Randy very much. I like his style. I like his vibe. I read his book; it was a really interesting book. It’s really cool that he lent his vocals for ‘Dead Behind The Eyes’. It made the song even more interesting, more exciting.

And then Ross (Dolan) from Immolation, that’s my own personal love of death metal that I have from the beginning, when I used to tape trade with Chuck (Schuldiner) from Death. It never went away. I’ve loved death metal my whole life; and having Ross on the album means so much to me because I’m a big Immolation fan and I wrote that song especially for him to sing and he killed it, man! He’s vocals are just brutal, amazing, especially when he’s saying ‘rapture’, like it’s earth shattering. I fucking love it man, I love the collaboration. I love the fact that it’s like two guys from two different bands. I just wanna grow the friendship between all the metal bands.

I still love the things that we’ve done with Sean Lennon, Larry McDonald who played with Bob Marley. I still wanna do stuff with different people. Henry Rollins would be cool, or Danzig…. Or even Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) to me would be a classic! Or even Brian Johnson, I’m a big AC/DC fan as well. I would love to have Angus Young on a track that would be the fucking ultimate for me. That would be really cool!”

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‘Dead Behind The Eyes’ is a stand out track from the album and is inspired lyrically by Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser”.

“I get influenced by a lot of different things and I was watching ‘Hellraiser’ one day and I was like, whoah! Not many people have made a song about this movie, this is cool. And I was watching the Cenobites and the Hell Priests and this whole crazy environment. So I did a little research. I went and started reading about it and I found out that Cenobites are an old sect from the Church that goes back to Greek times and they used to self immolate and cause pain to their body and enjoy the whole pain and pleasure kind of thing. So that’s where Clive Barker got the whole idea.

But yeah, it’s just a really cool song and it’s really drenched into the whole ‘Hellraiser’ concept. The chorus is like – ‘No pain, walk on fire, Cenobites I know your kind, you’re dead behind the eyes’. You know, that’s how I see them. They don’t have life, they’re dead creatures coming to terrorize us, you know! I like all of them. Those guys are terrifying man! The shit’s fucking scary!

But it’s a record that has everything. It’s has songs about Navajo murders, like ‘Blood On The Street’. It’s got songs like ‘Demonized’, influenced a little bit by the bible and ‘seven thunders’. It’s a wild record, shooting in all directions.”

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The band has enlisted the services of Josh Wilbur to helm the mixing desk for ‘Ritual’. Josh is a long time Soulfly/Sepultura fan and wanted to make this album from that perspective.

 “Yeah, that was kind of a hard job. I have to congratulate Josh on that, because recording Soulfly is not an easy task. We’ve got so much going on. We have percussion and a bunch of stuff on top of it, which makes it a real hard job especially for mixing. It’s kind of a mixing nightmare. But he did a really great job, man. I mean I love the sound of the record.

I love the fact that he was pushing for the groove songs and I was pushing for the fast songs. Somewhere in between we got a compromise and I think that’s why the record has both elements, which I love. If it were just an extreme album or if it were just a groove album it wouldn’t be as special. But because it has the two elements together makes ‘Ritual’ special. I owe Josh a lot for making this record with me. I think the best choice we had was to work with him.”

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Since there was a compromise between groove and thrash I wondered if there might have been some songs that didn’t make the album that might pop up elsewhere in the future.

“We threw one away. I don’t even know what happened to it. I actually should ask Josh to send it to me so I can catalog it and keep it as a souvenir, and even maybe use it. It was actually a good song. It was like a tribal kind of song. But we didn’t feel like it needed to be on the album. Sometimes you’ve gotta keep those records listenable, you know this day and age. I think personally I would even cut one more song off, if it was up to me. I don’t know which one, that’s a hard one you know. Maybe ‘Bite The Bullet’, maybe I would cut that one off”.

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Oh no! I love ‘Bite The Bullet’! That’s a great track!

“See that’s the thing, you say and then people go ‘no, no that’s a great song, don’t do that’, you know. But just as a fan of music. I mean I listen to music all the time. I like a little bit shorter records, something that’s about 40, 45 minutes, that’s about right, you know.”

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Each studio album from Soulfly features an instrumental track, which is usually comprised of acoustic, tribal, and world music influences. The latest offering features saxophone as a highlight.

“I enjoy making them very much. You know it’s kinda like a challenge to keep making a different one all the time and I’ve been getting pretty good at it. We had one with a violin, one with a duduk on ‘Archangel’. And this one we have a saxophone, you know really kind of jazzy, really cool. I really enjoy those songs. I really have a lot of melody that comes out with those songs that don’t come out anywhere else. So it’s a way of really getting those feelings out. It started out really cool as an accident on the first record and we just kept doing it. I think we’re even trying to do a live version.

When we play live on the next tour we’re gonna break down and do an acoustic rendition of an instrumental. I don’t know which one, or maybe we’re gonna combine a couple. But we’re gonna try to do that in the middle of the set of the next tour. And I think the crowd will really like that because apart from the fact that you get a break from all of the heaviness and aggression it’s cool, it’s kinda fun, it’s kinda relaxing and I think we can do it. I love doing the instrumentals and I really think I’m gonna have to stretch out my mind for the next one, come up with something different. But I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

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Speaking of touring… Max is confident that Australia will be on the list of destinations for the coming Soulfly tour that will span 2019.

“Next year we start this ‘Ritual World Tour’ in North America, but we hope that we expand that to all the world and Australia’s definitely on our books, definitely on our agenda. And we’re gonna try to get this really cool stage with like a bunch of animal bones and some African statues, some crazy ritualistic looking things”.

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AMNPLIFY – DB