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WXAV, bringing the best podcasts to you. All right, I love Chicago. Oh, yeah, what's your favorite place to go when you're in Chicago? I really, I'm a big football fan, so I always wanted to go to Soldier Field.
One of the days, I'm going to go. You know, we always drive by and it just looks awesome. It's just so old school looking. Yeah, one of the days, I'm going to go see a Lions-Bears game.
That would be a dream come true. That would be a pretty cool game to see. Yeah, I'm a Lions fan, so you guys are my rivals, but it's okay. Oh, you're a Lions fan, really?
Yeah. That's pretty cool. So, the word on the street is there's a new tour coming up with Soulfly. Is this true?
Yeah, we're leaving next week. That's so awesome. And I also heard that Dino from Fear Factory is going to be joining in. Yep, that's also true.
We're very excited. Dino's our old friend. He's an incredible wrist master. His personality is a great friend.
He's been knowing him for 25 years. And it's really made Soulfly sound like we never sounded before. We have an extra level of sounds are sharper, harder, stronger. So, it's going to be cool.
I think it's a special thing we're doing for the fans. It's like, you know, because I'm also a big fan of Fear Factory. And I think it's going to be great. So, it's a really, really cool special bond that we have.
And we get to show that on the tour, playing all the songs for the fans. That's awesome. That's really cool. How did you guys meet, if you don't mind me asking?
A long time ago, I think I was on my Sepertura Arise tour. And we play the Country Club, which is in L.A. And he was at the show. And we ended up meeting again a little bit later on when he started Fear Factory.
I really liked Fear Factory a lot. In a bunch of interviews, I said they were the future of metal. And I really think that the early stuff is incredible. The last record is incredible, so they're still going strong.
And Dino's been involved with me in many projects. Nail Bomb in 95. He plays on the first Soulfly record. A song called Hyper and I.
We jammed together many times on the stage. We toured together. Yeah, and he's like a lifer, like me. We do this for life.
It's like mafia. Once you get in, you can get out. Yeah, so for being in the music industry for as long as you have been, would you say that it has changed super drastically? Or would you say that it's stayed the same, but just certain things have changed?
No, it's definitely changed with the internet, social media. It has made a big change. People even listen to music differently. Obviously, old school, I do buy the vinyl of a band I really like.
I go ahead and buy the vinyl, and I have a big vinyl collection. Oh, nice. It's a hard copy, you know. But I do check out bands on my iPad, you know, Spotify and Bandcamp and things like that.
And I think the main difference is all the outlets that band members have now. You have Twitch. You have Facebook. You know, I myself do a Facebook Live thing called Max Tracks.
There's much more interaction with the fans through social media, so I think that's a huge difference from when I started playing music. Yeah, I feel like that has to be kind of a benefit in ways, because you can kind of communicate with your audience in ways that maybe you weren't able to before and stuff. Yeah, you know, you get to reach a lot more people quicker, faster, easier. The negative side is, I was like, there's too much stuff, like too many bands and too much music.
It's kind of hard to make a choice. It's kind of like, it becomes a little bit too much to choose. Yeah. But that's not really a bad problem, right?
Yeah, there's too much music. There's just too much shit. But I think overall, it's a good thing. You know, I use it on Max Tracks, and I love the comments that they made after the session is over.
I read the comments, and I give bands shout-outs. I tell people about what they should listen to, try to support them out, support the underground, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. That's really cool to do that.
Another question I have is, do you think that labeling music is constricting? So when people are like, this is this kind of metal band, or this is a death metal band, or this is a... Do you think that labels can be considered constricting sometimes? Yeah, I mean, I think people can help it.
They want to put labels on things. They just have to. And sometimes they put bands in corners, where sometimes they get trapped in those corners. That's why I think I'm so proud of my career, because I've touched many, many different areas of metal.
Black metal, thrash, death, industrial metal, melodic metal. I mean, but, you know, yeah, people will definitely like to put names, put labels. But in the end of the day, there's good in there shit. And I think the good stuff stays.
It's good. It's from the heart. It's done the right way. You can see it's pure.
You can see it's meaningful. Yeah, it doesn't matter what label is under. When it's done from the heart, people can tell. You can see through it.
Yeah, you can tell what music was made with passion and what was just kind of thrown together. Exactly, yeah. And I think that will always survive, that kind of metal that's done with that kind of purity, which is not really associated with hype or trend. Because metal, it was never really about being trend or being in a hype.
It's really kind of like more underground kind of music. Right. We operate outside society, and I like that. I like that kind of alpha-alphing that the metal have.
I don't think we should lose that. No, I agree with that. You also mentioned earlier that you're a big fan of physical copies of music. What was the first vinyl that you ever got?
My first record was Queen Life Killers. Really? Yeah, and I saw Queen in 81. Still a favorite?
And it was amazing. So the next day I bought the Queen vinyl, and my brother bought Kiss, I live too, and we became instant rock and rollers. That's really cool. But I have a lot of cool records in my collection, like First Printing of Black Sabbath.
Oh, wow. I have a First Printing of Sex Pistols, Chromex. There's a lot of... There's some records that are really valuable, and I cherish them.
It's cool. So I like the whole vinyl thing, the whole ritual that goes into the vinyl, of grabbing the needle and putting it on the vinyl, and looking at the album cover, and looking at the lyrics. There's a whole ritual involved with that. It's kind of like a lost art form, you know, with technology that kind of got lost.
But I'm glad that vinyl is definitely coming back, man. A lot more people are buying vinyl, and that's cool. I like to see that. You know, I think physical music is really important, because it also gives you a chance to look at the artwork on the whole cover, and everything like that as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely part of the metal experience. Maybe more than pop music, or even hip-hop. I think in the metal world, album covers with the vinyl cover, and the lyrics, sometimes the special edition gatefold, with rare songs, and obscure recordings. Those are things that people really cherish.
They really treasure that. So I think that in metal music, I think people like to have physical copy of things. I've been signing physical copies my fucking whole life. Like, we go on tour, sometimes people come on the bus, they've got like 300 things to sign.
Which is cool. I get to see a lot of cool stuff that I've never seen before. You know, bootlegs from Japan, and Indonesia, and special edition albums from Europe that I've never seen before. So that's pretty cool.
That does have to be pretty cool. So you have been in a lot of different projects, I noticed as well. How do you separate like, okay, I'm going to dedicate this time to this project and this time to that? Or does it just kind of flow, and sometimes you write stuff for one?
Yeah, I just kind of go from one to the other. Just really feel it, what I'm in the mood to do at a certain time. Like right now, getting ready to tour, so I'm really focused on the Soulfly tour. I finished a record not too long ago, Go Ahead and I, and it was cool working on the videos and all that.
But we probably went on tour for that until next year. Killer BQ also released a record not too long ago. I'm also a big fan of that project. So it just kind of goes from one to the other.
The writing itself is a little bit different. I approach it, when I'm writing for Killer BQ, it's much more melodic. I write more melodic riffs. When I'm writing for Go Ahead and I, it's all brutal, old school, extreme, 1980s metal that I grew up listening to.
And Soulfly is a mix. It's got a lot of tribal influences, but it also got a lot of groove and a lot of fast stuff too. So it's like a combination of all different things. But every project has its own different elements that I'm attracted to it.
And I think it's fun to jump from one project to the other. I think it's really, really cool. Would you say it's cool to do crossover stuff to kind of combine sounds and maybe have something to have a little bit more of a death metal sound but then also combine a different kind of subgenre, if you will, into that? Yeah, I think that'd be fun.
Especially if you're doing a record like Go Ahead and I, to me, it was really interesting because I was blending old school death metal with thrash and hardcore in a really unique way, really focused on the 80s era metal influenced by all the 80s bands, Celtic Frost, Discharge, Napalm Dev, Carcass. And yeah, it's fun to mix them up. I think to me, some of the records I made in the 80s, like Beneath the Remains, in 89 and Arise in 91, were really showcased this blend of thrash and death metal. When a lot of the bands were divided at that time, you were only a death metal band and you were only a thrash band and we kind of put both of them in a blender and we like both styles so we're just going to play both.
We don't care. We don't care what people think. We like it so we're just going to do it. And that's always been my attitude.
It's like, if it feels right, if it's from the heart and you're doing it right, do it. Don't listen to what people say. Otherwise, if you try to please everybody, you're just going to end up losing because you can't please everybody. It's impossible.
So you just have to follow your heart and see where that leads, you know? You know, that's really sound advice. Another thing I also noticed is you tend to collab with a lot of different artists which I thought was really cool. A lot of other bands and artists that I also like as well.
So do you think that collaborating also kind of helps you explore like collaborating with a different band or artists gets you to see their style a little bit and it's like... Oh yeah, for sure. You learn so much from it. It's amazing.
A lot of the soulful guests that appear on my records all the way from the early stuff like Ori, Slipknot, Chino from Death Tones, we had Tomaria from Slayer. Through everything, like Killer BQ that has guys from Mastodon, the Linger Skate Plan, Converge. You're always learning. There's always something new to learn.
That's what's cool. You never know everything. There's always something new that you can learn and apply to your music and that's to me, I call myself a student of metal because I'm always learning and I want to learn more about metal and, you know, it's a little nerdy but it's alright. We're allowed to be nerds.
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's good to have an open perspective and kind of look at everything as a new experience whether it turns out the way you want to do or maybe not so much. Yeah, but I just love the collaborations. They're amazing.
You know, I get to hear a lot of my heroes in a totally different setting, you know, like you hear Tom Araya on a Soulfly song. You never heard him like that because he doesn't sound like Slayer. He sounds like Soulfly. And it's cool.
To me, we're breaking barriers. You know, we're challenging the norm to bring something different to the table. And the same thing as far as sonic ideas, I think records like the Roots record which was heavily influenced on tribal music, the mix of tribal music and metal was a brand new thing and we kind of went into a complete unknown territory when we did that and the results were amazing and you end up getting praises by people like Dave Groh and Lenny from Waterhead, you know, which was unreal to me to hear my idols praising some of my stuff. It's pretty cool, you know?
So it's always, everything is, yeah, if you do it with passion, you just have to have a passion on what you're doing and sometimes you've got to go into these unknown territories and just see what happens and don't be scared of it. Don't be afraid. Just go for it. And sometimes you will fail and sometimes you will not.
Sometimes you'll be great. Sometimes it is controversy and it's okay, you know, it's not for everybody. Some people love Roots. Some people hate Roots.
Some people only like the old stuff. Some people, some stuff that I do, but I can't just be that only. So there's much more to life than that, you know? So that's what I think we're, like people don't understand.
Music is such a big landscape, you know? There's so much we can do with it. It's, you know, it's endless and that's what the cool thing about it. There's so, so much more you can explore and do different things with it.
Why do the same thing over and over? No, that would have to be boring. Exactly, yep. One last question I had was, of all the musical projects that you've worked on as of more recently, which would you have to say that has been your favorite?
I really like Go Ahead and Die because I did it with my son and it was kind of like the evil bad cabin. We just went out there and riffed all day long and wrote stuff and it was a dream of mine to record a record with my son and he got really involved with it and it's an extreme record that goes back to my teenage years. That was probably my favorite thing I've done in a long, long time and it was during the pandemic. That's another thing.
It was so cool to be able to do something cool during a bad time in your life. so we turn into something bad into something good well that is really cool thank you so much for talking with me today and everything it's been awesome I can say I've definitely been a big fan of a lot of your projects over the years so it was really cool getting to talk to you thank you thanks for being here of course thank you very much for listening to this WXAV 88.3 FM podcast be sure to visit our website WXAV.com for more information on your escape from Ordinary Radio