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"Where you're from doesn't really matter |
A chat with International metal master, The Intersection, 5-6-06 Editor's Note: This interview was conducted live and has been edited for content and length. MWE: How has this tour with Gizmachi, Manntis, Thine Eyes Bleed and Incite been treating you so far? MC: Very good, man. It's been a very fun tour, everybody's getting along great and it we seem to have a very good show, and good vibe in the air, which is the best thing when you go on tour. There's nothing worse than a weirdness vibe w hen you go on tour. I hate that. It's like we're all working for the same reason, you know? MWE*: The first day will tell you right away, the very first time you guys all meet for a tour is probably the icebreaker. MC: Yah, the guys are really cool, man, they're big fans. Most of them are big fans of Sepultura, Soulfly; some of them I'd never met before, (like Johnny, brothers with Tom). I met Tom |
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| many times touring with Slayer, it's so cool to see his brother on the road with us, and Richie my son is on the road, so it's like a family, there's kind of family vibes going on outside our camp even. We have our dog with us, and the tour is great. People go nuts, they loved our cages, and we've been playing longer than before. I play now like an hour and a half. It's like 25-26 songs, so it's killer. MWE: That's a long set!
MWE: The tribal rhythms, they just hit you so hard, you can't not like it. MC: We have the grooves, but there's a lot of fast stuff, too. There's parts of the show that are total fast that we just go for five, six songs full speed metal. I love that and it's right in the middle of the set. So I think it's very fun, very good, that's where we wanna be. That's where I'm supposed to be. The fan base, you're going from like really young, new Soulfly fans that don't even know Sepultura, to older guys that had seen me with Sepultura, and they're back and they're diggin' it. Even in the bands, the Gizmachi singer, he's like, "Man, I never got to see Sepultura with you, I saw it without you, and it's not the same." So yeah, it's been a lot of fun; I'm really excited. MWE: Does the reception that you receive from U.S. audiences differ from the European and the South American fans? MC: Not a whole lot. Because this kind of music, it's what I love about it, it breaks language and tradition and even where you're from doesn't really matter when you're in a mosh pit. To me, I'm Brazilian, but over there, I'm playin' and we all speak in music language, vibe language. So not really, when you talk to them outside, you notice maybe they dress a little different, and some dudes have hard accents. I don't understand some people sometimes in New York, I have to ask them, "What was that?" or Texas, man, Texas is like, "What?" But overall, the feeling of our fans is the same, and that's why we get along so good. We come here for the same reason every night. In a way I'm still a fan. I play music, yah, it's my job, but it's also my release of everything. I need to have music. Without being on tour, I use music very much the same as they do, when they come to the gig. I'm on a stage singin', but what's coming out is the same. MWE: When you're selecting contributing artists for your albums, how do they catch your eye?
MWE: Paul Booth is one of my favorite tattoo artists, what was it like working with him musically? MC: Fun. He got involved because of the band, Sepultura, he's a huge fan. My brother got the first tattoo, and he told me about him. I went and met him, and me and Gloria, we get tattoos together all the time, so we went to his shop in New York, and we got the eyeballs and she got some demons and stuff, very cool looking. But, yeah, it was always kinda fun. One time I know Paul, he was tattooing in a hotel room on tour, and there was a cross on a church and he asked me if I could close the window. (Laughs) And I was like, "Yah, sure, man. It will help you tattoo better, right?" And we were playing some cool death metal shit, so I say, "Close the window man. You're doing the tattoo, I'm just getting it." But he's always fun, like he did the tribal stuff (on Max's neck). I really liked him to do that, because he's completely out of his element, he's so famous for evil. This is not evil at all. I was like, "Paul, this is like the least evil thing you're pry gonna do. This is full on Brazilian tribal, are you up to it?" He's like, "yah", so he did it, and then I asked him to sign the paper, for me to put away for my kids for a collection. And he wrote, "It didn't hurt me a bit" on the paper. I love Paul, he's a very, very cool guy. Great tattoo artist. I've slowed down with tattoos lately, me and Gloria. I just didn't want to do so many and be out of room. You become more selective with time, I think. There's a couple things I still want to get, but I'm waiting, there's no hurry. There's a very cool artist in France who does portrait, and I'd like to have him do a portrait of my dad some time, I've been waiting. (Leo) Zulueta, the guy that did the Soulfly symbol--he's in L.A., he's from the Philippines--I'm still waiting to get my Soulfly tattoo. Everybody has one. Everybody, she has one (motions in Gloria's direction), our crew, our fans--I don't have one yet. Mine's going right here (marks out a spot on his throat), right where I sing. I'm just waiting for it. Every time I play L.A. it's so chaotic, there's no time. I want to go there, without shows and just, "Hey man, let's chill out and do the tattoo." (Editor's note: I found out, however that Zulueta recently opened Spiral Tattoo in Ann Arbor, MI!) MWE: Do you feel that the European and South American music scenes are different than the scenes in the U.S.?
MWE*: We're gonna see that now in you, now that you say that, just 'cuz you guys do have a lot of that difference in your music for Soulfly. But there's a lot more incorporated in that, a lot more metal. MC: In fact
I don't even know like, you kind of lose track of what's really
metal. People argue Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin, I don't care
anymore where metal really comes from, it's just a mutation. It's
been mutated a million times. I think it's good, man, it's good
to mix, as long the way it mixes is natural and good. 'Cuz there
are people that try to mix stuff up, but it's forced and you can
feel it, like, "Oh man, that's just gimmick". That goes
for everything, not just metal. Milli Vanilli, you know? MC: I don't know. Pro'bly, you know? Because my music, it was aggressive in the beginning, yet but then again the begging had tragedy, too. So, it's stuff I don't think about. If I go really deep about it thinking, yah, my if my dad wouldn't 've died, I probably would not be a musician. That comes down to that being a very, yah, a very strong thing. The fact that he died, and that tragedy, led me to music. But again, I don't really question those things. You can go crazy over that. I heard the other day that Hitler's mom was supposed to have an abortion. She was going to the clinic to have an abortion and she changed her mind on the way, that really is mind-blowing right? 'Cuz she gave birth to the biggest monster of the century, and she was on her way to have an abortion and she changed her mind. So you just really can't think about that kind of shit. Just gotta let it roll, I guess. MWE: One question I do have is, how do you go about getting permission to record a song in the Hagga Sophia? MC: Aw, we didn't get permission to. MWE: You just went in and did it?
I was really bummed out with the whole sampler thing, because I really think samples are really cool. I love old Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, Front Line Assembly, that used to put all the samples from the movies like Apocalypse Now, that was great, and now you can't do it. To do a couple, it's so much money. All Soulfly albums, all of them had different versions that were censored, that didn't make it. I had Lawrence of Arabia, I had Mad Max. There's a guy at Roadrunner, he listened to it, and he's like "I know that, that's off". Some of my samples are very obvious, like Mad Max, there was a great one, something the guy said, like, "I'm a full-injected suicidal machine", or something like that. It's a great sample. It was like on Soulfly: 3, but it was very obvious, so I got a "(makes a schwwwweeet noise), You have to take it out." MWE: What is your favorite song, from Nailbomb to Sepultura to Soulfly? MC: "Eye for an Eye". That's my favorite of all time. That's like kind of a de-anthem. It closes every show every night, everybody sings, it's powerful, it's very simple. "Eye for an Eye" can be done with one string, it was written with one string, two strings-I only play four, but even that one, you could play "Eye for an Eye" with one string. I took the experiment of Roots deeper with "Eye for an Eye", just simplified even more. Roots was really primitive sounding, and when I entered the studio to do Soulfly I, it started with "Eye for an Eye", and then I just took it way more deep, and it's my favorite song. I close the show every night and it's been like that for all these years; 6, 7, 8 years now. It's very rare that you find a CD, a live one, that some other song finished the set. 90% will be "Eye for an Eye". So yes, it's my favorite song. I like it too, 'cuz it's the end of the show and I'm done. (Laughs) It's got double meanings, you know? MWE: What do you perceive to be your main driving force for sticking with music all these years? What keeps you doing it?
And then apart from that, music itself. Because music, to me music is like different from what a lot of people think. To me music is not here to teach, it is here to evoke. That's why I don't give a fuck much about technical music. It's nice if you learn music, nothing wrong, and I respect those people, but I think it's much more important that the music evokes something out of you, that you have no control. And all of a sudden, you got this, you know, this feeling hits, and you would do something that normally you wouldn't do. That is what is cool about music that's different from movies or books. And also writing music, everything is different. Ten people have ten different ideas, visions of a song, which is probably totally different than the guy that wrote the song. So the translation of it, it's really exciting, 'cuz it's not so obvious. I like that. MWE: I have to ask about your recent work with Apocalyptica. What's it like working with a metal cello band? MC: It's very exciting, you know? I didn't really see them recording the cello, which sucks, I wish I was there when they were doing it. But I did see them play live with us in the festivals. I've seen them doing that, and it's pretty amazing. The whole cello thing, it's cool. The songs are really cool, they're very cool guys, Finnish guys.
Gloria wants
to bring them to tour with us in the states, it was her idea,
and I think it would be great. I think the crowd, once the they
see it, they'll be like, "Whoah". So hopefully that
tour will come up sometime later this year, because we have to
go to Europe and do some shows in June and July, but then after
that, we'd like to tour a little more in the states.
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MC:
It's long, but it doesn't feel like that, 'cuz it's a lot of fun,
there's a lot of things going on. We got drums, Marc does the
flamenco, it's more of a show. It think Soulfly right now, it's
really a show you can actually go [to], and even if you don't
like all the crazy, fast shit that we do, you'll be entertained
by the vibes.
MC:
It's kind of a chaotic thing, it doesn't really have order. A
lot of it is meant to be, I believe that. I believe a lot of things
are like, unexplainable, and I don't wanna know why, why did I
go to Serbia? I really don't care to find out the real reason.
I really don't know how the light bulb works, and I don't care,
but it works. So I let it happen, you know? The most important
part is once you're with whoever, you're doing something really
cool and you feel it, it translates into the song. That's most
important. You can be with somebody real famous, as I've worked
before with Soulfly, or somebody completely not famous, it doesn't
really matter. Just that the feeling is there and you're doing
something cool. To me that counts more than anything else. 
MC:
Yah, you know, they bring different elements. I think the stuff
that I do, it wouldn't be the same if I was born in Europe, I
don't think. The fact that I am from Brazil brings out some shit
that is different I don't see anywhere else, which goes the other
way around, too. There's bands from here that sound like they
are like just from here. If they were from Brazil, they wouldn't
pry sound like this. So, I think it's cool to be like that, 'cuz
every country has a little bit of a style to their metal, or rock,
or whatever. Musically speaking in general, I'm a big Paul Simon
fan. And I think Paul Simon's stuff is definitely...I love it
'cuz he mixed American music with world music. Very cool. But
he's strictly, you know, listening to his records, he's coming
from American roots.
MC:
Yah, It's like one of those kind of places. Me and Gloria went
there, to just kinda check it out, you don't even know what to
expect. If they say no, it's no, and you're done. And if nobody
says nothin' and you get it... I tell you, it's much easier to
go there and record than it is to get a sample from a movie. It's
absurd. To get a sample from a movie, which you can do at home,
anywhere in the world, it's a big hassle. You gotta clear, and
a lot of times Paramount pictures or whatever will not give you
the license. Or, you have to pay so much money to do it, When
you can just walk into Hagga and record that and put it in the
record. Nobody can say nothin', you know? So that's kinda how
that shit works. 
MC:
Well...I have to be very thankful for people like Gloria to be
in my life, 'cuz I gave up many times, where I didn't want to
do anything. You reach a level, like too many disappointments.
When you work your whole life towards something and when it's
kinda like stripped away from you, like the Sepultura thing, it's
really to me kinda lost. "Yah, I've lost the whole thing,
bye, I don't want to do this anymore. This is not worth it."
But I was wrong, and she made me see I was wrong, and I went back
to the game, and stuck to it. 
Yah,
one afternoon in Munich, We had a show, and there was like, four
hours between the show and time to go in the studio and do some
screaming in there for them. I went in there and did that, you
know, so it's great. The way I like to do these kinds of things,
very...I didn't really hear the song much, before. He sent me
a copy, and I only heard it like once. I went into the studio,
"We'll figure something out. Like rotate, man." I just
started screamin', and it came out...it's a great song, though.
It's really a cool song. I can't wait to hear the rest of the
record. And I went to L.A. to do part of their video. So yah,
I'm excited, 'cuz this is something that's really cool. Again,
it's another thing that I'm part of, like the Dave Grohl project,
PROBOT, and Apocalyptica. It's cool to not do everything, and
when you do do something, it's quite cool and different. I hope
that the fans dig it.