FIRST OF ALL, MAX, ARE YOU OVER BRAZIL’S HUMILIATING 7-1 DEFEAT BY GERMANY IN THE WORLD CUP IN 2014?
“I was mad at that game! I was actually in England when they played. We were doing a club tour, and I watched the first half of the game with two German bus drivers. Even they felt sorry for me. In a period of 10 minutes, it was 5-0. I remember going to do the show, and I came back, and the final score was 7-1. I got so mad, I went to the back of the bus and tried to burn my Brazilian shirt. But guess what? The shirt didn’t burn. So I tried throwing beer and vodka on it, and it still wouldn’t burn. The shirt got totally destroyed, though…”
ASIDE FROM YOUR TEAM LOSING AT FOOTBALL, WHAT MAKES YOU MAD?
“Gossip, intolerance, racism, Bush – George Bush pisses me off. Watching the news, too. Watching the news is more depressing than anything else.”
WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE SUSTAINED ONSTAGE?
“I had a flashlight launched at my head in Australia once. We were doing the Big Day Out [in 1999], and Marilyn Manson and Korn were there, too. In the middle of [Soulfly song] Tribe, somebody decided it was a good idea to launch a flashlight onstage. It hit me on the forehead and completely opened my head. There was blood gushing out all over my face and all over my guitar. It looked really cool, actually. I decided to keep playing with my face covered in blood,and I remember the Korn guys were on the side of the stage and their expression was one of complete horror. I still had a good time, though. Even with a split forehead, I still rock out.”
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WHAT’S THE STRANGEST GIG YOU’VE EVER PLAYED?
“Soulfly played for the Marines in Camp Lejeune once [in 2006], which is a base in America [in Jacksonville, North Carolina].That was pretty wild, because the drum riser was set up on top of a tank, and there was all this military gear everywhere, and they wanted to mosh, so they had to ask permission from their General. His thinking was, ‘Well, you’re shipping off to Iraq next week, so go and have fun with this metal stuff that you guys like.’ So we end up getting a circlepit going, and that was pretty surreal, man.”
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STARSTRUCK?
“Oh yeah! The first one that freaked me out was Ozzy. We were obviously all Black Sabbath and Ozzy fans, and after meeting me he gave me a kiss on the forehead. I was like, ‘Wow, did that really just happen?’ We did acid that day, too, and we were tripping all night long about Ozzy kissing me on the forehead. The guys were like, ‘You got baptised by Ozzy!’ Ha ha ha.”
IS THAT THE MOST OVERAWED YOU’VE EVER BEEN?
“Well, another time was in London when we met Lemmy. We went in a pub and he was there, playing one of those fruit machines, and I got kind of drunk and I went to bug him. I was like, ‘I’m from Brazil and I’m a big Motörhead fan.’ And he just said, ‘Leave me alone, kid. Can’t you see I’m trying to play?’ I kept bugging him, and so he grabbed his glass of whisky and tipped it over my head. I thought that was the coolest thing!”
OTHER THAN THAT, WHAT’S THE COOLEST THING YOU’VE EVER DONE?
“The thing that impressed me the most was visiting the Xavante tribe [indigenous people living in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil] while we were making [1996 album] Roots with Sepultura. It was some National Geographic shit! We spent three days in the jungle with them. It blew my mind to live there for a while and experience their culture and get painted with them, and be part of their traditions. I came out of there almost like a different person. I’ll never forget it.”
WHAT’S YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE DRUG, AND WHY?
“Probably acid. I love cocaine, and we did a lot of that back in the day. It’s a really good drug for speed and thrash metal. You can rock out on that shit all night long. But with acid, you’ve got no control. There were times when I took acid and I wanted it to be over, but it doesn’t work like that. You have to wait until it wears off, and sometimes it took two or three days. I hated having no control over my mind and my body. So I don’t recommend acid for anybody…”
The story behind Sepultura's Roots
