Does Max Cavalera ever sleep? It seems unlikely. The Brazilian icon already has Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy, not to mention the somewhat overhyped Killer Be Killed, and churns out albums with the maniacal zeal of a man possessed, still visibly and audibly in love with ugly, brutal music.
Clearly Max had another itch that needed scratching, however. Because while Go Ahead And Die are definitely not going to surprise dedicated fans of Max’s output over the years, the trio’s debut album is just about different enough from the aforementioned bands to justify its existence. That this album is also the nastiest and most obnoxious thing he has put his name to since Nailbomb’s Point Blank in 1994 says a lot about where his creative priorities lie.
Superficially, Go Ahead And Die tend not to stray from the rudiments of their leader’s trademark sound. Songs like the enjoyably misnamed Truckload Full Of Bodies (it’s either a truck full of bodies or a truckload of bodies, surely?) and Toxic Freedom are built around plenty of gnarly chugging and primitive discord. And while the production is brilliantly gritty and raw, we’re often not a million miles away from the more brutal direction that, in particular, Soulfly have taken recently.
Nonetheless, there’s much more going on here, not least a mad-eyed devotion to crustpunk and filthy grind, and Max, bassist and son Igor Amadeus, and drummer Zach Coleman (also of Khemmis) sound utterly psychotic and having the best time ever on the fast and frenzied likes of I.C.E. Cage and Worth Less Than Piss. It’s all deeply honest and unpretentious stuff, just as one might expect from Max Cavalera, but it will cheerfully slice your face off too. He’ll sleep when he’s dead (or deaf), presumably.
