Amid his runs with Sepultura, Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy, Nailbomb and Killer Be Killed, Brazilian vocalist/guitarist Max Cavalera has come up with a sprawling body of work. Thus, it was almost a kindness that Revolver asked him to narrow his focus to his current primary outfit Soulfly when they asked him what song he was most proud of writing.
Of course, that groove metal outfit have twelve studio albums to their credit, so it’s not like that caveat made the task much easier. Ultimately though, it was the lead single (and opening track) from Soulfly‘s gold-certified self-titled 1998 debut album that Cavalera landed on. That song featured contributions from Fear Factory‘s guitarist Dino Cazares and then vocalist Burton C. Bell.
Explaining his choice to Revolver, Cavalera offered:
“It’s got to be ‘Eye For An Eye‘. The reason is it was done in an extremely hard situation. I’d just got done breaking up with Sepultura. I was on my own, and I didn’t want to play music. I was done with music. I was like, ‘Fuck this. It’s too much heartbreak. It’s not worth it, man.’
But little by little I got back in the groove, and there were a lot of really, really cool people that inspired me, like my wife and some label people like [longtime Roadrunner Records A&R man] Monte Conner. And little by little I got my courage back. I got my mojo back, and that’s the first song I wrote.
Actually, the very first thing I recorded after splitting from Sepultura was [Deftones‘] ‘Head Up‘. But after that I went into [album mode]. I made a demo — it was a drum machine demo that had ‘Eye For An Eye‘ and ‘No‘ back to back. And I flew to New York with this demo like a weapon.
Like, yes, I’ve got something here. This shit is killer. And I knew it was powerful and good. And we played [it] for Monte in New York. At that time, he was at Roadrunner, and it blew his mind. Even though it was a drum machine, he felt the power of the song.
The cool thing about “Eye For An Eye”, to me, is that if you are on a desert island and you have a guitar with only one string, you can play ‘Eye For An Eye‘. So it’s caveman shit, man.”
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