Forged in fire, rhythm, and ritual, Max Cavalera returns to Australia with Soulfly for a tour that’s as explosive as it is deeply personal. Joined by the uncompromising fury of Nailbomb and the raw, unfiltered legacy of Snot, this run promises a full-spectrum assault of heavy music history and modern metal fire.

At the heart of it all is family. Touring alongside his son Zyon Cavalera, Max continues a generational passing of the flame—bringing bloodline, rhythm, and rebellion together on-stage night after night. It’s a powerful embodiment of what Soulfly has always stood for: tribe, connection, and resilience.

This tour also channels the spirit of Chama—an album fueled by collaboration and conviction. Drawing in a diverse range of artists, Chama represents ignition in its purest form: voices united, cultures intersecting, and heavy music as a living, breathing force.

Ahead of the Australian tour, we sit down with Max Cavalera to talk legacy, family, collaboration, and why—decades into his career—the fire still burns hotter than ever. Chama.

Hi, Max. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm very excited for your upcoming tour in January.

Yeah. Yeah. We're very, very happy to start the year with that, with the Australian tour. I think it's going to be great. You know, the festivals, the headline shows, Soulfly's got a new album out. So, yeah, I think it's a great way to start the year and we're super excited.

Yeah, absolutely. As we are. And yeah, very excited about your new album release.

Congratulations. And what an amazing feat that is. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Chama has just been released on Nuclear Blast Records. It's massive. It's heavy. Can you tell me about the journey of this LP for Soulfly? Yeah, I started a couple of years ago, just kind of like collecting the first ideas, the first riffs of it. I worked really close with my son Zyon.

We did a lot of the early beats of the album together. We did the riffs. And then I chose him to produce the album and to give the album a different sound and just different texture. And I think that was really cool because the record does sound different from the last one. We wanted an album that has a kind of like dramatic difference from the last one. That was like the main thing for the record was to sound different and has different elements in it. But I think the record itself is very heavy in many ways. Like some of the tribal grooves are back. There's a lot of noise stuff that we did. It's got fast stuff. I think kind of like the best of Soulfly world is on this record. And I think that's why fans are responding so good to it.

Yeah. Yeah, I've been enjoying it, actually. Can you talk about the different elements that were used in the production?

Yeah, mostly the main thing was we made a run of all the songs with the riff by itself. And then we add a layer of real noisy guitars. And we kind of mix that with a little bit of electronic sounds, a bit like Nailbomb, actually. Something that kind of nail bomb would probably do. But we did it with guitars without any samplers. We did all the noises on the guitars. That's the main difference. I've never really done a record with that kind of thing on it. That was really interesting because you create this really kind of unhinged sound. It's almost like uncomfortable for the listener. So it becomes like creepy. I like that. I think that made the record modern. And it sounds like a modern record for right now. And yeah, my favourite song right now is the actual song ‘Chama’, the last track. Yeah. It's so cool.

“We are playing that live right now. And every night I lose my mind.”

— Max Cavalera

It's such a cool song. So is that the creative directive of Zyon that you found on the album, being so different to the last one?

Yeah, yeah. The last one was just kind of like more simple. It was just like the riffs, the drums, singing. Okay, done. This one was like, all right, let's spend some more time. After we've done the riffs, what else can we add to make sonically interesting and brutal or creepy or whatever? And we did that on every song. And I think that kind of treatment, when you do that, the record becomes a little bit more involved. You get more involved with the album. And definitely I feel like Chama has something special. The last couple of Soulfly records I released, it feels bigger for some reason. And I really like a lot of the guests that we got on the record as well. They made the record really special.

Yeah, there were a plethora of guests that you had on there. So Chama means “flame” in Portuguese. Can you explain how that evolved throughout the record?

It's a double meaning word. It means flame, but it also means if you're calling somebody out to fight, like let's go. Chama can be used for that as well. The actual word is inspired by Alex Pereira, a UFC fighter. That's his catchphrase. And he used one of my songs to walk in. He's walking music from the Roots record, It's Sorry. And we felt like, yeah, kind of like returning the favour and named the record after his catchphrase. And it's cool because I never had a name, an album name in Portuguese, my first one. And it's a name that everybody can say, Chama. Everybody in the world can say it. It's not a hard word to say. But it also means flame, which is cool because I think that connects with the original meaning of Soulfly is to burn like flame. So with the album cover, with the Apache Coral Dancer and a lot of fire, it made sense to call the record that.

So the artists that you had featured; Dino from Fear Factory, Michael Emmett of Arch Enemy. What kind of element or dynamic did these artists bring to Chama?

I mean, the beginning of Soulfly, we had a lot of guests, the first record. The second record, Primitive, was incredible. Just people everywhere. I felt those are really fun records. And although Chama doesn't have as much people as Primitive, they were selected in a very special way to do special things. And I love that the variety, where they come from, is also so different. You have Michael from Arch Enemy, you got Todd from Nails, you have Gabe from Unto Others, Ben from No Warning. The list is wild. And I don't think a lot of people would expect some of those guys to be on a Soulfly record. And that makes it cool. And I love collaboration. I think we need more of that in metal. Other bands should be doing that more. Because it helps everybody, man. And it makes the records more fun to listen to.

Yeah. It's definitely something special for fans as well, when you have those crossed hands.

It is. It's really cool. Yeah.

It definitely gets us excited. What is it like working alongside your son?

Good. It's really good. I mean, this album, he grew up a lot and he became really involved with, I never saw this kind of involvement from him before. So, it was really cool to see, pay attention to every detail, knew the record inside out. He has this really kind of innocent hunger to go get things. It's what drives people. That's cool. I love that. Because after you've done so many things like I did in my career, it does become a little harder and harder to have more dreams and stuff. And he has a lot of dreams and it's great. And I love that we get to share that. And we get to share that in the stage every night too. It's an amazing feeling. I actually on this tour right now, I'm playing with ‘Go Ahead and Die’ with my other son Igor and playing with Soulfly. I'm joking. I said this is training for Australia because I got to do Nailbomb and Soulfly in Australia. So, this is like a boot camp for that. Getting ready. Special training.

It must be something completely different to have two separate bands on stage that you go back to back and play at the same event.

It's cool. Of course, like I'm feeling like physically good now, better than I've done in many years. And that helps a little bit. But I also love so much. I love this music, this metal. I love, I'm blessed that I get to do that with my family and friends. And I'm blessed that I have a long career where I can do something like Nailbomb that is from the 90’s and I can do Soulfly, which is brand new right now. Yeah. It's an amazing feeling. And I'm just glad I get to do all that. You know, it's really cool. I feel very humble. It's a humble experience, but also very happy that I get to do this, you know, with the people around that we have.

Yeah. It's definitely a very family event coming up by the look of it.

Yeah. I mean, it's always kind of really like being like that. The difference was in the beginning, my kid, a lot of the kids were not big yet and they couldn't play, but we all always had kind of like family traveling with us. And it was always kind of a circus. So I'm so used to it, you know, to me is I've been doing it for 30 years. I don't know any different, you know, this is the way of touring that we're used to. And it's cool because even the crew becomes family. A lot of them are with me for more than 20 years. We don't have the heart to fire them after so long, you know, so we have to stick with them.

You've got Igor Amadeus Cavalera also featuring on the album, playing bass. And now going back to touring a band after 30 years. What’s it like returning after all of these years?

That album was great because the record itself, it's all, it's all done. You know, we don't have to like write anything new. We just have to play them as good as they can be played. And, you know, a lot of them are electronic stuff, like samplers. And, you know, it was, it was, it was a really fun record to make in terms of no rules. There was no rules involved in making the record. So, we use and abuse the studio as far as samplers, drum machines, noises. We create a lot of our own noises. To get to do that live 30 years later. It's so cool. And the reaction of the Nailbomb show is unique because the show is so heavy and kind of almost like oppressive, like unfriendly, kind of like hostile environment when Nailbomb plays. And that's what makes it cool. It's like a really feels like a real true punk band in this core. But it's spitting out, you know, industrial metal. It's really cool.

You have just come off the back of tours in Europe. How was Wacken?

Great. Yeah. All the festivals are really good. We’re going to do more of them in next summer. We already on Download and some other ones, but yeah, I love, I love the European festival season. It's nothing compared to Wacken is an experience that I highly suggest anybody to experience at some point in their life, because it's so, it's a unique thing. The whole city becomes a heavy metal city and it's quite cool. Like you don't see that every day, you know? And they're really organized. Well, all the festivals are cool. You play out with a lot of cool bands. You see a lot of friends. I love, I love the festival seasons of Europe.

And then a couple of festivals here in Australia. Froth and Fury in Adelaide and Perth in January as well.

Very excited for that. Yeah. It sucks. There's only two. So it's not many, but we'll make the best out of this too. We'll make them as cool as it can get. But I heard great things about the festival. I heard the festival is amazing. So, I'm very excited to be part of it. Yeah, you know, the headline show is going to be great too. I mean, they, they probably going to be, you get to hear the whole record. Nailbomb. The whole album. Soulfly full set list. The fact is, I don't know how long we have to play, but I'm sure we can't play that long. Either way, it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm excited.

What can fans expect from Soulfy?

I suppose in terms of, I don't want to give up too much. We are adding some more and more Chama stuff. We also trying to pick some deep cuts, songs that we didn't play much. So the fans can to, you know, a lot of fans always talk to me about, you know, they love dark ages. They love, they love ‘Primitive’. So, we try to find songs that we haven't played much. And add to the set together with the new stuff. Like, like I was saying to me right now, Chama is my favourite song to play of everything I've done. It's every night. I just lose my mind. It's so good. It's cool. And it's good that you have songs like that, that in the studio, I didn't think too much about it. I was like, it's cool. It's a cool song. But now I feel it's one of my favorite songs I ever done. It's so crazy how that happens, you know, but yeah. And we got some surprises that I'm going to keep it surprise for the festival and for the headline shows. We kind of do try to get both. You know, we play old stuff, like ‘Bleed', ‘Tribe’, ‘Jump the Fuck up,’ ‘Pain.’ And then we play new stuff and the combination of all that makes the record. The set feels really exciting because of all that. And Soulfly has a lot of like singalongs, you know, it's almost like, I guess the, the metal version of Beatles, I guess Beatles have all these singalongs. We have all these metal singalongs, you know, ‘Prophecy’, ‘Primitive’, all of the songs that people sing along with us. And it's great. I love it. It becomes like part of a church. Or, or a tribal gathering, you know, it's a, it's an amazing feeling. Yeah.

Do you have anything else that you want to tell your fans out there that have been following you for all these years?

Soulfly

Australian 2026 Tour Dates:

Sat, Jan 24: Perth HPC, Mount Claremont (Froth and Fury)
Mon, Jan 26: The Tivoli, Brisbane
Tues, Jan 27: The Enmore, Sydney
Fri, Jan 30: The Forum, Melbourne
Sat, Jan 31: Adelaide Showgrounds, Wayville (Froth and Fury)

Tickets on Sale Now

https://thephoenix.au/soulfly-2026/

Interview by Pieta Clarke

Images courtesy of Nuclear Blast Records

CHAMA with Max Cavalera

After Dark with Gary Pinto