Max Cavalera has written a helluva lot of Soulfly songs. Since founding the band after leaving Sepultura in the late Nineties, the Brazilian musician has cranked out 12 albums worth of material, his most recent being 2022's Totem. Over the years, Soulfly's sound has shifted between nu-metal, groove-metal, death metal and more, and in a recent conversation with Revolver, was asked Cavalera to pick the one Soulfly song that he's proudest of writing.
He had so many to choose from, but he ultimately went with a track from Soulfly's monstrous 1998 self-titled debut. See what Cavalera picked and what he had to say about it below.
"Eye for an Eye"
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.
