SOULFLY frontman Max Cavalera recently spoke with Thomas Stanley Orwat Jr. at RockMusicStar about the band's new album, Savages. He also addressed his controversial split with SEPULTURA in 1996:

RMS: I always wondered about the Sepultura thing. I always thought to myself, I mean, I don’t know the all the little nuances about the spilt. That’s why I’m looking forward to reading your book, but, I always wondered why you didn’t just fire everyone from Sepultura, keep the name, and find replacements.

Cavalera: "Yeah, I couldn’t do that. There were contracts and there was a bunch of legal shit like that. My only options were, at that time, was to stay with them and do what they wanted me to do, which was fire Gloria, which I thought was the wrong thing to do, or me leaving. And I was left with no choice, so I ended up just leaving it. I had faith in myself that I would do something else. I didn’t know exactly what it was, what I was going to do right away. It took six months to get Soulfly going. But, I knew in my heart, I always want to make music and I was going to continue making music, and I was going to try my hardest to make whatever band I was going to make next be as powerful as it could be. I’m, you know, in a way, kind of now looking at how it turned out. I’m actually really happy, because, I think maybe, if I would have stayed with Sepultura, maybe it wouldn’t have been that good, you know? Maybe it would have been too hard to maintain the high caliber quality that we were used to in all the Sepultura records. And Soulfly is really great for me, because it’s really a freedom band that I can do all kinds of stuff that I like to do with metal. I like metal to be different; I like to push the boundaries of metal. I like to bring all world music themes, I like to do all these guest songs, and Soulfly lets me do all of that. So, in a way, I think it was a blessing in disguise that I ended up leaving Sepultura."

RMS: I do, too. I just don’t understand why they go after you in the press, and say things like you “turned your back on them,” and things like that.

Cavalera: "Yeah, that’s all propaganda. Everybody that reads the book will understand why I did it. And, you know, everybody that knows what’s going on knows that that band is actually taken hostage by Andreas, by guys that weren’t even there in the beginning. They were not there in the beginning. Sepultura was formed by me and Igor, it had all different people. Paolo and Derrick are not former band members; they are not original band members. The way I see it, they took the band hostage, and they are just using the name, promoting themselves. But, they’re dragging the name down, because they’re getting less and less popular, and I don’t really hear anything good about their records. So, it’s like, to me, I don’t really care what they do. You know, for me there’s always the classic Sepultura that I love. I think we did some amazing records, but it’s all in the past."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

In other Cavalera-related news, be sure to check out BraveWords scribe David Perri's feature, SEPULTURA Vs. SOULFLY 2013, available now at this location.