A Democratic Supergroup

On paper, supergroups sound great. You just take the best elements of established acts and put them together: more talent = better music.

In reality things are little more difficult. How does a musician used to being the main songwriter for their day group co-exist with other musicians also used to being head honchos? Surely the concept is an ego-laden recipe for disaster? Not the case, says Max Cavelera. “We made sure everyone had their voices heard and we shared a lot of stuff during the songwriting process. Some of the stuff was written when it was just me and Greg [Puciato – The Dillinger Escape Plan] – stuff like Face Down, which ended up staying on the record. When Troy [Sanders – Mastodon] joined, we wrote more songs with him – stuff like Snakes Of Jehova. The final writing session happened in the studio when we were actually recording the album. For my part I was really excited to hear what all the guys had to say about the direction of the songs. In Soulfly I write all the songs myself but with Killer Be Killed the songs were collaborative. Sometimes I’d only written one part of a particular track and the other parts were from the others. We were all very aware that each of us came from different bands people already liked, so we knew it was going to be a surprise. But I think in the end it was the band that was surprised because the record just blew us away – we couldn’t believe how strong the songs were.”

"I think in the end it was the band that was surprised because the record just blew us away – we couldn’t believe how strong the songs were.”

Australian fans in particular took to the Killer Be Killed project, giving the band some of its strongest sales figures anywhere. That was partially responsible for their decision to treat Australia to a world premiere. “Yeah, Killer Be Killed will be playing our first ever live shows at Soundwave – and we’re thrilled to be doing it in Australia. We got together to do the record and then we shot two videos and that was it. We’ve all been so busy touring with our bands that Killer Be Killed hasn’t yet played a single show.”

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Cavalera also reveals the approach Killer Be Killed is taking to their inaugural shows. “We’re planning on getting together before the tour and practising for a straight week in January to get the songs really sharp and ready to go. As for the set list, I don’t know at the moment. As I said before, everything is really democratic in the band and I haven’t sat down with the guys to sort out exactly what the set will look like. But right now I think a good idea will be to play the whole record and add a couple of cover songs on as well to round out the set. I’m so proud to be playing with these amazing musicians and it’s going to be great to see what we can do live. I think they’re going to blow people away at Soundwave.”

A Democratic Supergroup

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