SOULFLY Announces New Album 'Totem', Releases 'Superstition' Single

SOULFLY will release its twelfth album, "Totem", on August 5 via Nuclear Blast. The follow-up to 2018's "Ritual" was recorded at Platinum Underground in Mesa, Arizona by John Aquilino and Arthur Rizk with assistance from John Powers. Produced by frontman Max Cavalera alongside Arthur Rizk (KREATOR, MUNICIPAL WASTE, CODE ORANGE),the LP boasts guest appearances from John Powers (ETERNAL CHAMPION),Chris Ulsh (POWER TRIP),and John Tardy (OBITUARY). Rizk was also responsible for playing lead guitar on the record. The artwork for the album was created by James Bousema.

The official lyric video for the album's first single, "Superstition", created by Aimed & Framed alongside 3D character artist Álvar Gómez Padilla, can be seen here.

Max Cavalera comments: "'Totem' is a celebration of the spiritual nature. It was a two-year journey writing with [my son and SOULFLY drummer] Zyon. This album is about all the joy, the fun and the anger in metal."

"Totem" track listing:

01. Superstition
02. Scouring The Vile
03. Filth Upon Filth
04. Rot In Pain
05. The Damage Done
06. Totem
07. Ancestors
08. Ecstasy Of Gold
09. Soulfly XII
10. Spirit Animal

In a recent interview with the "Rez Metal" podcast, Max stated about "Totem": "It was created a little bit different. The majority was just me and my son Zyon playing together, so we kind of wrote the bulk of the material. And then I had a great producer friend, Arthur Rizk; he worked with POWER TRIP and CODE ORANGE. Arthur is great, man. And I was curious how Arthur would make a SOULFLY record sound if he was in charge [of] it. And we created something that, to me, feels kind of like… It's almost like a biography of Max music. We cover everything from the early days all the way… So there's some black metal things, there's some death and thrash, there's some groove metal — there's everything. So the record really goes deep into all different areas of metal. So because of that, the album feels very diverse. At the end of the day, I just wanted to make a solid, full-on attitude record that just says, 'We're here to fuck shit up.' This is what we do. This is why I love playing metal, because of the energy it gives me.

"The record is actually really connected to nature, which is really cool," Max explained. "I think this is the mostly SOULFLY record that is really about the whole mystique of nature, as in forest spirits and spirit animals and things like that. So that was cool.

"We worked a lot on a lot of the tracks. And I think Arthur did just an amazing job.

"I don't wanna describe the record too much — I'd rather have people hear it and see what they think — but to me, it feels like this is just a really, really energetic SOULFLY record," Cavalera added. "It's kind of cool to have that kind of… After so many records, if you can still put an energetic record out, it says something about your career; you're not slowing down — you're going, actually, the opposite way. So I'm more in the trenches than ever with this one. It feels like [I've been] rejuvenated; I feel like a young kid again playing metal. Those are great elements to have. Especially when you're getting older, a lot of people go more mild and slow down. I'm not one of those people. I wanna just get even more wild, get heavier. But always with the SOULFLY groove, 'cause I think that's a key element of SOULFLY; it's always been the groove. So we pay really close attention to the… We actually added a lot of percussion to it, so it kind of goes back to records like 'Primitive'; some of the grooves go back to songs like 'Primitive' and 'Boom', but some of the other stuff is super aggressive and it's like a lot of the current extreme metal that I listen to right now from a lot of other bands."

SOULFLY performed "Superstition" and "Filth Upon Filth" on its recent U.S. tour.

In August, SOULFLY parted ways with longtime guitarist Marc Rizzo due to personal differences. A permanent replacement guitarist has yet to be announced. FEAR FACTORY's Dino Cazares played guitar for SOULFLY on the summer 2021 U.S. tour and once again handled second-guitar duties on the band's most recent run of shows.

Roman P-V - 2022-05-06 10:23:39