Max Cavalera’s Love of Thrash Goes Deeper Than the Mainstream Stuff

We talked yesterday about how Chris Barnes has a completely unsurprising list of favorite death metal albums, right down to including a Cannibal Corpse album that he performed on. Thankfully, it comes as no surprise that Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera has a less obnoxious answer when asked about his favorite thrash metal albums.

In an interview with Sobre La Dosis, Cavalera was asked for his picks. The three he selects are deeper cuts than you might expect, with no Big Four inclusions to be seen.

“I went a little bit old school. The first one is from Canada, Sacrifice‘s Forward To Termination. Amazing record. I played it so much when I was a teenager in Brazil. Also Nuclear Assault‘s Survive. Danny Lilker, the man. Yes! Danny on the bass. Nuclear Assault was amazing. They played with us in Brazil. It was great. The singer, John Connelly, had to borrow my guitar, and he played, and it was full of blood. And he gave it back to me. And the whole guitar was full of blood. But I loved the show. And it was cool to have his blood on my guitar.

“And the last one is Dark Angel with Darkness Descends. It’s the perfect death/thrash record, but it’s more on the thrash side of things. Very, very amazing drums from Gene Hoglan. And I love Dark Angel; I love the power and the brutality of the riffs. Those are three inspirational thrash records that helped shape all my stuff I did from that era.”

This is a damn good list, by our calculations. Cavalera also recently discussed being a teenager in Brazil and how he loved Metallica so much that he cut his hair for a copy of Ride the Lightning.

“I had a cousin that was trying to make me go to the straight and narrow. He was, like, ‘You’ve gotta cut that long hair. I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll buy you an imported record.’ And I was, like, ‘The hair will grow back again.’ So I shaved it. I shaved my head. That copy of ‘Ride The Lightning’ was worth it. It’s a record that’s worth shaving your hair for.”