Desperate Max Cavalera drank hand sanitiser

Max Cavelera
Max Cavelera (Image credit: Getty)

Soulfly frontman Max Cavalera says he resorted to drinking hand sanitiser when there was no other alcohol available in his “wild” days.

The former Sepultura and current Soulfy and Cavalera Conspiracy vocalist also remembers once waking up in hospital after he overdosed on painkillers in Canada – but adds that he “mellowed out” as he got older.

He tells Fret 12: “I was pretty wild during my 20s and 30s. I think it was just after my 30s that I actually mellowed out.

“I was always flirting with drugs and drinking and stuff that could have gone really wrong. I overdosed once in Canada – took a lot of painkillers and drink and woke up in a hospital.

“There’s crazy stories of me in Europe drinking hand sanitiser. I wanted to drink something, hand sanitiser was the only thing available, so that was it, I drank that. That was pretty crazy, very wild.

“At some point I thought one of these days it’s going to catch up and I’m gonna be done. But that didn’t happen so I guess God or whatever had a different plan and I’m supposed to stick around for a little bit longer.”

He and drummer brother Igor have also said they’re working on new material – and they’ll draw influence from their tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of iconic Sepultura album Roots.

Igor tells Capital Chaos TV: “There’s some inspiration from tour that’s really cool also. Because the approach we have with Cavalera is something very minimal, very direct, and by going back to Roots, I think we might try to experiment a little more with Cavalera, something that we haven’t done.

“But by doing this in a fresh way, it was very inspirational. For me, that was, like, ‘Yeah, we can do some crazy, new tribal stuff’ – different than what we did in the past, heavier or whatever. So I think a lot of cool stuff will be coming in the future.”

The Cavelera Conspiracy continue their Return To Roots tour across North America – and they’ll hit Europe next month for a run of dates.

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Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.