Singer/guitarist Max Cavalera is a master of blending the band’s aggressive sound with experimentation and this time he also continues his tradition of adding guests to the mix, blowing sonic boundaries out of the water.

There’s a battle brewing on the record: the chaos of loss, anger and hate juxtaposed with unexpected spiritual moments. Heaviness meets nature – in all its beauty and brutality. It’s that uneasy mix that Cavalera wanted to capture. “Nature on one hand is beautiful, peaceful; on the other hand it’s lethal and ruthless as we see in tsunamis and things like that. . . Soulfly records are a bit like that: one side of it is very peaceful, very positive, very spiritual. The other side is very apocalyptic, dark, even self destructive . . . I embrace the extremes.” While making the record, Cavalera lost his grandson Moses and also longtime friend, Dimebag Darrell. “I think one of the reasons it’s called ‘Dark Ages’ is it’s also somehow personal dark ages. At the end of December [2004] when we were making the record, losing Moses and Dimebag, it was a very dark month. A dark way to end the year,” says Cavalera.

Travelling to 5 countries (Serbia, Turkey, Russia, France and the US), Cavalera recorded native artists and sounds and employed some unusual recording techniques. Turkey was chosen because “Constantinople was the center of Christianity 1000 years ago and I found it to be really exotic,” he says. “I wanted to add some flavour of that part of the world on an album called ‘Dark Ages’.” It was there, inside the ancient temple Haggia Sophia, that the disconcerting, tinny metal echoes serving as the outro to the speedball-infused “Bleak” was recorded. “It’s actually people working. They’re banging metal on metal.” While in Russia, the frantic “Molotov” begins with Russian lyrics. “In Russian it means ‘Fuck the war, let’s think about what’s important’ . It comes from the liberation of Russia after communism.” S.O.D.’s Billy Milano also makes a guest appearance on the song. Cavalera called Milano and said, “Do you mind singing over the phone and I just record it? . . .Even the distortion coming from his voice is actually from the phone.”

Amid the darkness, there are also lyrics that inspire. Hope comes in the form of “Stay Strong,” which features meandering melodies within the urgent speed. “My son Richie sings on ‘Stay Strong.’ I’m really proud of him ‘cause he sings his own lyrics and he’s really singing his heart out for Moses and for his brother Dana.”

Though Cavalera stretches the boundaries and adds subtle world flavours, the results are always definitively Soulfly. Cavalera wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s unorthodox metal. . . I’ve been metal my whole life from when I started Sepultura, but it’s a different kind of metal. I’m actually trying to create something new and trying to be a kind of scientist, like a metal scientist – fuse these things that normally would not fuse and see what happens when you combine them together. I love fast aggressive music. I love metal, hardcore and I love to combine them with other things. That’s really my passion, making metal different somehow.”

As is tradition for Soulfly, the album is bookended by the album’s title track and a closing eponymous epic entitled “Soulfly V” featuring French Brazilian musician, Stephan. Cavalera added the real sounds of rain and thunder. After all the ferociousness that makes up ‘Dark Ages’, it culminates in a sprawling, almost peaceful end. It’s appropriate, Cavalera says. “[After] going through the bad and the good and the rough, but in the end into this spiritual cleansing. It’s kind of like the calm after the storm,”

Soulfly provokes. It’s metal for the daring. Never safe and always engaging, Soulfly delivers another compelling album. ‘Dark Ages’ is fierce and unrelenting, heavy and foreboding. Yet within the darkest depths, beauty exists.