Fear Factory's Dino Cazares is set to join LA metallers Soulfly on their upcoming US tour. It is not yet clear whether the news means the permanent departure of long-serving Soulfly guitarist Marc Rizzo.
The band will cram 33 dates into a little over a month; the run commences August 20 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and concludes September 25 in Tempe, Arizona.
“The first time I met Max [Cavalera, Soulfly frontman] in 1991, I knew we were going to be longtime friends,” Cazares explains in a new statement regarding the move. “I was standing at the bar, he grabbed my arm and yelled ‘Papa Capado’. I was like ‘Who the fuck are you?’ He said, ‘I'm Max’ and from there we just hit it off.
“That same night I played him the Fear Factory demo tape on his cassette Walkman in his hotel room while we were attending a music convention in Los Angeles. He liked it so much that he wouldn't give it back, so I had to wrestle him and take it out of his Walkman! [laughs] It was my only copy.
“Max told Monte Conner, the A&R director from Roadrunner records, that we had a new demo that he needed to check out, so our manager at the time sent our demo to Monte after many labels turned us down. The rest is history.”
He continues: “Over the past 30 years, I've guested on a few of Max's projects and jumped on stage whenever and wherever I could. Now it's a great honor to be doing this tour alongside Max as the second guitarist. It's going to be amazing for all the fans to see the two of us playing a selection of Soulfly songs and a few familiar extras.”
“I'm very excited to be sharing the stage with Dino,” adds Max Cavalera. “he is a true OG riff master. It's going to sound heavier than Soulfly has ever sounded before! Dino's legendary Fear Factory crunch guitar sound mixed with Soulfly is going to sound insane.”
Marc Rizzo – who is yet to announce whether or not he has left Soulfly – has enjoyed a fruitful solo career, putting out six records since 2004. He recently announced that he'll be joining country metal duo WhiskeyDick on their forthcoming tour.
Back in 2018, in a conversation with The Classic Metal Show, Cavalera praised Rizzo, saying “it would really suck to lose” him.
“He loves what he does; he loves playing in Soulfly; he loves working with me,” he said. “We are totally connected. He gives 150 percent every show, no matter if there's 10 people or 10 thousand, which is rare.
“Sometimes when there's not a lot of people, it's hard to go out there and still be excited and he does it. I do believe he's underrated big-time, but I'm kind of happy about that because if he gets too big, then he will go away. He will join a big band. I'll be out looking for another guitar player and it would suck.
“I'm kind of happy. It's almost like a secret thing that we have, this treasure that we have. He's fantastic. He's an amazing guitar player. I sit sometimes around the dressing room just to hear him play.
“[I] just go in the dressing room to hang out while he's practicing just to hear him playing some of the flamenco sections in the dressing room or when he's just shredding. He's killer. He is a true, true guitar hero.”
