THROWDOWN: Singing With MAX CAVALERA And Destroying South America

Frontman Dave Peters of the Orange County, California-based hardcore/metal act THROWDOWN has issued the following update:

"Singing with Max Cavalera and SOULFLY… destroying South America... and actually they happened completely independently of each other in spite of the fact that Mr. Cavalera hails from a town only a couple hours from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where we just ended our South American run with our friends in IT DIES TODAY.

"About a week or two ago we went a few amazing places where it is actually still summer (must be nice),including Argentina, Chile and Brazil, but before that, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the legendary Max Cavalera on a ridiculously brutal and thrashy song that will be appearing on the upcoming SOULFLY record in 2008.

"Some of you might have read the Revolver 'Rebel Meets Rebel' with Max and I, which was a dream come true in itself, and if you did you might have read an official invite to sing on the CAVALERA CONSPIRACY record that he and his brother Igor had planned after about a decade of doing their own and separate endeavors. Well, schedules did not permit the aforementioned, however, Max and Co flew me out to Orlando recently to be a part of an incredible collection of songs that I had the pleasure of previewing while in the studio, and... well... what can I say... the experience was completely surreal.

"What I thought would be an hour or so of getting the right take on a few pre-written lines ended up being a full day of writing the lyrics and vocal patterns alongside one of my heroes of metal and getting some amazing stories out of him during the downtime.

"Can't say I'll ever forget that or top that one, but maybe we can fool Max into stumbling into a THROWDOWN session one of these days and give it a shot.

"I'll say that I feel pretty damn lucky to have done that and then jumped on another plane a few days later and head down to South America for some killer shows.

"It was our first experience in Argentina and Chile and our second in Brazil and it was all a fuckin blast. Just want to say thanks to everyone that came out to the shows in Buenos Aires, Santiago and Sao Paulo and made us and the IT DIES TODAYers feel real at home.

"We rolled a hell of a lot into those six or seven days across three countries, most of which I was too exhausted at the end of it all to recollect accurately, but here are some highlights. Photos to come soon...

* Andy Williams of EVERY TIME I DIE being present, bearded and amazing for the course of the entire tour

* Meeting Snoop Dogg in the airport, having him crip walk up to the ticketing counter and give TD a 'sup nod'

* Benstopping a purse robbery, and in the course of doing so, actually robbing the robber of his own backpack. Unfortunately, all dude had was a couple schoolbooks and 30 condoms. At least he's an educated and health conscious lowlife, right?

* Brutal concert dog that ate more Ruffles than I've ever seen and snarled every time you put your hand above her head to pet her

* Eating more meat than we ever could have dreamed. The manager of the Brazilian BBQ restaurant actually cut Andy off at one point, which is awesome considering it was all you can eat.

"Thanks again to South America and the legendary Max Cavalera for the good times, and Happy Holidays to y'all."

THROWDOWN's video for the song "Holy Roller", which was directed by Andy Reale, can be viewed below.

According to a press release, the video is full of performance footage combined with images of snakes and torture, and the band was pleased with Reale's interpretation of the song. Vocalist Dave Peters says, "Andy did an exceptional job of reading in between the lines of the lyrics and meaning of the song and translating it into visuals centered around a really imaginative storyline. 'Holy Roller', in particular, is a song that we don't want taken for face value, so it was very important to us that the images for it were just as accurate as they were powerful. The song speaks to the nature of hypocrites and their proclivity toward punishing the rest of the world for their own skeletons and insecurities. It's a hostile song with a lot of energy; Andy's shots and editing lended itself real well to that." Drummer Ben Dussault added, "Even though snakes are pretty cliché right now... they just look so brutal in the right video! PS. no animals/insects/critters were harmed during this process, just band dudes! Enjoy."

The track comes off the group's latest album, "Venom & Tears", which was released on August 7 via Trustkill. The CD was produced by Mudrock, who has done seminal work with such bands as AVENGED SEVENFOLD and CHIMAIRA.

THROWDOWN bassist Matt Mentley previously stated about "Venom & Tears", "This album was a lot more collective in the writing. The new songs really stretched my abilities as a player rather than falling back on same progressions we already did in previous albums. However the songs are a blast to play and will be amazing in our live set." Vocalist Dave Peters added, "We kinda went back to our roots as far as what got us into playing music, rather than sticking to what got us into hardcore. When I saw my first hardcore band live in 1992 I remember thinking, 'Whoa, this is like PANTERA without the guitar solos.' We weren't trying to consciously add metal or other elements into our songs. When we wrote 'Haymaker' (2003) that's about as bare bones and raw as it gets. Add four years later of playing and touring together to that and we've developed quite a ways with influences, execution, and fuck it, we'll play a solo if we want to too."