Plenty of bands announce a farewell and quietly reappear. Derrick Green, asked at BLOODSTOCK OPEN AIR whether SEPULTURA genuinely mean it, did not leave much room.
"This is our last tour," he told Neil Jones of TotalRock at Catton Park. "This is what we know in the moment. This is all I can predict... I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but this is what we wanna do right now."
He also settled the question of who started it. "It actually came about from Andreas," Green said, referring to guitarist Andreas Kisser. "And the idea was just — the timing of everything, of what was going on, it just seemed to really make sense."
What made sense was an exit from a loop the band had been running for decades. "We had gotten to a point where we had done the cycle of go in the studio, write some songs, record them, do press dates and everything, then do a tour for two years, and then, again, write new material. We've done that cycle over and over... For us, doing music and playing music is about having fun." The point was to stop before it curdled into obligation — and, crucially, to stop for the right reasons. "Nobody's stopping because of something physical or health reasons, knock on wood. And this is an honor to be able to call when you wanna call it."
The scale of the goodbye is a function of the band's own history. "With the history of SEPULTURA, we played over 80 different countries, so we needed that length of time in order to do a proper farewell." The farewell tour opened on March 1, 2024 in Belo Horizonte and has run ever since.
Green admitted the ending has become harder to walk toward, not easier. "It actually is becoming harder to leave, just the fact that things have been going so well... It's an incredible feeling when you have people come up and say, 'Don't stop. Keep going.' And I think we made the right choice."
The last show is scheduled for November 7, 2026 at the Mercado Livre Arena Pacaembu in São Paulo. METAL ALLEGIANCE will appear, with Mike Portnoy of DREAM THEATER, Alex Skolnick and Chuck Billy of TESTAMENT, Phil Demmel formerly of MACHINE HEAD, Troy Sanders of MASTODON and founder Mark Menghi, alongside KRISIUN and SACRED REICH. Former members including Jean Dolabella and Jairo Guedz, Kisser's predecessor, are expected to join. The band recently issued the EP "The Cloud Of Unknowing" via Nuclear Blast, and are recording 40 songs in 40 cities for a live album documenting the run.
Source: blabbermouth.net