Intervista Sepultura (Andreas Kisser)

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A month after the release of Sepultura‘s fourteenth album, “Machine Messiah“, we talked with the band’s guitarist Andreas Kisser.
What’s the album about? What was the inspiration behinf the music and the lyrics? What’s next for Sepultura? We talked about this and more in our interview.

You’ve got a new album out, “Machine Messiah” came out a bit more than a month ago, what has been the reaction to the new songs played live so far?

Fantastic man, I mean, it’s one of the best reactions we had in a long time; we are playing five songs from the new album in an hour set touring with Kreator, Soilwork and Aborted, four bands and stuff, but we have an hour set…I think it’s the first time we bring so many new songs to the setlist, you know?
Probably “Chaos A.D.”, when it came out we played a lot of new songs, but this time it’s fantastic, people are really listening to the album, it seems like they are really understanding the music.
Of course you can listen to the songs separately but, you know, if you listen to the whole thing it makes more sense, that was our intention, to tell a story, and it feels like the fans are really listening to the whole thing and while we play the new stuff people are really locked, they are not like “Ugh the new songs…”, it’s really cool.

As you mentioned you’ve been on tour for almost a month now with all these amazing bands, Kreator, Soilwork and Aborted, how’s the tour going? How’s your relationship with them?

Great man, all great guys, like I said it’s not easy to put four bands like this, some of the stages are really small, but together we are making it happen.
I think it’s a great start for us, you know, of this first part of the “Machine Messiah” tour; touring with Kreator is something we tried to do so many times and finally it happened.

You said that the concept behind “Machine Messiah” is the robotization of today’s society.
Can you explain me what do you mean by robotization? Are you talking about the influence of new technologies in general or is it something more specific?

I think it’s what we see today, it’s not like a sci-fi futuristic idea.
We have the privilege to travel the world, so we see countries like England, Armenia, Morocco, Dubai and the Emirates, we see how technology influences and has more participation in different societies, it seems that robots are not here really to help us, to develop our own intellect, our own brain, we have so many different frequencies and energies around that we cannot really explain, you know, and we need a more straight connection to nature, to the universe and everything.
Robots are here to do stuff for us and we’re getting lazier and dumber, we are not really…you go to a restaurant and you have whole families and everybody’s here [takes his phone, Ed.], if you have a doubt you go straight to Google, you know, you don’t have interactions, even to get women you have a fucking app, you know? You don’t go out and… eye contact, that kind of stuff…
So this is something I was observing while travelling and stuff, and we decided to talk about to try to find the balance, you know, everything needs discipline: to watch a movie, to eat candies…I think about kids, when you give education to kids the main thing you do is to create a discipline, you have to sleep a certain time, go to school, an hour or two of videogames, go again to sleep early, you know, you need discipline to heave a healthy life and with the robotics you need discipline too, especially with the smartphone because otherwise you stay the whole day here [takes again his phone again, Ed.] thinking you’re connecting to the world and you’re not even leaving your room, you know?
That was the main inspiration, to talk about what we see today and to discuss where is the right balance and not to be enslaved by robots, instead having the robots to help us develop ourselves.

A lot of your albums, most of them, are concept, why so?

I have never seen an album without a concept, “Help” from The Beatles, the song “Help” but it was the movie, somehow you have a connection…”The Number of the Beast”, “Powerslave” by Iron Maiden, “Master of Puppets”, you know, all of them have a concept, you have something to say and you using certain musical elements to express that idea.
I don’t see a concept album only like “The Wall” from Pink Floyd or, you know, that kind of stuff, as soon as you have an idea for a song you have a concept; to talk about love, like The Beatles did so many times, take love out of The Beatles and there’s no Beatles!
So a concept is necessary to express a certain idea, that’s why! Why should I write a song for nothing, just write a riff…ask the robots to do that [laughs] you’d have all the elements and stuff, but a concept in my opinion is when you have something to say and you try to arrange in an artistic way to express that, could be an opera, could be a painting, could be a poetry, could be a song and in that sense I think everything has a concept.

The album has some elements that could be considered almost Progressive, in a way, and in general is a further evolution for Sepultura’s sound.
Is it a precise decision, do you write music thinking “I want to do something new, something diverse”, or is it just the way the songs come out?

It’s a little bit of both, of course we came back to the idea of a concept, we wanted to do a very musical album, explore a lot of our musicianship, I worked the leads note by note, all the details of the songs, Derrek’s singing, trying to find the right words to put in the right place in the songs, Jans Bogren [the producer, Ed.] was a fantastic help to do all this, a perfect producer to enhance all the ideas that we had.
Of course we had this idea but at the same time we had to leave things flow a little bit, that’s why we go to the rehearsal room and we play and we try out the demo ideas, of course we change things here and there.
The performance when we are recording is of course very important because that’s gonna be there forever, so there’s a balance of both, you need to have a discipline to find your way and to reach your goal.
You need to have a goal because if you go to the studio you have so many different options, different equipment, different guitars, it could be a mess, but if you have a goal, a direction, everything makes sense; you’re gonna use the stuff that is gonna work for that message to get across.
It’s a little bit of both, we never lose the spontaneous attitude even if we have everything in our mind the spontaneous attitude is the most important thing to…you know, when you listen to an album to feel that there are people playing, with all the mistakes or not but, to remain humans.

In the latest years many bands have been playing albums in their entirety, I’ve seen Anthrax doing the whole “Among the Living” two weeks ago and, you know, Igor and Max Cavalera are doing the whole “Roots”, have you thought about doing something similar?

Not really, not yet, we are very focused on what we are doing now.
I understand Anthrax doing it during the second round for their new album, they have a new album, so it’s cool that they present the new stuff and that they have room to do that.
The Cavalera situation is that they don’t have nothing new, they are just exploring the past, basically, and we never really wanted to do something like that, to go on tour and play the whole “Chaos A.D.”, not so far, we are very focused on what we are doing and we have a new album, we are promoting the new album, it would be very idiotic now for us to spend time to play old stuff, as I said we are playing 5 new songs and we are gonna do this new album in its entirety at the Rock In Rio festival in Brasil which is great, a new album and we can do the whole thing!
So it’s even better than to have old stuff; maybe in a few years we could do something like that, but not now.
And we have many albums that we could do, it’s great, we have the possibility to do that, but it’s not something that we are thing to do anytime soon.

You know, the first time I saw you wasn’t with Sepultura but with Anthrax in 2011 during the Big 4 tour, how was that experience?

It was insane man, beautifully insane [laughs].
It was great, one of the best experiences of my life to play with the Big 4, to play with Anthrax, a band that influenced me so much, Scott Ian has one of the best guitar sounds in Metal…he called me 6 months in advance, he told “My wife is pregnant, she is due in July, it’s a very specific week when we have big shows to do and I thought about you” and, fuck, I was so happy to be part of this, and I had time to prepare myself for the guitar parts and mainly the vocals, you know, because Scott Ian does a lot of backing, a lot of singing and I did most of it but Frank Bello helped me a lot and I really felt at home with them.
I’m so thankful that they thought about my name and so happy that everything went great, I even had the chance to play with the Big 4 at the end of Metallica’s concerts, it was wonderful.

You said in a recent interview that there’s a movie about Sepultura coming out, can you talk me about it?

Yeah, it’s like a movie/documentary, a director from Brasil has been working on it for seven years now, he has been following the band for many different tours, different recordings, Jean Dolabella was in the band then Eloy came so he captured all the transition phase which is very difficult in any band and it’s finally done!
I think we’re gonna announce a date very soon for the release, we just saw the first and second cut and we’re very happy with the results; a lot of great friends, roadies and people that were part of Sepultura’s history talking about it and, you know, the thing is to show this trajectory not really to fight old members, this is ridiculous!
I have my point of view, they have their point of view, there’s no right or wrong it’s just different prospective of things and our intentions is to show that Sepultura is still here, somehow.
Also it’s not only for Sepultura and Metal fans but also for “normal people”, let’s say [laughs] they can watch a band coming from Brasil and see how difficult it is to have a family, to be on the road, to really be with this band every day, we build Sepultura every day and to show that, 33 years of career; we have the show that we filmed in San Paulo in 2015 to celebrate 30 years of Sepultura which was a very special show with family, friends and everybody as a part of the movie.
I think it will be cool for people to see that we never really stopped regardless of all the difficult times that we had inside and outside because, you know, Sepultura lost a singer, drummer, management but at the same time it was vinyl to CD, CD to download and all the technological changes that never happened before in music history so…here we are, enjoying ourselves and doing what we do with a lot of passion, a lot of hearth and I think that’s what the movie will show, that we are a very “artistic” band, so to say, and not hostages of our own past and our own myths.

As a guitarist this is something I wanted to ask you for a while, Stratocasters are not the most common guitars in extreme Metal, why did you choose this guitar?

That’s why! [laughs]
It’s a very enjoyable guitar really, is a different way of finding new sounds, I love those challenges, I hate polite instruments, I have to battle instruments to know that I’m doing something different all the times.
If you have all the same guitars and all the same things for 30 years it becomes boring, it’s expectable, “I know what he’s gonna do” kind of stuff, and Fender was an opportunity that started in 2001: we had this great friend of ours, he used to be my guitar tech, Billy Siegle, he worked at Fender and wanted to bring Fender to a heavier side, I think he even talked to Dave Mustaine as well.
Of course I was sceptical, Stratocaster are more related to Hard Rock and Rock N’ Roll, stuff like that, but they put this pickup that they built themselves which is really heavy and it’s the sound that I used since then; my Nation guitar, one of the firsts Stratocaster I got from Fender is on every album since then and on every tour, 15 years touring with that guitar and it’s one of my best sounds.
You have to give a chance to yourself, to learn new thing, because if you know everything you might as well die [laughs] there’s a lot of stereotypes coming from outside and you don’t go there because you listen to what people is saying, but you have to experience it yourself, try things and doing so you find new possibilities.
You think Stratocaster wasn’t right, “oh, this is not for me”, how do you know? You never tried, it’s like a kid “I don’t like it” “How do you know? You never tried it…eat it!” [laughs].
Just give chances to yourself, there are a lot of new possibilities, you just have to keep your mind and ears open and then you are gonna learn a lot more.

A couple of years ago you invited Steve Vai on stage with you at the Rock in Rio; you two are quite different bands/musicians, how did this collaboration start?

I’ve known Steve Vai for a while, I followed his career since forever, he’s one of my big influences, he’s one of the big masters on the guitar, Frank Zappa, especially with David Lee Roth, Whitesnake, Alcatrazz and many other stuff, I followed him for many years.
There was a possibility for Sepultura to release the album before “Kairos”, before we signed with Nuclear Blast, we were talking with Steve Vai to sign with his label in the States, he has this Metal guy who works at his label and they wanted to try with heavier bands.
It didn’t work out but I got in touch with Steve and we could talk and have this, I wouldn’t say friendship but a good relationship and he likes Sepultura, he really knows Sepultura, he was talking about “Chaos A.D.” and “Roots” and “Against” and I was like “Wow, you really know your stuff”.
I saw him in Brazil a few times and…you know, the stage at the Rock in Rio is called Sunset Stage, they made that stage specifically for collaborations, for unique shows so we did one with the Tambours Du Bronx the first time that there was the Sunset Stage, it was fantastic, we did another one with a Brazilian musician,Zé Ramalho, who sung in Portuguese his material playing with Sepultura and that was even more…weird than Steve Vai [laughs].
And then Rock in Rio Las Vegas, it was the first time that Rock in Rio was going to the States and we had this opportunity, he loved this idea of being with us and it was so beautiful man, Steve is a master musician and a maestro and a gentleman, an amazing guy, very smart, so humble at the same time a monster.
The connection we had was beautiful, so enjoyable and so cool and hopefully we’ll have the occasion to do it again with even more songs.

As of now, with more than 30 years of career behind you, what is your goal, what is the next thing you want to achieve with Sepultura?

I don’t know man, it’s just what we’re doing, we are in a path where we are growing, doing an album like “Machine Messiah” I think proofs that we are really active and not really lazy and conformed with the history we had and playing only old songs and all that crap.
The place we are in now is great and the future is just a consequence of what we do now, of course we have the movie, we have the tour and hopefully we’ll have the chance to play bigger venues and festivals and with other bands and keep enjoying what we are doing.
It’s hard enough just to be here, to have all the structure flowing, I’m very thankful of what’s happening with Sepultura…I think the movie is our biggest challenge now, to put it out and see how we are gonna work this documentary around but at the same time playing as much as we can with “Machine Messiah” and hopefully for another 2 years let say.

Davide Sciaky