SEPULTURA's ANDREAS KISSER: 'It Was Always Hard To Be On The Road'

In a new interview with Czech Republic's Metalshop, SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser spoke about the realities of post-pandemic touring, including increased travel expenses — gas, tour buses, hotels and flight costs. Asked if touring is "a problem" for bands like SEPULTURA nowadays, Andreas said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "No. We're here [in the Czech Republic]. [Laughs] Otherwise we wouldn't be here, right? I mean, we are managing to do a great tour. The shows are being sold out everywhere. The fans are really buying the merch and stuff to keep this flowing, and it's great. It feels that people wanna go out and really be a part of life, not being home and just, 'Ah, tomorrow I do this, tomorrow I do that.' No, it's now, now that life happens. So it's great. I cannot complain, man."

Kisser continued: "It was always hard to be on the road — always. It doesn't matter if you are [a bigger band] or [a smaller band], you have higher cost or less cost, but [it's] always a big challenge to put the rock and roll circus on the road. But we have an amazing crew, meaning amazing managers, a band that's really tight, fantastic fans that really keep this band alive. Fans that don't like to buy bootleg stuff — they buy the official stuff where the money goes at the right place; it comes to the band, it goes to the label, it goes to the manager. So we manage to make it happen. Without the fans, nothing will be possible. So we all have to thank them a lot."

Last month, Kisser confirmed to Oran O'Beirne of Bloodstock TV that he and his SEPULTURA bandmates have no plans to work on the follow-up to 2020's "Quadra" album in the coming months. "Next year we're gonna celebrate 40 years of a career, so the idea is to put out a live album," he explained. "We're actually recording everything right now; we're recording every show. It's great that nowadays, because of technology, we have this possibility, so we don't have really to be attached or limited to one or two gigs to record a live set. So the idea is really to collect recordings from all over the world and prepare a really nice celebration release of our history, of our music. So, new songs or a new album, I don't even see happening in the [near future]."

Elaborating on how SEPULTURA is going about putting together the material for the upcoming live album, Andreas said: "I'm trying to be as much organized as I can. We have this Dropbox file with all the music. I have an Excel file with all the dates and all the songs. When you have the songs fresh in your mind, you make some notes — 'Oh, broken string here,' 'Shitty sound there,' or whatever. So at least we have a kind of a map where to start.

"It's exciting," he continued. "I mean, SEPULTURA doesn't have a proper live album per se. We have DVDs, we have the Barcelona stuff [1992's 'Under Siege (Live In Barcelona)'], which is very old. But I think it's a tradition of — when I grew up, my favorite albums were all live albums: 'No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith' [from MOTÖRHEAD], 'Alive I' and 'II' from KISS, THIN LIZZY — you name it. Many great albums. 'Made In Japan' [from DEEP PURPLE]."

When O'Beirne noted that not many bands release live albums nowadays, Kisser said: "You know why? Because the thing of the image of the YouTube, whatever, it kind of killed that. We are all from Brazil. We didn't see any of the shows [back in the 1980s], and to have a live album and to dream about to be there, to listen to the people screaming, it created this atmosphere for us. That's what we wanna try to do. Vinyl is back, [so we wanna] do a really nice package with a lot of photos and really show where we. I mean, we go everywhere in the world. We visited 80 countries so far [in] almost 40 years of a career. And now at the end of September, we go to Singapore for the first time. Still a first after so long. So it's exciting. It's great."

SEPULTURA's previous live albums include 2002's "Under A Pale Grey Sky", 2005's "Live In São Paulo" and 2014's "Metal Veins - Alive In Rock In Rio".

SEPULTURA comprises Kisser, singer Derrick Green, bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. and drummer Eloy Casagrande.

SEPULTURA was formed in 1984 in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais. Guitarist Jairo Guedz joined the group the following year and played on the band's first two releases, 1985's "Bestial Devastation" EP and their 1986 full-length debut, "Morbid Visions". He also participated in the early songwriting sessions for 1987's "Schizophrenia".

In early 1987, Jairo quit SEPULTURA and was replaced by São Paulo-based guitarist Kisser.

In 1996, Max exited SEPULTURA after the rest of the band split with Max's wife Gloria as their manager.

Igor left SEPULTURA in June 2006 due to "artistic differences." His departure from the band came five months after he announced that he was taking a break from SEPULTURA's touring activities to spend time with his second wife and their new son (who was born in January 2006).