The EP, entitled ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, will be released on 24 April through Nuclear Blast records. This will be the band’s first release since 2020’s ‘Quadra’ album, having announced that they were retiring in 2023 but not as of yet ending touring.

The single, ‘The Place’, was released alongside the EP’s announcement. The track features a distant, almost post-metal gloss before a punishing riff kicks in at around the four minute mark, a reminder of the power the Brazilian pioneers can pack. The song follows a distinct concept. As singer Derrick Green said of the track, “this song deals with immigrants who have come to a place seeking refuge and start a new life.” He added that “I feel the lyrics truly follow the transitions of the song.”

In many ways, it is fitting for Sepultura to be ending their career on an experimental note seeing as this is what they were best known for at their height in the post-thrash 1990s. Having been one of the first bands to push extreme metal to its blackened limits in the 1980s, they made an effort to continually reinvent, incorporating a groove-laden sound on subsequent albums and mixing tribal elements with nü-metal on their 1996 release ‘Roots’.

The news of the band’s retirement has not been without controversy. Some have voiced confusion at the band supposedly playing their last shows on UK soil in Manchester and London, before being announced for Bloodstock this year. Others have critiqued the lineup arrangements, the only original member at this moment being bassist Paulo Jr.

This particular issue with the lineup has been intensified by former frontman Max Cavalera, and his brother, ex-Sepultura drummer Igor, touring in recent years as Cavalera Conspiracy and playing Sepultura albums the whole way through, like they did with innovative 1993 groove metal album ‘Chaos A.D.’ in 2025. They even went as far as to re-record Sepultura’s debut EP, the raw ‘Bestial Devastation’, and album, ‘Morbid Visions’, initially released in 1986.

Longtime Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser has said that he is comfortable with playing with the Cavalera brothers again at their final gig in São Paulo, where he’s declared he wants to put on a ‘SepulFest’ to commemorate the band’s career. He said that “it’s totally irrelevant to discuss the past, who is right, who is wrong. We’re never gonna get to a point — we’re gonna have two different views of it, and that’s fine. This is irrelevant. Let’s jam for the fans, to ourselves, to our families [who had] never seen us together.”

The show will take place on November 13, 2025, at Espaço Unimed. Sharing the stage are Brazilian icons Cavalera, featuring members brothers Max and Iggor Cavalera of Sepultura, who will perform ‘Chaos A.D.’, one of Sepultura’s most politically charged albums, which critiques authoritarianism, environmental destruction, and social injustice. Their involvement brings a raw edge to the evening, whilst aligning with Massive Attack’s own tradition of politically conscious productions.

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What sets this concert apart is its direct coordination with Indigenous organisations across the Amazon. Representatives will not only be present but will actively shape the event. Speaking to NME, Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja said this collaboration is “more than a passing of the mic.” Instead, it is about recognizing and amplifying the “knowledge, moral authority, and wisdom” of Indigenous communities whose lands and lives are threatened daily by deforestation and exploitation.

The concert precedes COP30 in Belém, a city in the Amazon basin. As leaders gather to debate the planet’s climate future, the Amazon remains a big talking point, both as a crucial carbon store and as a fragile ecosystem under attack. By holding the concert in Brazil, Massive Attack and Cavalera underline the urgency of the Indigenous people’s demands.

Music has long been a vehicle for protest, and this collaboration aims to show its power. Massive Attack’s trip-hop sound offers a reflective atmosphere, while Cavalera’s aggression provides raw resistance. Together, they bridge genres, audiences, and continents, reinforcing the message that climate justice is universal.

Tickets for ‘The Answer Is Us’ are available now through the official Espaço Unimed website and major Brazilian ticketing platforms.

While influenced by the classic 1927 sci-fi film ‘Metropolis’, ‘The Mediator Between the Head and Hands Must Be the Heart’ will not be a concept album, such as ‘A-Lex’, which was based on A Clockwork Orange, and ‘Dante XXI’ , based on The Divine Comedy by Dante.

Lead guitarist Andreas Kisser said on the band’s official site “I was inspired by a phrase which is the main message of the story: “The mediator between the head and hands must be the heart” to express what we are saying on the lyrics.

In the movie, a crazy millionaire wants to transform a robot into a real person. That’s kind of the opposite of what we live today. More than ever we are robotized, through the worldwide web, Google glasses, chips under our skins and the globalized slavery our society suffers nowadays. The phrase points to the heart as being the human factor who keeps a man, a man, not a robot. The heart beats with freedom of choice, we have to think by ourselves to create a real world, not a matrix.

Being a novel written in the early 1920’s, it’s almost prophetical. It helped us to put the ideas together for the lyrics to express what we see today. I live in São Paulo, Brasil, one of the big metropolis in the world with more than 20.000.000 people living and working in it. I know how it is to live in daily chaos, our music reflects a lot of that feeling.”

The band will be announcing further details about the album soon.