Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser recently opened up about what makes a truly great guitar riff. He named a modern band he believes has reinvented the craft, in a conversation shared by Paolo Phoenix.
Kisser explained that for him, a great riff isn’t about technical skill. It’s about the emotion and authenticity behind it. He named Gojira as the band that has brought something genuinely new to guitar riffing.
“That’s a hard one,” Kisser said. “Definitely it’s not technical element. It’s something that touches you. For me, it’s riffs like [Iron Maiden’s] ‘Number Of The Beast’ or [Metallica’s] ‘Fight Fire With Fire’. [Laughs] It’s something that really drives me. It takes me to a different level.”
He went on to elaborate on why those riffs resonate with him so deeply.
“Of course, technically you go there and you learn how to play and how to pick and everything, but there’s something else, [not] only [the] technical [aspect],” he continued. “You feel it was written with truth. You almost feel the Metallica [guys] in the small room working the [‘Fight Fire With Fire’] riff, James [Hetfield] and Lars [Ulrich] and Kirk [Hammett] and Cliff [Burton] playing that riff for the first time. Can you imagine the excitement? And that’s what we feel, that excitement that you cannot explain.”
Kisser then turned to the present day, singling out Gojira as a band that has pushed guitar riffing forward.
“Yeah, I think Gojira,” he said. “Gojira, it’s a band and a guitar work that is very original. In a sense, they build their message around that new element of using the tapping or using that kind of groove. It’s really hard to describe, but I think they brought something new to the guitar riffing and guitar playing, for sure.”
These reflections arrive at a poignant moment for Kisser and his own band. They add extra weight to his thoughts on musical legacy and what comes next for riff-driven metal.
Sepultura is currently in the final stretch of its “Celebrating Life Through Death” farewell tour. The tour closes out a career that has spanned more than four decades. The band recently released “The Cloud of Unknowing,” an EP featuring four new tracks recorded with its current lineup. It marks one of the final musical statements of Sepultura’s active run before the group steps away for good.
That backdrop makes Kisser’s comments about riffs like “Fight Fire With Fire” feel especially reflective. They come from a guitarist assessing not just what moves him creatively, but what will endure after his own band’s story closes.
Gojira appears to be building toward its next chapter with riffs very much in mind. The band has signaled that its upcoming album will lean into “big guitar riffs” alongside a sound described as more metal, yet more modern. This suggests the French band intends to keep pushing the same boundary-breaking guitar work that earned Kisser’s praise.
That trajectory lines up closely with what Kisser highlighted in Gojira’s playing: the tapping techniques and groove-driven riffing that he called genuinely original within modern metal. New material is reportedly on the way, and Gojira looks poised to keep expanding on exactly the qualities that caught the veteran Sepultura guitarist’s attention.
