Soulfly and Nailbomb Close European Summer with Five-Show UK Run

Max Cavalera has closed out an extensive European summer by putting two very different parts of his musical history on the same bill. Soulfly and the revived Nailbomb played five UK shows together from 3 to 7 September, ending the run at Manchester Academy 2.

The dates followed almost six weeks of Soulfly touring across mainland Europe and Scandinavia. That route included a particularly dense stretch through Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, with appearances at Alcatraz Festival, Reload Festival, Summer Breeze and Dynamo Metalfest alongside a series of club shows.

For the UK dates, however, Cavalera doubled up.

Each night paired Soulfly with Nailbomb, bringing the industrial metal project he originally formed with Alex Newport in the early 1990s back to British stages more than three decades after Point Blank first appeared.

Nailbomb back out of the vault

Nailbomb have always occupied an unusual place within Cavalera’s catalogue.

Formed by Cavalera and Newport, the project combined industrial electronics, punk and extreme metal on 1994’s Point Blank. Nailbomb were deliberately short-lived, releasing the album and playing only a handful of shows before disappearing.

That limited lifespan helped turn Point Blank into something of a cult record rather than the starting point for a conventional band career.

The current incarnation looks different. Newport isn’t part of the touring line-up, with Cavalera joined by his son Igor Amadeus Cavalera, Jackie Cruz and Travis Stone. Nailbomb have nevertheless moved from archival curiosity back towards being an active live project.

The UK run marked another significant step in that return.

Cavalera himself described having waited 30 years to bring Nailbomb to the UK, making the decision to combine the project with Soulfly particularly fitting.

Five nights of double duty

The run began at Engine Rooms in Southampton on 3 September before moving to London’s Electric Ballroom the following evening. Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester completed the five-night stretch.

Southampton and London both sold out, as did the final Manchester date.

The full run was:

3 September: Engine Rooms, Southampton
4 September: Electric Ballroom, London
5 September: O2 Institute, Birmingham
6 September: SWG3, Glasgow
7 September: Academy 2, Manchester

Cavalera fronting both bands gives these dates a different character from simply taking another support act on tour.

Soulfly are firmly in their current cycle following the release of Chama in 2025, while Nailbomb reaches directly back into the more abrasive industrial side of Cavalera’s early-’90s work. Putting them next to each other makes the shows almost a comparison between different periods of the same musician’s career.

A long European summer comes to an end

The British dates were effectively an extension of Soulfly’s Tribal Technology Tour, which started on 24 July in Austria.

From there, the band crossed much of Europe, mixing club dates with festival appearances. Germany received an especially substantial run, including Berlin, Leipzig, Bochum, Freiburg, Sulingen, Dinkelsbühl, Rostock, Einbeck and Flensburg.

There were also two particularly relevant stops for the Low Countries.

Soulfly appeared at Alcatraz Festival in Kortrijk on 6 August, followed ten days later by Dynamo Metalfest in Eindhoven. In between came Reload Festival in Germany and Summer Breeze.

The mainland European run finished at Black Lab in Lille on 1 September. Two days later, Cavalera was back on stage in Southampton for the first Soulfly and Nailbomb double-header.

For Nailbomb, those UK shows are arguably the more interesting part of the story.

Point Blank was released 32 years ago by a project that was never expected to develop into a conventional touring band. In 2026, those songs are no longer confined to the occasional revival appearance.

Nailbomb are moving again.

And for five nights in Britain, Max Cavalera got to move between that part of his past and Soulfly’s present within the space of a single evening.