Massive Attack have revealed they turned down Coachella 2025 over concerns about the festival’s environmental impact. Group member Robert Del Naja spoke about the decision in a recent interview with NME, which was focused on Massive Attack’s commitment to minimizing the carbon imprint of live events.
The conversation took place at Massive Attack’s recent three-day “Act 1.5” festival in Liverpool. That event followed their groundbreaking August concert in Bristol, which was meant to be a “large-scale climate action accelerator” and aimed to be a trailblazer for “new standards of decarbonization of live music.” With its desert setting, Coachella doesn’t have the same goals in mind.
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As Del Naja explained, “We said no to Coachella for next year because again, we’ve been there once, and once was enough. It’s in Palm Springs. It’s a golf resort built on a desert, run on a sprinkler system, using public water supplies. Mental. If you want to see something that’s the most ludicrous bit of human behavior — it’s right there.”
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He also had criticism for artists doing residencies in Las Vegas, which is an “aviation destination” also located in the desert. When asked about the Sphere, Del Naja described it as “a brilliant bit of infrastructure in the worst possible place it could be — in the worst setting in the world.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Del Naja said Massive Attack had “some new music which we’ve been sitting on for four years” due to a label dispute and shared hopes of releasing it next year and doing some live shows under the standards set at the Act 1.5 events.
Earlier this year, Massive Attack returned to the stage with their first show in five years. They also booked a brief run of US tour dates, but canceled it due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
