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ALIEN WEAPONRY originally stormed their way out of New Zealand with their scintillating blend of Māori culture and a barrage of thrash riffs, and have shared stages with the likes of French titans GOJIRA in their career so far. Now coming into their third album Te Rā, with a second album that as they freely admit “didn’t quite hit where they wanted to”, we catch up with bassist Tūranga Porowini Morgan-Edmonds as they’re mid-tour to talk about how they’ve approached this new album and the changes they’ve seen in perception of the band and Māori people.
“It’s been a big change,” Tū explains of the change in writing style, “this is the first album that I’ve had a significant role in the writing of the album. There’s a good bulk of the songs that were written by me, so we’re curious to see how they’re received.” There shouldn’t be any danger in that; each single so far has been received warmly by fans. They’ve praised the band for recapturing the intensity that made them stand out originally as well as elevating the levels of groove, without sacrificing the technicality the trio have always enjoyed showcasing.
“When I started the process, since I’d never done it before, my goal was to not listen to other metal bands. I listened to ALIEN WEAPONRY to try and break down what it is that makes Lewis’ playing sound like ALIEN WEAPONRY,” he explains of settling into writing with the others for the first time. Take recent single 1000 Friends, which Tū wrote the music for, but guitarist and lead vocalist Lewis Raharuhi de Jong wrote the lyrics. Initially, the band thought it was a little too out of their wheelhouse during writing and even up to recording.
“My favourite band is TRIVIUM, and when we ran through the first demo we all said, ‘this is a little too much TRIVIUM for us!’ But it was the vocal melodies that brought it back, because the guitar part hasn’t really changed at all.” That bears out in that there’s much more of a groove influence to Te Rā than before; where their first two albums were thrashy, sometimes technically flashy affairs, Te Rā saw them take a deliberate decision to re-centre themselves on what fans had loved about them, without sacrificing their growth as musicians and people. It’s an approach that’s paid dividends, and it’s their most accomplished work yet.
It’s also, tonally, their most downcast and often negative. “That wasn’t conscious,” Tū begins, “it seems to take form when we were at home, and you’d think, ‘oh I want to write a song about that’… Lewis writes a lot of his songs about his mental health, the way he’s observing the world from his own mind and then his opinions on global issues. We didn’t decide collectively that there had to be an overarching theme, but it just sort of happened along the way because of the grim situation of the world right now.”
There’s the aforementioned 1000 Friends that criticises the impact of social media as it drives wedges between people while turning social interactions online into a pissing contest of likes and followers, while songs like Blackened Sky deal with the looming, seemingly constant threat of a global war. Elsewhere, there’s first single Mau Moko that takes in their cultural heritage. “I’m the band member with facial moko [traditional Māori tattoos] and that was about my experiences, what I noticed about the way my life changed since getting facial moko,” Tū explains, while its video also tackles the legacy of colonialism and its suppression of Māori culture and the head trade that colonial forces carried out. “There’s only one song that’s devoid of any deeper meaning,” he grins, “and that’s Ponaturi. It’s just a really fun song about killing sea demons!”
ALIEN WEAPONRY have become akin to ambassadors for Māori culture; while he notes originally in New Zealand, because of the history of colonialism it was difficult to find purchase in their home country, global adoration of their music and message has helped. There’s also been changing attitudes towards Māori people at home, with far more tolerance particularly amongst young people.
“The home reception has always been interesting,” he agrees, “the main one is that heavy metal isn’t a popular genre, and there’s an animosity towards Māori people that isn’t harboured elsewhere. Now, many years on, there’s a really awesome shift… a lot more people are proud to be Māori now, there’s a really great revival of cultural pride going on. We’re noticing people coming to our shows back home that don’t listen to metal, so they’re actually there to support the Maori side of what we do, which is really, really awesome. We played a festival back home last year, one of the only festivals that actually has a stage for rock and heavier music, and it was the first time we’d seen people complain that we were playing at the same time as a very popular R&B singer who was on a completely different stage!”
He recognises that there’s a certain amount of animosity still, but that it typically comes from an increasingly-maligned bigoted, far-right wing within the country, while most are embracing cultural pride, and by extension ALIEN WEAPONRY themselves. “There’s a lot of messaging and stories, metaphors to absorb” on the new album, but it’s safe to say, ALIEN WEAPONRY are back, and better than ever.
Te Rā is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS119 here:
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