From the outside and for the uninitiated, the metal world sounds and looks like a breeding ground for rebellion, violence, chaos, and your occasional witch burning or dismemberment. Once inside, however, anyone with a brain realizes it is a vast and rich soundscape filled with diverse musical tastes and talents amongst the layers of distortion, vibrant with colour and culture.
New Zealand-based and born trio Alien Weaponry are some of the younger faces on the rise, three albums in, and have been checking off all the aforementioned boxes since Day 1. They are understandably loud and proud of their native Māori heritage, and as such they have injected elements of their homeland’s indigenous culture into songs. And although they’re still in the early stages of making a name for themselves, many metal fans have locked into Alien Weaponry for this reason, discovering in the process they’re a volatile live act.
The band kicked off 2025 supporting Slayer guitarist Kerry King on his solo tour through North America. There are hours of footage on YouTube as a testament to Alien Weaponry’s ability to pull off their live shows as a trio, which isn’t something you expect when listening to their albums. They would benefit from having a second guitarist, sure, if only to reduce their on-stage workload.
“That’s one of the things that we do pride ourselves on,” says bassist Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds of their live show, “and it’s kind of a funny backhanded compliment when people go ‘I hate listening to their songs on Spotify, but I love watching them play live.’ The thing is, we have a great sound guy, and he understands what it is that’s important for our live show from a sound perspective. When you have a low budget like we do, you don’t have all the lights, you don’t have all the crazy stuff, so how are you going to entertain the crowd? We’re not even singing in English half the time, so if there’s nothing for the crowd to catch on to, how are we going to bring them in? There’s only three us, so we need to have a high energy, big performance. To fill out some of those stages can be quite a task, so one of the things we really focus on is how to capture an audience with the physicality of the performance. Then there’s the three-piece vocals, which help with the sound as well.”
“The three-piece thing came about because of financial restraint,” Edmonds continues. “It’s expensive to be a band anyway, but it’s very expensive to be a band from New Zealand. We spend half the budget on plane tickets. We’re travelling all over the world, so one extra person is a lot of extra money when it comes to the travelling. We’ve toyed with the idea of adding someone if we were to become more financially expanded, but we’re always working at developing the band’s sound.”
Thus, working within those limits, Alien Weaponry went into writing their new album, Te Rā, with the stage in mind.
“One of the things that we specifically focused on was how the new songs were going to sound live. With the second album we found that even though they sound great on the recordings, whenever we played the songs live they just didn’t land. A great example is ‘Mau Moko’, the first single off the new album. When we wrote it in the studio, there’s two haka; one in the breakdown and one that closes the song out. When we wrote the breakdown haka, we felt it was a big crowd moment. On the record the build-up to that breakdown is just a couple bars, but live we extend that build-up. Now it’s become a key moment of our set to get the crowd moving and bring that energy up to 120%.”
Given their New Zealand heritage, Alien Weaponry – like Indian bashers Bloodywood and The Hu out of Mongolia – have benefitted from the path carved by German industrial metallers, Rammstein. Their “humble” beginnings date back to pre-internet days, and in the space of only a couple albums beginning with their second record, Sehnsucht, in 1997, the sextet became international stars in spite of frontman Till Lindemann singing exclusively in his native tongue. Alien Weaponry’s catalogue boasts the use of the Māori language in easily half their songs, and people have clearly embraced it.
“Absolutely,” agrees Edmonds, “and it’s amazing. Higher-ups in this industry tried to stop that at the early stages of the band’s career, saying ‘Maybe you should just sing in English.’ Their thinking was that nobody would understand what they were singing so nobody was going to like it. You can talk to a lot of Māori artists in New Zealand that are now singing in Māori after years of not having done that. And that’s what they say in interviews, that ‘the record label told us not to.’ That’s from within New Zealand, which goes to show the prejudice and racism that exists against the Māori. Napalm Records didn’t feel that way because they don’t have the same negative attachment to things Māori.”
“We go all over the world and we have fans singing Māori back to us; Spain is the best at it, probably because their pronunciations are similar to Māori, and they’re a very vocal crowd. The last time we played Resurrection Fest – and we always talk about this – we were playing our last song, ‘Kai Tangata’, and I took out my in-ear monitors because I wasn’t sure I was hearing things properly, but there was a sea of Spanish people singing in Māori. I think we were almost crying because it was the biggest example of people singing in a language they don’t even speak. We’ve spent our lives being told that nobody cares about this dead culture. To have these moments where we’re proving all of that wrong is an amazing feeling.”
The next logical step would be to record an album completely in Māori…
“We’ve toyed with the idea of doing an EP completely in Māori,” Edmonds reveals. “When we did this new album, however, there was no quota that we strived for, and the main reason for that is Lewis (de Jong / vocals, guitar) writes the English stuff exclusively. For him as the frontman, he finds his message or whatever he wants better conveyed through English. He never writes in Māori, and who are we to tell him that he can’t have his message told just because it’s in English. It just happens to fall naturally in an almost 50-50 split; I think it’s 60-40 in favour of Māori on the new album. On this album I wrote the bulk of the Māori lyrics because I thought the song ideas were better suited to the language, but beyond that the split was never planned. For us to do an EP or an album completely in Māori, it would have to be with purpose.”
As for how the band decides which language to use for the songs, Edmonds says it comes down to musical instinct.
“Lewis and Henry (de Jong / drums, vocals) don’t have music theory training, so before I joined the band they would have a feeling. Quite often the music was written separately from the lyrics, and it was the feeling they had for a particular song that dictated the set of lyrics that they used. I have musical training, so when I joined the band, I was able to pick out why they would think in a certain way. There are actual reasons why Māori lyrics suit some songs better than English, and I was able to apply what I’ve learned to the music I was writing and try my luck. Every song I wrote, in my head I wanted them to have Māori lyrics, and ended up with 100% success rate.”
“The title track, ‘Tama-Nui-Te-Rā’, is easily the most progressive song on the album. That was one of the first songs that came out of our writing sessions for this album, and we knew off the bat that was a Māori song as well. It took us a while, though: the vocals were being fine-tuned as late as the studio. Instead of approaching that song as having a heavy metal lyrical cadence, we actually resorted to traditional forms of Māori music. When we made the shift from heavy metal vocals to Māori vocals, it completely changed how the song flowed and made it work better. We discovered that sometimes it’s that traditional music that is actually the answer to your modern music problem. We absolutely love that song, and we were almost upset that the label didn’t make it a single, but we get why. It’s a little weird (laughs).”
Lyrics and language aside, Te Rā also stands out musically, never getting comfortable in one particular groove. In a world that is saturated with easily accessible paint-by-numbers music, the album caters to a variety of metal tastes and is able to hold the listener’s attention rather than merely enticing it. Edmonds is completely on board with that summation.
“That’s something we were trying to achieve with this album as well. Yes, bands have a sound, obviously, but so often – and it’s exactly what you said – there’s so much music out there. I am still an album listener, and I judge the body of work rather than getting attached to a single. I think artists are putting in the time, a lot of thought goes into making an album, so I think it should be absorbed as a listener. We tried to not lock ourselves into a sub-genre on Te Rā, and luckily for us, a lot of what makes our sound comes from the vocal stuff. As soon as people hear Māori they say, ‘Hey, it’s Alien Weaponry!’ and that’s great.”
(Photos – Frances Carter)
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The post ALIEN WEAPONRY – Triple Threat Tradition appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
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New Zealand-based and born trio Alien Weaponry are some of the younger faces on the rise, three albums in, and have been checking off all the aforementioned boxes since Day 1. They are understandably loud and proud of their native Māori heritage, and as such they have injected elements of their homeland’s indigenous culture into songs. And although they’re still in the early stages of making a name for themselves, many metal fans have locked into Alien Weaponry for this reason, discovering in the process they’re a volatile live act.
The band kicked off 2025 supporting Slayer guitarist Kerry King on his solo tour through North America. There are hours of footage on YouTube as a testament to Alien Weaponry’s ability to pull off their live shows as a trio, which isn’t something you expect when listening to their albums. They would benefit from having a second guitarist, sure, if only to reduce their on-stage workload.
“That’s one of the things that we do pride ourselves on,” says bassist Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds of their live show, “and it’s kind of a funny backhanded compliment when people go ‘I hate listening to their songs on Spotify, but I love watching them play live.’ The thing is, we have a great sound guy, and he understands what it is that’s important for our live show from a sound perspective. When you have a low budget like we do, you don’t have all the lights, you don’t have all the crazy stuff, so how are you going to entertain the crowd? We’re not even singing in English half the time, so if there’s nothing for the crowd to catch on to, how are we going to bring them in? There’s only three us, so we need to have a high energy, big performance. To fill out some of those stages can be quite a task, so one of the things we really focus on is how to capture an audience with the physicality of the performance. Then there’s the three-piece vocals, which help with the sound as well.”
“The three-piece thing came about because of financial restraint,” Edmonds continues. “It’s expensive to be a band anyway, but it’s very expensive to be a band from New Zealand. We spend half the budget on plane tickets. We’re travelling all over the world, so one extra person is a lot of extra money when it comes to the travelling. We’ve toyed with the idea of adding someone if we were to become more financially expanded, but we’re always working at developing the band’s sound.”
Thus, working within those limits, Alien Weaponry went into writing their new album, Te Rā, with the stage in mind.
“One of the things that we specifically focused on was how the new songs were going to sound live. With the second album we found that even though they sound great on the recordings, whenever we played the songs live they just didn’t land. A great example is ‘Mau Moko’, the first single off the new album. When we wrote it in the studio, there’s two haka; one in the breakdown and one that closes the song out. When we wrote the breakdown haka, we felt it was a big crowd moment. On the record the build-up to that breakdown is just a couple bars, but live we extend that build-up. Now it’s become a key moment of our set to get the crowd moving and bring that energy up to 120%.”
Given their New Zealand heritage, Alien Weaponry – like Indian bashers Bloodywood and The Hu out of Mongolia – have benefitted from the path carved by German industrial metallers, Rammstein. Their “humble” beginnings date back to pre-internet days, and in the space of only a couple albums beginning with their second record, Sehnsucht, in 1997, the sextet became international stars in spite of frontman Till Lindemann singing exclusively in his native tongue. Alien Weaponry’s catalogue boasts the use of the Māori language in easily half their songs, and people have clearly embraced it.
“Absolutely,” agrees Edmonds, “and it’s amazing. Higher-ups in this industry tried to stop that at the early stages of the band’s career, saying ‘Maybe you should just sing in English.’ Their thinking was that nobody would understand what they were singing so nobody was going to like it. You can talk to a lot of Māori artists in New Zealand that are now singing in Māori after years of not having done that. And that’s what they say in interviews, that ‘the record label told us not to.’ That’s from within New Zealand, which goes to show the prejudice and racism that exists against the Māori. Napalm Records didn’t feel that way because they don’t have the same negative attachment to things Māori.”
“We go all over the world and we have fans singing Māori back to us; Spain is the best at it, probably because their pronunciations are similar to Māori, and they’re a very vocal crowd. The last time we played Resurrection Fest – and we always talk about this – we were playing our last song, ‘Kai Tangata’, and I took out my in-ear monitors because I wasn’t sure I was hearing things properly, but there was a sea of Spanish people singing in Māori. I think we were almost crying because it was the biggest example of people singing in a language they don’t even speak. We’ve spent our lives being told that nobody cares about this dead culture. To have these moments where we’re proving all of that wrong is an amazing feeling.”
The next logical step would be to record an album completely in Māori…
“We’ve toyed with the idea of doing an EP completely in Māori,” Edmonds reveals. “When we did this new album, however, there was no quota that we strived for, and the main reason for that is Lewis (de Jong / vocals, guitar) writes the English stuff exclusively. For him as the frontman, he finds his message or whatever he wants better conveyed through English. He never writes in Māori, and who are we to tell him that he can’t have his message told just because it’s in English. It just happens to fall naturally in an almost 50-50 split; I think it’s 60-40 in favour of Māori on the new album. On this album I wrote the bulk of the Māori lyrics because I thought the song ideas were better suited to the language, but beyond that the split was never planned. For us to do an EP or an album completely in Māori, it would have to be with purpose.”
As for how the band decides which language to use for the songs, Edmonds says it comes down to musical instinct.
“Lewis and Henry (de Jong / drums, vocals) don’t have music theory training, so before I joined the band they would have a feeling. Quite often the music was written separately from the lyrics, and it was the feeling they had for a particular song that dictated the set of lyrics that they used. I have musical training, so when I joined the band, I was able to pick out why they would think in a certain way. There are actual reasons why Māori lyrics suit some songs better than English, and I was able to apply what I’ve learned to the music I was writing and try my luck. Every song I wrote, in my head I wanted them to have Māori lyrics, and ended up with 100% success rate.”
“The title track, ‘Tama-Nui-Te-Rā’, is easily the most progressive song on the album. That was one of the first songs that came out of our writing sessions for this album, and we knew off the bat that was a Māori song as well. It took us a while, though: the vocals were being fine-tuned as late as the studio. Instead of approaching that song as having a heavy metal lyrical cadence, we actually resorted to traditional forms of Māori music. When we made the shift from heavy metal vocals to Māori vocals, it completely changed how the song flowed and made it work better. We discovered that sometimes it’s that traditional music that is actually the answer to your modern music problem. We absolutely love that song, and we were almost upset that the label didn’t make it a single, but we get why. It’s a little weird (laughs).”
Lyrics and language aside, Te Rā also stands out musically, never getting comfortable in one particular groove. In a world that is saturated with easily accessible paint-by-numbers music, the album caters to a variety of metal tastes and is able to hold the listener’s attention rather than merely enticing it. Edmonds is completely on board with that summation.
“That’s something we were trying to achieve with this album as well. Yes, bands have a sound, obviously, but so often – and it’s exactly what you said – there’s so much music out there. I am still an album listener, and I judge the body of work rather than getting attached to a single. I think artists are putting in the time, a lot of thought goes into making an album, so I think it should be absorbed as a listener. We tried to not lock ourselves into a sub-genre on Te Rā, and luckily for us, a lot of what makes our sound comes from the vocal stuff. As soon as people hear Māori they say, ‘Hey, it’s Alien Weaponry!’ and that’s great.”
(Photos – Frances Carter)
Follow BraveWords on social media… Facebook page, Facebook Group, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and YouTube.
Visit https://linktr.ee/bravewords
The post ALIEN WEAPONRY – Triple Threat Tradition appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
Continue reading...