WRITTEN INTERVIEW w/ ALIEN WEAPONRY

Alien Weaponry is slowly taking over the heavy world, and their debut album hasn't even been released yet! June 1st sees the release of said debut album, which features the New Zealand band showing off the best of what they can do : Heavy riffs, strong lyrical content, changes from out of nowhere and so much more. I recently got to ask the band some questions to talk about everything you need to know about Alien Weaponry and the debut album, Tū. ENJOY!


For those that may not be familiar, describe Alien Weaponry.
We are a thrash/groove metal 3 piece who​ sing/​write in Te Reo Maori (New Zealand's native language)​.

The debut album Tū is coming out June 1st through Napalm Records. How does it feel to have this album finally coming out?
Absolutely amazing, it's been so long in the making and to finally have it out it's going to be so satisfying after all the work we've put into it behind the scenes.

I truly appreciate the unique and diverse sound throughout Tū. Was this the original intent of the band since the beginning, or did this sound evolve over time?
We really just write whatever comes to us, so the album is sort of a representation of the band's mindset when we wrote each song. When we first started writing songs, we wrote in English, but we started to include Te Reo Maori in our music about 3 years ago. We originally did it because we wanted to enter a competition called Smokefree Pacifica Beats, but it sounded so good that we kept doing it, so now about half our lyrics are in Te Reo Maori​. As well as the sound of Te Reo, there are some cool stories to tell and important issues to address pertaining to Te Ao Maori (the Maori world).
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Holding My Breath and Kai Tangata have been chosen as singles for Tū. How did you decide on these two songs representing the album before it’s release?
As far as the album goes,​ Kai​ Tangata is about the heaviest track on there so putting it out as one of our singles was a no brainer because it is just a really killer track that really speaks to traditional thrash and groove metal fans. As for Holding My Breath, we felt it represents our more melodic side of songwriting. All of us are big fans of Trivium and I think you can really hear it in the track. Holding My Breath is also​ a really important song to Lewis, who wrote the lyrics, and expresses some pretty intense things.

What has been the reception you have heard for the singles and album so far?
The reception has been overwhelmingly positive and we're so happy about how many people have been contacting us to tell us how much they love the singles. 
​And, as far as I'm aware, everyone who has reviewed the full album so far has really liked it too. ​I don't think we could have asked for a better outcome.

Raupatu actually won an award back in September, the APRA Maioha award, for your lyrical commentary on New Zealand history. How does it feel to recive such an accolade and be able to bring up a difficult subject matter into a song like this?
First off, it's really humbling but I think, even more important than that is that it shows that our message is being heard, which is the whole reason we do what we do.
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What is next for Alien Weaponry?
Well we're about to have our album release show in a week. We will be playing a few shows in Australia shortly after that and then flying over to Europe where we will be touring until early October. We are playing 7 festivals, including MetalDays, Wacken Open Air and Bloodstock, as well as a bunch of club shows, so yeah there's a lot, haha

For those that have not had the pleasure to see, describe an Alien Weaponry live show?
100 tons of neck breaking brutality. Although I think maybe we aren't the most qualified to answer that question, because we've never actually watched ourselves live!

Having talk to other bands in the country before, I’ve learned New Zealand has quite the diverse style, especially in heavy music. How does it feel being a part of such a great musical scene?
It's really great, there are a lot of very talented musicians and great bands in the metal community and actually in the music community in general in New Zealand. I think being such a small country really helps the individual scenes here to be very tightly knit.
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What do you like to do when you’re not focused on Alien Weaponry?
Work on cars, mess around doing dumb shit with mates, driving and sleeping

Thank you very much for taking the time to be able to talk to me about everything going on in the world of Alien Weaponry. With being brand new to the band, I love discovering music like this that really captures my interest and makes me wanna go back and listen to Tū over and over again. I wish you all nothing but the best and I’m very interested to see where things go from here. Before we are done, is there anything else you would like to mention that I haven’t brought up yet?
I'm going to make a shameless plug, haha. The album is currently on pre-order, you can buy it off Napalm's website, so go and get a copy and support us!


Alien Weaponry- Tū is out June 1st through Napalm Records