Band salute te Reo
An internationallysuccessful Whanga¯rei heavy-metal band have released a video online from their last pre-Covid-19 live concert to celebrate Ma¯ori Language Week/Te Wiki o te Reo Ma¯ori this week.
Alien Weaponry are a thrashmetal musical trio from Waipu¯ formed in 2010 by brothers Henry and Lewis de Jong, who were only 10 and 8 years old respectively. They were joined by electric bass player and vocalist Ethan Trembath in April 2013 before he recently stood down and was replaced by long-time friend Tu¯ranga Morgan-Edmonds.
All three members have Ma¯ori ancestry — while the brothers’ mother is Dutch, their father is Ma¯ori. The culture was a large part of their upbringing. Both attended a ko¯hanga reo, and Ma¯ori is 18-year-old guitarist Lewis’ first language. “He went off to grandma’s for about a month and came back speaking it.”
Drummer Henry, 20, said though he had more Dutch blood, he felt stronger ties to his Ma¯ori roots.
“Ma¯ori is a lot of who I am. I’m mostly Dutch [from both his mother and grandad on his father’s side] but the fact that I’m here in Aotearoa and I do have Ma¯ori whakapapa, I feel more connected. I feel like tikanga Ma¯ori and the ideals around Ma¯ori culture just speak to me more.”
Their live sets consist of 50 per cent Ma¯ori lyrics. Ma¯ori ideas are also incorporated into the English lyrics and many of the songs are based around the haka.
“We wanted to release the te reo Ma¯ori version of our video because it lined up with Ma¯ori Language Week and it was really great to be able to put it out in both Ma¯ori and English. It’s heart-warming to see that New Zealand is now embracing te reo
Ma¯ori more than ever and we are stoked to be a small part of this momentum,” Henry said.
The video is based on their March 6 performance at Auckland’s Town Hall, the last show performed with Trembath.
The video originally aired as part of the Metal Alliance Online Festival in Europe where they were asked to be one of the headline acts representing Metal Days Festival. The Metal Alliance Festival spanned a weekend in August and was a collaboration between 13 independent music festivals for Europe and the UK.
The band has been making headlines across the world with its unique fusion of thrash metal and te reo Ma¯ori. They held top slot for 13 weeks on the Devil’s Dozen countdown on US radio station Sirius XM; their debut album Tu ¯ was voted album of the decade by Finnish metal magazine Tounela; in Denmark they were welcomed to the Copenhell festival by a crowd of 10,000 doing a haka in their honour; and they opened for Slayer in Stuttgart in their final European show last year.
The band enjoyed further success this month after being scouted and approached to join Los Angelesbased management company The RSE Group, home to high-profile genre artists including Slayer, Gojira, Mastodon and Ghost.
“We couldn’t be more excited to work with Rick Sales and be a part of the company that manages some of our favourite artists,” Henry said. “We think he can take us to the next level.”
While the world has been in Covid19 lockdown, the band have been at their Waipu¯ studio, writing and recording their second album. It was due for release in 2020, but has been delayed until next year.
Although having to cancel all overseas touring in 2020, including big festivals in Europe, they will soon reveal dates and locations for a New Zealand tour this year.
While they had a large international fan base from the likes of the US and European countries, Henry said: “There are things we can do here in New Zealand that only New Zealanders can understand.”