An Interview with Māori Metal Band Alien Weaponry
Learn about Māori, colonialism, and the cross-cultural appeal of Alien Weaponry.
I spoke with Tūranga and Henry of the iconic Māori metal band ahead of their Valentine’s Day show at Emo’s in Austin, TX. Alien Weaponry is currently touring in North America alongside Municipal Waste and Kerry King.
“We always think there’s a difference between having a heavy metal song and you’re just singing it in Māori, but musically it sounds like “normal” heavy metal songs. Versus putting things Māori over heavy metal, you know? And that’s a blend we’ve been working on trying to refine over the years.”
Tūranga, the bassist and back up vocalist of the Aotearoa (New Zealand) metal band Alien Weaponry, gestures emphatically as he describes the band’s approach to creating Māori metal music. We are sitting in the green room at Emo’s in Austin, Texas, along with Henry, the band’s drummer and back up vocalist. Later tonight, Tūranga, Henry, and guitarist/lead vocalist Lewis will take the stage as they open for US bands Municipal Waste and Kerry King.
Originally founded in 2010 by Henry and his brother Lewis, Alien Weaponry has since gained international attention for music that combines their Indigenous Māori heritage with the heavy metal genre. Particularly, the band is known for singing in their native language, Te Reo Māori. Their third album, Te Ra, releases March 28 via Napalm Records.
To craft their unique sound, Alien Weaponry draws from a diverse array of styles, including thrash, groove, and traditional Māori genres. “A lot of our earlier influences were thrash,” Henry notes. “We listened to a lot of Metallica.” “And now on the road it becomes really apparent how much in the groove department we are,” Tūranga chimes in.
The band’s sound has also been compared to nu-metal, something that the band members attribute to the Māori cadence present in their vocals. “Lewis isn’t speaking English and he’s got this kind of Māori cadence with the things he does. It starts sounding a little rappy,” Henry explains.
Tūranga adds: “We take a lot of inspiration from the traditional Māori methods of performance. It’s trying to attain the sound of the precolonial Māori music. Which is a lot of syncopated chanting, monotone chanting. There’s not a lot of variation. To the untrained ear, a lot of it, when you put it over music, can sound a lot like rapping, or like a spoken kind of flow.”
Over time, the band has worked to craft a unique sound that incorporates both Western and Māori influences. While their first album employs Māori lyrics over more traditional heavy metal song structures, the second and upcoming third albums have shifted increasingly towards Māori soundscapes and rhythms.
Tūranga says: “When you have it in Māori, we want it to not only just be in the language, but also have the sound that is also a little different. In particular, “Tama-nui-te-rā” is one of the tracks, and “Te Kore” is the other one, that really heavily feature the traditional Māori vocal styles on the lyric side. They’re a little stranger. They’re not necessarily single material for a lot of people. We’re hoping that when people get their hands on the full album, it’ll be cool for them. Because they’re the ones that we really love.”
The band draws a clear distinction between tracks written in English and tracks written in Māori. For the upcoming album, Lewis wrote the English language lyrics, and Tūranga and Henry wrote the Māori ones. The English songs have more personal content, whereas the Māori songs focus on broader concepts from Māori culture and history. The band’s songwriting process involves combining separate pools of instrumental tracks and potential lyrics, using their instincts to determine which tracks should go with which language.
Tūranga describes this process: “We have all the instrumental tracks with no lyrics on them. And then we’ve got a set of lyrics. And then we’ll cull. They’ll be like 30 instrumental tracks, and we pick our favorite 10. And then we bang the lyrics over which ones we feel appropriate. But there is a method to deciding the languages. We can listen to an instrumental and know instantly whether it’ll be Māori. So then we go, ok, this song’s definitely in Māori, here’s our Māori lyrics, which one fits the best. It’s kind of like…I don’t really know how to explain that feeling. We know it. We can all listen to an instrumental and be like…that’s a Māori song.”
The first single from the upcoming album, “Mau Moko,” gives a glimpse into what to expect from the Māori language tracks. “Mau Moko” details the history of moko, or the traditional practice of Māori tattooing. “The song was more of a broader anthem, almost a protest song,” Tūranga says. “A pride song as well, to remind Māori and potentially educate people who do not know about our traditional marking practices known as “moko.” The song talks about how over the years it’s tried to be squashed and eradicated as a practice because of colonialism and Christianity and just societal expectations in the late 1800s and 1900s. And then in the 70s a revival period started to spawn. It’s been on the increase ever since. But there’s still a lot of stigma and a lot of miseducation surrounding it. So the ethos of the song as a whole is to try to make Māori feel proud about our traditions and then to maybe educate people who don’t know.”
The music video for the song takes on a particular part of that history, the head trade. During the 19th and 20th centuries, British colonizers aimed to acquire preserved Māori heads for trade, leading to violence in Māori communities and the near eradication of moko.
“That was a part of the history that we wanted to go over in the video,” Tūranga explains. “And also bring awareness to the fact that yes, the trading happened in the 1800s. There are still a lot of these heads in possession around the world because of people who have traded them many generations later, you know? So a lot of museums, the British Museum is a famous one. They apparently have hundreds of these heads in the basement down there and refuse to return them. Some places are giving them back, which is great. So the song is hopefully an opportunity to remind people that there are still more out there, and if people do know where these things are, we can get them returned.”
While the band’s work is deeply embedded in Māori heritage and traditions like moko, the band has also sought out connection with Indigenous communities worldwide. Touring globally has given them a chance to connect with other Native peoples who share similar histories of colonization and resistance.
“Last time we were in North America, we headlined the Navajo Metal Fest in Gallup,” Tūranga recalls. “We meet people all over the world that resonate with our music from the Indigenous content side of things. We’ve had Sámi people from Finland, and all the way to North America here. When we were in Canada last week, we noticed a lot of First Nations coming to the shows. They would bring us awesome gifts and weavings and things. It’s a really awesome opportunity to have international cultural exchange with these people that are so different, and on the other side of the world, but very familiar at the same time. When we play for the Navajo, it’s this weird thing where you feel like you’re going home. You just happen to be in the middle of the desert.”
“They’ve got these weirdly similar lived experiences of their ancestors,” Henry chimes in.
Following the close of their North America tour, the band returns home to tour New Zealand for the first time since 2020. They will be playing alongside their friends in Shepherds Reign, a band that incorporates indigenous Samoan influences in metal. Alongside Alien Weaponry, bands like Shepherds Reign and Pull Down the Sun are developing a unique body of Polynesian metal that speaks to Indigenous experiences in the south Pacific.
Ultimately, Alien Weaponry hopes their music speaks to the Māori experience while also resonating with listeners worldwide.
Tūranga says: “Even though we’re singing in Māori about things Māori specifically, they are things that people can resonate with and find applicable to their own historical strife or situations and experiences. The colonialism thing, even though we talk about it in the context of Māori, is not a unique experience to Māori. There are people all over the world that can experience the effects of colonization. And so that’s a really awesome thing to see. When you think you’re coming from the middle of nowhere New Zealand at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and you’re playing in Canada, and you’ve got people coming out from Cree or Blackfoot Nations that are like, “Hey, we really love your music, and it really resonated!” And they’ll bring us a whole bunch of stuff. It’s really sick, eh? It’s one of my favorite bits about doing these tours.”
Listen to Alien Weaponry on Bandcamp, YouTube, or Spotify. Te Ra releases March 28 via Napalm Records.
All photos by Professor Guanaco
