Alien Weaponry are very drained. After I video-call singer/guitarist Lewis de Jong and bassist Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds, the New Zealanders have simply returned to Aotearoa after a whirlwind two months of touring: they supported Slayer guitarist Kerry King’s solo band throughout North America, then nearly instantly dove right into a headline run throughout their dwelling nation. Now they’re in the midst of a sequence of interviews to advertise their new album, Te Rā.

“We’ve accomplished eight weeks of touring in 2025 alone, and that’s greater than we’ve accomplished in a single 12 months over the previous three, 4 years,” summarises Morgan-Edmonds, with he and his bandmate’s exhaustion palpable. The place the bassist joins our name along with his digital camera off, de Jong routinely mutes himself to set free a string of coughs.

Nonetheless, that is what you endure when the trade-off is attending to play in one in every of heavy steel’s greatest buzz bands. Co-founded by de Jong and his drummer brother Henry when the pair had been eight and 10 respectively, Alien Weaponry have wowed audiences and fellow artists alike with their Māori-language groove steel. Now aged between 22 and 25, they’ve unloaded three albums of acutely aware anthems, raging towards imperialism whereas sharing tales and customs from their native tradition.

After their music went viral within the mid-to-late 2010s, the three-piece opened the primary stage at Obtain competition in 2019: a reserving that’s additionally affirmed the “rising star” standing of Trivium, Bloodywood and others. “That was indescribable to say the least,” a shaky-voiced Lewis remembers. “I used to be solely 17, and I’m fairly positive I had, like, half an hour of sleep that night time, which solely made the entire expertise 10 occasions extra enjoyable.”

Then, after Covid, the band supported Grammy-winning enviro-metal crusaders Gojira in arenas on two continents. “These excursions had been a fully big deal for us,” Lewis continues. “Gojira had been a band that me and my brother had been already followers of, years and years and years earlier than that. Simply seeing the dimensions and the workflow of these complete excursions was actually eye-opening. Additionally, attending to have human-to-human conversations with some people who we actually look as much as, I’m eternally grateful that I acquired to expertise that.”

Residing Language

With their ascent, Alien Weaponry have supplied hundreds of metalheads an introduction to Māori life and historical past. The indigenous Polynesians’ inhabitants is roughly a million in Aotearoa, however for the reason that nation’s colonisation, their methods have been threatened by pressured assimilation into Western customs. Solely 200,000 Kiwis can converse te reo, the Māori language, at a conversational stage.

Lewis and Henry are Dutch-Māori, whereas Morgan-Edmonds (who joined the band in 2020) is Scottish-Māori. The brothers’ first language was te reo they usually attended kura kaupapa – Māori-language immersion faculty – earlier than being pressured to modify to English-language schooling. “After we did that, principally 98 p.c of the vocabulary simply left my mind,” Lewis remembers.

The frontman provides that having white pores and skin made the siblings really feel like outsiders in their very own tradition, an expertise shared by Morgan-Edmonds. Nonetheless, the band’s songs nonetheless relay their folks’s myths and doc the atrocities they’ve suffered. 2019 single Ahi Kā, as an illustration, is about Auckland Metropolis Council evicting the native Ngāti Whātua folks from their village after which burning it down, in an try and ‘beautify’ the world for a royal go to. In the meantime, 2021’s Hatupatu takes its title from a rangatira (tribal chief) who in accordance with legend hid within a rock to flee the monster Kurangaituku.

I ask why the band discover it so very important to relate Māori tales when, in their very own phrases, they felt “othered” from their very own folks rising up. “Typically you simply don’t select, you recognize?” solutions Morgan-Edmonds. “All of us, we’ve got Māori mother and father and, in New Zealand, we reside within the nation of our personal folks. It simply turns into part of you, as a result of that’s the character of cultural upbringing.”

Fantasy and Legend

Alien Weaponry’s embodiment of a lot of Māori tradition – its language, its myths, its historical past – has led to many headlines and observers boiling the band right down to ‘Māori steel’. Nonetheless, as Morgan-Edmonds factors out, their music isn’t just for their very own tradition, they usually’ve seen crowds around the globe figuring out with their lyrics.

“We performed in Albuquerque, New Mexico [during the tour with Kerry King this year],” the bassist displays, “and an enormous chunk of the viewers that got here out was from the Navajo Nation, a Native American nation over there within the US. They connect themselves to our music as a result of it’s the same factor: indigenous satisfaction, additionally reflecting on indigenous struggles and colonialism. So, when you might have one thing that claims ‘Māori steel’, I do suppose it’s vital for the viewers. Illustration does much more than what lots of people suppose it does.”

It’s not all been dream bookings, although. In 2022, Alien Weaponry performed what ought to have been a pinch-me slot opening for Weapons N’ Roses on the 50,000-capacity Eden Park in Auckland. Throughout an interview shortly afterwards, Lewis grumbled in regards to the lack of attendees singing in te reo, given he’d beforehand seen audiences achieve this in nations as far-flung as Spain.

“I assume that’s most likely simply Weapons N’ Roses’ demographic,” he says extra diplomatically right now. “I really seen on this final New Zealand tour, there have been lots of people singing all of the lyrics, a whole lot of youthful folks within the crowd, a whole lot of Māori within the crowd. It was actually fascinating and funky to see.”

On current albums – Te Rā and its 2021 predecessor, Tangaroa – Alien Weaponry don’t simply talk about Māori subjects; additionally they discuss broader points from a Māori perspective. For instance, Tangaroa’s title monitor laments local weather change, marine litter and overfishing by personifying the ocean as Tangaroa, the Māori god of the ocean. On the brand new album, Mau Moko doesn’t clarify the customized of Māori tattooing (tā moko) as a lot because it lambasts those that fetishise such practices. “You displayed our pores and skin as spectacle! Now we have taken again our custom!” Lewis roars in te reo.

Morgan-Edmonds, who wrote the music’s lyrics, acquired moko kanohi – a facial tattoo – on the tail finish of 2021. “I stroll round with this factor that undoubtedly marks me as Māori,” he says. “I’m experiencing this very unusual factor now, the place the acceptance from Māori has been astronomical. I’ve been acknowledged by Māori – out in public, by strangers, by my circle of relatives – 10 occasions over what I ever skilled rising up. On the opposite finish of it, you get a lot extra hostility from those that are anti-that. I’m representing Maori, and I’m nonetheless representing Scottish and British, so I’m all the time representing all my heritage at anybody time.”

Stadium Prepared

The bassist additionally wrote most of the riffs on Te Rā alongside Lewis. The album options a lot tighter and heavier songs than the extra sprawling Tangaroa, and the band brazenly cite the Gojira tour, the place they performed in entrance of hundreds night time in and night time out, as an affect.

“We seen that among the songs [from Tangaroa] that we actually preferred listening to at dwelling didn’t essentially translate reside very nicely,” Morgan-Edmonds admits. “So, once we had been writing these songs, one of many issues behind our minds was, how do we expect this will probably be acquired reside?”

He provides, “All through the three excursions with Gojira, we chopped and altered our setlist each tour to attempt to finetune a set that acquired the largest response from a crowd that predominantly had no concept who we had been. That was a giant lesson.”

At time of writing, Alien Weaponry don’t have any reside dates introduced for after Te Rā’s launch. Nonetheless, even of their post-tour tiredness, the band are fiercely bold. Absolutely, headlining the form of venues they supported Gojira in is on the prime of the to-do record? “After all!” Lewis rapidly responds. “Nobody could be like, ‘Nah, that may suck! I’d hate to headline an enviornment!’”

Wanting even larger, I ask what they’d prefer to see sooner or later politically. Alien Weaponry make no declare of getting the solutions to the world’s ills, however they are saying that the persecution of their Māori tradition – and the race-based persecution that also exists in every single place – is a symptom of selfishness and distraction. These in energy, those that are after your cash and had been beforehand after your land, need you to show in your neighbours quite than these on the prime.

“A really small proportion of persons are making an attempt their hardest to take all people’s cash,” Morgan-Edmonds observes. “And, in doing that, they create these divides in order that the on a regular basis folks – whose cash is being ripped out of our pockets left, proper and centre by these small few – blame one another for it as an alternative of them.”

So… eat the wealthy? “Primarily,” the bassist replies. “Primarily.”

Te Rā is out now through Napalm.