Troy Rawhiti-Connell talks to Alien Weaponry about living and creating as Māori, and the toxicity of social media.
It’s a Friday morning in Tāmaki Makaurau when Lewis de Jong and Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds of Northland metal band Alien Weaponry join our Zoom call. They’re inside their tour bus, somewhere else on Earth, at some other time. “We’re in Houston, Texas,” they announce as if they’re on the tourism board. Bassist Tūranga’s voice booms overhead like an airliner while frontman-guitarist Lewis meerkats up from underneath with a quick “yeehaw!”
Alien Weaponry is growing into something much more serious than a twangy greeting. They’ve been those “reo Māori metallers” going back well before Covid times, long enough to challenge assertions of novelty or tokenism. They’ve recorded three full-length albums, been the subjects of an acclaimed, feature-length documentary, and played the world’s biggest and most demanding festival stages. All this, and they’re still young – early-20s young.
The band members are also fair-skinned Māori, all three of them. Lewis and his older brother Henry (drums) have heard variations of “you don’t look Māori” at least since tunes like ‘Urutaa’ first surfaced on YouTube in 2016, two years before the release of Tū, the debut album.
New album Te Rā is the most technically complex and musically advanced album in the Alien Weaponry canon, with a clear whakapapa back to the most important band in Lewis’ life, American groove metallers Lamb of God. ‘Crown’ and ‘Mau Moko’ rumble through the speakers like the sun Māui vowed to humble in the old legends. Put these tunes in a playlist with peak Metallica, Sepultura, and Trivium, and they would sound right at home. Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe guests on ‘Taniwha’, lending his signature screams, and a voiceover to chill the blood: “Now you die beneath the shadow of the long white cloud.”
Throughout Te Rā’s tracklist, these toa tāne open up about living and creating as Māori, and keeping their mental health in check while social media creates and uncreates reality as fast as fingers can doomscroll. These dynamic tensions between youth and maturity, te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā, and the goodness and toxicity of social media, gave us a foundation to kōrero.
The Spinoff: So ‘Crown’, the opening track of Te Rā. Your first two albums started with more of a jogging pace. This one, you decided to blow up everybody’s speakers.
Tūranga: There was a moment where we thought, “do we want to start in a similar fashion like the others?” I think we did. We had the song, a nice opening track that did that kind of buildup thing. Our producer Josh Wilbur always loved ‘Crown’ – it was one of his faves during the recording process, so we were like “OK, let’s just bang right off.” It’s also one of the two bilingual songs. It was an option to open the album in both languages – if you’re an LP listener, the B-side also starts with the other bilingual track, which is ‘Taniwha’.
On being a bilingual band, Lewis, you sing about “culture for profit” in ‘Crown’. As Māori artists and businessmen, how have you navigated selling your art? Have you had any hōhā?
Lewis: I always try and be mindful of doing things correctly, through the right methods. We get everything double-checked and proofed. It’s not as simple as just writing the lyrics out and going “oh yeah, there’s a song, sweet – it’s got Māori in it.”
Tūranga: Like many things Māori, Alien Weaponry is a community effort. When the album comes out, take a look at that thank you list. Some of it is practical, like the people who give us our guitars and stuff, and then you’ve got people like Rōpata Taylor, shoutout, a whanaunga of mine who took every lyric and gave it the rundown. On the ‘Mau Moko’ music video, it was the first time we had a Māori director. We had a tōhunga of tā moko to make sure the visuals were alright. There’s a lot to make sure the tikanga is in mind, first and foremost.
Lewis, ‘1000 Friends’ is not the first time you’ve gone after the hollowness of social media. What worries you about it?
Lewis: I get it as a marketing tool but I feel like it’s a recipe for people to feel like shit, and comparing themselves to other people’s supposed lives. But it’s obviously not what their life’s like. It’s just their portrayal. I’m not against social media as such. I’m against some of the outcomes and the mental health issues it can cause. When you click on the comments, it’s people saying shit to each other that they’d never say to each to other in real life.
Tūranga, you’re basically an influencer. How does this resonate with you?
Tūranga: I have a pretty solid base to be able to create freely without taking on all the stuff Lewis is talking about, and so many people don’t. People should just be nice to each other, but people aren’t. That’s the sad reality and if you can’t hack it, it’s a dangerous place. Social media is an awesome way for me to share our culture with people who would never normally absorb it. My comments section is a rare breath of fresh air because, otherwise, Lewis is right. I totally resonate with ‘1000 Friends’.
This brings us to ‘Hanging by a Thread’ and ‘Myself to Blame’. Across your three albums, there are “shit sucks” songs. They’re really raw. Lewis, how are you affected by these sentiments while you’re writing and recording?
Lewis: A lot of the time I feel people expect you to be like “you must be so stoked all the time, you get to do this, you must be nothing but happy.” Well, sometimes I’m fucking miserable and yeah, I want to write songs about it. It’s OK to not be fucking positive and happy all the time. It’s just not realistic. But when you channel that into art, you’re still creating something positive.
I always find after I write songs like that, I have people going “oh my god, are you OK?” I’m fine, I’ve written the song. I’ve released that thing. At the end of the day, I’m still a young fulla. I’ve experienced a few things but I’ve still got a lot of learning, shit to figure out in my own head and my own life. Delving into those places for good is better than just feeling like shit.
Before he passed away, Kiingi Tuheitia said this: “just be Māori all day, every day.” What does being Māori look like in your everyday?
Tūranga: For someone like me, it’s all over my body. It’s a little less hideable than it once was. I spent all those years presenting like the usual pale-skinned Māori, people going “are you this, are you that?” so it came down to the way you carried yourself, when you’re following certain aspects of tikanga. We notice this a lot on tour, outside the usual boundaries of te ao Māori, the core things like manaakitanga, whanaungatanga. In America, you notice the lack of it [aside from] the Navajo culture. You would think it’s just being nice, good habits, ethics I guess.
Lewis: Having a sense of humility. There’s a lot of ego in America, a lot of “I’m better than you, I’m richer than you.” Shit that would not slide when you go back home. People would say “listen to your elders, shut the fuck up, humble yourself.” I’m always thinking “what would my whānau think of what I’m doing right now? Would they be proud of me, or disappointed?”
Alien Weaponry’s new album, Te Rā, is out now
