ALIEN WEAPONRY release video for 'Taniwha', featuring LAMB OF GOD's RANDY BLYTHE
21-02-2025
New Zealand’s ALIEN WEAPONRY has released a music video for the song “Taniwha”, featuring a guest appearance by LAMB OF GOD‘s Randy Blythe. In the clip, the modern groove metal trio finds itself face to face with puppet masters of corporate greed and overconsumption, providing a thought-provoking backdrop to one of the most aggressive, death-metal leaning offerings on ALIEN WEAPONRY‘s recently released third album, “Te Rā”.
Watch “Taniwha” below.
ALIEN WEAPONRY comments on the “Taniwha” video: “We are super excited to share something we have been working on for a while.
“We felt honored to have the opportunity to collaborate with the mighty Randy Blythe on our song ‘Taniwha’ off of our latest album, so it only made sense to have him be a part of the music video too! We wanted to create something special for this one, and we are stoked with how it turned out!”
ALIEN WEAPONRY bassist and backing vocalist Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds told Rolling Stone Australia that the collaboration with Blythe came about when Randy privately messaged Tūranga after seeing one of his Māori culture posts on social media.
“I was sitting in my car listening to demos and thought, ‘This song needs something… it needs Randy,'” he said. “I didn’t tell anyone in the band in case he said no.”
According to Rolling Stone Australia, Blythe was originally slated to appear on a different “Te Rā” song, “Hanging By A Thread”, but producer Josh Wilbur made the decision to scrap the idea due to the track’s overlap with the lyrics on LAMB OF GOD‘s song “Nevermore”, off the latter band’s 2022 LP “Omens”.
Blythe ended up contributing his own lyrics to “Taniwha” — even the Māori ones — and recorded his verse in his own living room.
“It wasn’t just a name-drop moment,” Tūranga told Rolling Stone Australia. “It felt like a real, meaningful collaboration. Lewis (Raharuhi De Jong, guitar/vocals), who worships LAMB OF GOD, was over the moon.”
Watch the previously released “1000 Friends” and “Mau Moko” below.
On “Te Rā”, listeners can hear ALIEN WEAPONRY doubling down on the aggression in the verses before applying temperance, especially in the case of “Taniwha”, a death metal-leaning banger featuring the particularly raw aforementioned guest vocal from Blythe. Lyrically, there’s a noticeable tilt towards despondency, hopelessness, and frustration on “Te Rā”. While bassist Tūranga Porowini Morgan-Edmonds‘s lyrics in Māori on songs like “Tama-nui-te-rā” and “Ponaturi” draw from the themes of history, battle lore and mysticism that made the first two albums so rich, frontman/guitarist Lewis Raharuhi de Jong‘s English-language lyrics illustrate the impact when culture collides with disenfranchisement day to day. “Crown” and “Hanging By A Thread” take us into the headspace where struggle pushes people to the brink of desperation, while on “Blackened Sky” and “1000 Friends”, Lewis addresses universal woes like the looming threat of World War III and the damaging effects of social media. On album closer “Te Kore”, Tūranga dives into primordial nothingness at the root of the Māori origin story, while on “Mau Moko”, he finds the middle ground between these perspectives. Taken as a whole, “Te Rā” grapples with what it’s like to be caught in the pull of divergent cultures — not just for the descendants of colonized people, but for all of us.
ALIEN WEAPONRY have solidified themselves as one of the greatest young metal bands of their generation with renewed musical tenacity and crucial messaging. “Te Rā” is a bold, unwavering cry for a future in which we can all take part in the legacy of peoples like the Māori and others all around us – people who, if they aren’t seen, most certainly need to be heard.
ALIEN WEAPONRY frontman/guitarist Lewis Raharuhi de Jong adds: “We really stepped it up this time, as we understood that this album had to go further. We went through a lot of songs and scrapped entire sections of songs. We kept working them and working them until we got them right. Then, with the way we were pushing ourselves musically, I knew it was important to challenge myself lyrically as well. This time I delved into difficult emotional places and mental states. There’s a lot of existential dread running through the album, and I tried to find the right words to describe the indescribable.”
“Te Rā” track listing:
01. Crown
02. Mau Moko
03. 1000 Friends
04. Hanging By A Thread
05. Tama-nui-te-rā
06. Myself To Blame
07. Taniwha (feat. Randy Blythe)
08. Blackened Sky
09. Te Riri O Tāwhirimātea
10. Ponaturi
11. Te Kore
Henry Te Reiwhati de Jong – Drums, Backing vocals
Lewis Raharuhi de Jong – Guitars, Lead vocals
Tūranga Porowini Morgan-Edmonds – Bass, Backing vocals
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