Latest / The Downbeat / ALIEN WEAPONRY: Māori Tattoos, Culture, and Meeting Your Idols

Transcript

ALIEN WEAPONRY: Māori Tattoos, Culture, and Meeting Your Idols · The Downbeat

• 0:00
  Hey guys, welcome back to the Downbeat podcast.
• 0:02
  My guests on the podcast this week are Taranga and Lewis of
• 0:05
  Alien Weaponry. Alien Weaponry is a band hailing
• 0:09
  from New Zealand and every member of the band is of Maori
• 0:12
  descent. Now I knew nothing about the
• 0:16
  indigenous people of New Zealand and they schooled me for 2 1/2
• 0:19
  hours. We also talk about their music,
• 0:21
  their influences, touring, there's a bunch of stuff, but
• 0:24
  mostly it is a history lesson and a super, super interesting
• 0:28
  one. Before we get started though, I
• 0:30
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• 2:28
  We're here. What's going on here?
• 2:30
  We made it. 9 hour drive to Lewis.
• 2:32
  Thanks for coming on the podcast.
• 2:34
  Thanks for having us. Yes, 9 hour drive from We Will
• 2:36
  Chicago last night. Chicago and the snow freezing.
• 2:40
  Blah. Chicago this time of year is
• 2:42
  like top three cities I don't want to be.
• 2:45
  Packing up our gear outside in the snow in our stage outfits
• 2:49
  which is 1 layer basically hell. What's your stage outfit?
• 2:54
  Talk me through that. What?
• 2:55
  My stage outfit actually is just a pair of pants and no shirt.
• 2:59
  So I I have a shirt side of stage ready to go.
• 3:02
  Especially for these tours because it's like brutal.
• 3:04
  Yeah. Same pretty much.
• 3:06
  I mean I used to do the shirtless thing too until I gave
• 3:08
  up on the cold weather thing. So now there's at least AT shirt
• 3:10
  on top. It probably works a bit better.
• 3:12
  It does work a little bit better.
• 3:13
  Yeah, it does work a lot better in New Zealand.
• 3:15
  It's great for summer tours, I know.
• 3:17
  And even though we're Pacific Island, like we're north boys as
• 3:19
  well. So we're from the winterless
• 3:21
  North, not the South Island, OK, which is so much warmer inverse.
• 3:26
  Of Auckland's at the top, Wellington's at the bottom.
• 3:29
  Wellington's at the bottom of the north.
• 3:30
  Of the North. Oh, and then there's the.
• 3:32
  South Island. That's where the cold.
• 3:33
  So you're the South Island completely not on?
• 3:37
  No, we're top of the North. Yes.
• 3:40
  So we're like 3 hours north of Auckland, Auckland.
• 3:43
  So we're kind of the the, the tropical.
• 3:46
  See, in my head Auckland was the top of that island, but it's not
• 3:49
  then. It's like a quarter, maybe 1/3.
• 3:53
  Yeah, I think it's about four hours up to the tippy top from
• 3:58
  Auckland or No 6 longer. Than that.
• 4:00
  Six to seven, actually. Does it get cold?
• 4:02
  Not like this. Yeah, like I said, amazing.
• 4:05
  Where we will raise the. Celsius, the very coldest that
• 4:08
  we ever get in where I'm from. Say that again, sorry.
• 4:10
  It's probably like doesn't get much colder than 10 Celsius,
• 4:14
  maybe 1 Celsius on a really bad day.
• 4:17
  Like if you see a frost, you're like, oh boy.
• 4:19
  Doesn't he doesn't hit freezing? Not very really.
• 4:23
  I mean, yeah, we're known as the winterless N, you know, So it's
• 4:26
  it's it's. Like sounds black metal but like
• 4:27
  the opposite. Right, right, right.
• 4:29
  And it's so when we come over here, it's like, goodness
• 4:33
  gracious, South Island gets a lot colder, though of course,
• 4:36
  you know, Southern hemisphere flipped, of course.
• 4:37
  So when the South get colder. When you get the tour offer
• 4:40
  through and it's a winter in America that you look at it and
• 4:43
  you're like, yeah, but. Yes.
• 4:46
  And that's the second one we've done this year.
• 4:47
  We did January, February with Kerry King at the start of this
• 4:51
  year. Oh my gosh, yeah, just just
• 4:53
  winter again. And then we had nothing in all
• 4:57
  of the summer and we're coming back now for this beginning of
• 5:00
  winter. It's like, nice.
• 5:02
  Whoever writes that schedule, you're the man.
• 5:05
  It's almost the same. Whenever Stray did like that
• 5:09
  side of the world, we didn't, unfortunately.
• 5:10
  We just came back from Australia a couple of months ago.
• 5:12
  We didn't get to do New Zealand that time.
• 5:14
  But like it's always they're like, yeah, you want to go in
• 5:16
  August? I'm like, really?
• 5:19
  No, I'd rather go when it's fucking freezing here.
• 5:22
  Right. No one wants to hit a Pacific
• 5:24
  island in the winter. I loved New Zealand so much, but
• 5:29
  I have to admit I didn't get to see a lot of it because we did.
• 5:35
  We we flew to Auckland and then it was the Dr. Auckland to
• 5:38
  Wellington and we were ready to do it.
• 5:40
  And then we were going to stop off on a lot of beautiful places
• 5:43
  on the way. All the, all the Lord of the
• 5:45
  Rings, Lord of the Rings, yeah, yeah, Lord of the Rings.
• 5:48
  All of the Lord of the Rings spaces got into the van.
• 5:52
  Fuck, you probably know the guy. There's a guy that owns a bar in
• 5:56
  Auckland and he also owns a bar that does venues in Wellington.
• 6:00
  Oh yeah, it would have been the Valhalla guy I.
• 6:03
  Can't remember that. That's the fucking guy.
• 6:05
  He was our promoter for our New Zealand tour at the start of the
• 6:07
  year and he drove us, you know. Yeah, OK, so lovely guy, no
• 6:10
  disrespect to him. We've just done like a, a world
• 6:13
  tour and we're getting in the van at the end of the night in
• 6:17
  Auckland to drive all night. And he just bought that bar in
• 6:22
  Wellington that he owned. So he was transporting a load of
• 6:25
  glasses from both bars. We get into the van and then
• 6:31
  someone feels something scurrying along their legs and I
• 6:34
  was like, what the fuck was that?
• 6:35
  And everyone was like, shut up. You're just, you're freaking
• 6:37
  out. Turn the light on in the van and
• 6:39
  there's like 100 and 5200 cockroaches.
• 6:43
  No in. The in the fucking glasses.
• 6:46
  And I was like, I'm really sorry, boys.
• 6:47
  It's like one thing in the world that I'm scared of and it's
• 6:50
  cockroaches. I was like, I'm there to fucking
• 6:52
  fly. Yeah, I just went.
• 6:53
  I stayed in the airport and I got a flight.
• 6:55
  I missed out on all the beautiful countryside.
• 6:57
  Yeah, yeah. And it is a good drive.
• 6:59
  Walking to Wellington is a good drive.
• 7:00
  You get a good range of the country doing that.
• 7:02
  But I I wouldn't blame you. I don't.
• 7:05
  Blame you, I'm not a big fan of creepy crawlies either.
• 7:08
  Bro there's so many. My asshole was just so up this
• 7:11
  seat just remembering it. Yeah, we had a in Riverside on
• 7:14
  this tour. We had the Roach Hotel which was
• 7:16
  a nice fun experience. You mean the Roach?
• 7:18
  Hotel. Yeah.
• 7:19
  Well, we like, we were playing in San Diego and it was only
• 7:23
  like some like an hour and a half drive to Riverside.
• 7:25
  And so we were like, Oh yes, it's gonna be like one of the
• 7:27
  tours, like we're in a van on this tour.
• 7:28
  So it's like you're just doing van hotel.
• 7:31
  And we were like, oh, it's so looking forward to like a short
• 7:33
  drive after the show, get a sleep in at the hotel, whatever.
• 7:36
  And we start the drive and then like we're 20 minutes away and
• 7:39
  there's a crash on the highway. So we were step sat there for
• 7:42
  like 2 1/2 three hours. And we're like, oh, come on,
• 7:45
  man, Great start. Yeah, supposed night off, you
• 7:48
  know, short drive night. And then we get to this hotel,
• 7:51
  we pull up into the rooms and then.
• 7:53
  Yeah. You and Jurgen just like put
• 7:55
  your stuff on the bed, got in your undies and got in the bed.
• 7:58
  And like, I think your room was slightly less dingy than ours.
• 8:02
  But we got into the room and we were like, yo, like we're not
• 8:07
  fast parts, but like we got in there.
• 8:10
  The deadbolt on the door had been ripped off violently.
• 8:15
  They were like bullet holes in the door.
• 8:18
  All the smoke detectors had been like violently ripped out of the
• 8:22
  ceiling. They were live cockroaches
• 8:26
  living underneath the mattress. I'm pretty sure I saw like a
• 8:30
  piece of blood soaked tissue left in the bathroom.
• 8:34
  I was like, dude, I don't even like want.
• 8:36
  I feel like I'm going to catch some shit just standing in this
• 8:40
  room. And so basically we're like,
• 8:42
  yeah, now let's find a different place.
• 8:45
  So we obviously was slightly more expensive to find a
• 8:49
  different place on short notice. And then we spent the whole
• 8:51
  whole rest of the tour like arguing with this hotel chain
• 8:56
  trying to get our money back and they finally have refunded us.
• 8:59
  But we were like, what the heck? So.
• 9:01
  It turned what was supposed to be an hour and a half drive
• 9:03
  into. We found the next hotel at like
• 9:05
  5:30 in the. Morning.
• 9:06
  Oh, you might as well have been fucking driving.
• 9:08
  We might as well have just driven in all states.
• 9:10
  It was like it was a whole thing.
• 9:12
  And so that was like right at the beginning of the tour too.
• 9:14
  So then every hotel after that, regardless of the quality, felt
• 9:17
  like the hill luxury. I mean, I'm not a fastball
• 9:22
  either. I think I'd probably draw the
• 9:23
  line at cock cockroaches in the bed that I'm sleeping or the
• 9:26
  van. It's my one regret though.
• 9:28
  I was like why? Why couldn't I have just lived
• 9:30
  with that cockroach infested van and I could have seen one of the
• 9:34
  most beautiful countries in the world?
• 9:36
  Understandable, though I wouldn't have done that.
• 9:38
  Is it a culture shock for you when you come to the States?
• 9:42
  Definitely like this is. I mean, this is your second or
• 9:46
  third time in the States, but this is my.
• 9:49
  Own tour at least yeah on my ex-girlfriend lives in LA so
• 9:52
  I've spent a lot of the past few years back and forth over here
• 9:56
  but LA on its own is a culture shock yes it's.
• 9:59
  Different it's a different mentality for sure, but it's
• 10:03
  kind of cool. You know, like you grow up
• 10:04
  watching West and movies are like movies that are primarily
• 10:08
  sit in America and kind of have that as the main culture.
• 10:14
  And it's kind of like you come over here and you're like, oh
• 10:17
  dude, people like that's how people are in like like you hear
• 10:21
  voices that you only see on TV and you're like, what the.
• 10:26
  Yeah, I'm the same. When I moved here and I was
• 10:27
  like, Oh my God, Twinkies. A real one, right?
• 10:30
  Right, right, right. The obscene amount of processed
• 10:33
  things, you know, packaging, you know.
• 10:35
  I do find it hard sometimes because I've got issues.
• 10:38
  So sometimes I like, you know, I do no disrespect to the States,
• 10:43
  but I find the food in New Zealand to be fresher and less
• 10:47
  like gone. Through.
• 10:49
  Oh yeah, you know, it's. I think it's one of the worst
• 10:53
  foods in the world in terms of like the laws right around like
• 10:57
  freshness and pesticides and stuff like that.
• 11:00
  Delicious. Some of.
• 11:01
  It but then some of it you're like.
• 11:06
  What do you eat when you're on tour then?
• 11:08
  Because you just did a nine hour drive from Chicago, there can't
• 11:11
  be that many places to stop that's.
• 11:12
  Good. There's a lot of like either I
• 11:16
  don't eat for six hours or I get like a gas station thing, which
• 11:19
  is never like my what I want necessarily, but it's like I'm
• 11:24
  hungry and I need to eat. But I do find that Asian foods
• 11:29
  usually pretty good for like a pellet cleanser, you know, like
• 11:32
  just a good thing of fried rice. And I'm like, I can, you know,
• 11:37
  digest. It's not so greasy.
• 11:39
  But like, I do end up, you know, just heading up like burger
• 11:43
  spots and stuff, you know, because they're there and
• 11:46
  they're open late. Is there like a universal place
• 11:50
  that you know that you'll want to eat if you see it?
• 11:52
  That you'll stop to get it. In and out it's.
• 11:54
  Pretty good. It's pretty standard, you know,
• 11:56
  like it's just there. One of the most flawless burgers
• 11:59
  in the world. Yeah.
• 12:00
  Like the epitome I think of a burger.
• 12:02
  It's #1. And still relatively affordable
• 12:05
  on the scale. It's so cheap for whatever.
• 12:07
  It is blown up like everybody else has.
• 12:09
  I'm definitely on tour. I'm like a Mexican food, that's
• 12:12
  the staple. For me, Oh yeah, real Mexican
• 12:14
  food or Chipotle. Either all I had literally a
• 12:18
  life changing burrito and San Diego.
• 12:21
  San Diego. Yeah, I keep thinking it's
• 12:22
  Phoenix for some reason, but I went in there like 11 bucks for
• 12:25
  like burrito, like 3 different salsas and a drink.
• 12:28
  And I was like, Oh yeah, got the thing, like walk back to the
• 12:31
  green room and I like bought it out of the packaging and I was
• 12:36
  like, oh, and then I took a bite and I was.
• 12:37
  Like, Oh my God. I was like literally felt sick
• 12:41
  and depressed before eating it, ate it and I was like felt
• 12:44
  happy, healthy and like 1,000,000 bucks.
• 12:46
  I was like no way. Like for me it's like they're
• 12:49
  like like the ex bodybuilder and me thinks it's the perfect
• 12:52
  package. I knew there was.
• 12:53
  I knew you mentioned trainer. You know, it's like this guy's
• 12:56
  no. It's like rice protein.
• 12:59
  It's like wrapped. It's like the most perfect thing
• 13:01
  ever. They're still relatively
• 13:02
  affordable. Like we we did a tour with the
• 13:04
  Kerry King at the start of the year and they're a Phil Demos
• 13:08
  guitar tech Max Karen. Yeah, he like would eat a
• 13:11
  burrito three meals a day, every single day.
• 13:14
  And I was like watching him and I was like, man, I think he
• 13:16
  might be onto something because like Mexican food, New Zealand
• 13:18
  is, it's a nearly non existent thing.
• 13:21
  Couldn't be. Further right there, it's like
• 13:23
  coming into into fashion now, you know, like as everyone raves
• 13:26
  about it over here, it's like the general popularity, but like
• 13:29
  it's not nearly as accessible as it is while we're on the road.
• 13:32
  You know what though, Funnily enough, I did have an amazing
• 13:35
  burrito in Wellington. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually,
• 13:38
  Wellington does have good burritos.
• 13:40
  There's like one place and it was like like because I my like
• 13:43
  autistic food. I've been told it's an autistic
• 13:46
  food is I eat burritos like that would be at home.
• 13:51
  I will eat burritos three times a day because of the same
• 13:54
  exactly the same reason you said.
• 13:55
  I bet that pour on the same. Ecum, yeah, probably is.
• 13:59
  It like popular spot. Relatively close to where?
• 14:02
  Very close. We played some little bar
• 14:03
  Common. Yeah, probably the same.
• 14:05
  There's a spot in Rotorua and I like that.
• 14:09
  Sounded amazing. Say that again.
• 14:12
  It's actually where me and the drummer, that's where we
• 14:15
  ancestor from. But it was, it was like I
• 14:20
  couldn't believe that I found it in New Zealand because it was
• 14:23
  it, it tasted so authentic. It honestly, it bit like 80 to
• 14:29
  90% of Mexican. I've even had it in America and
• 14:31
  I was like, get out of it, Yeah. Well, it was like they were
• 14:36
  owned by Mexicans, run by Mexicans.
• 14:38
  So it's like it's but with New Zealand ingredients.
• 14:42
  That's what I always think about that place because we all went
• 14:44
  to that place and we were filming our most of the alien
• 14:46
  weaponry music videos are filmed in in Rotorua because that's
• 14:49
  where like the Maori tourist experiences are.
• 14:53
  So it's where you can find the like replica villages and the
• 14:56
  sort of environmental look. And yeah, we were down there
• 14:59
  filming our videos for one of the the latest album, and Lewis
• 15:04
  was like, Oh my God, I found a great Mexican spot.
• 15:07
  When you say down there geographically, where is that?
• 15:09
  Yeah, it's mid country probably. East Coast in between.
• 15:15
  So it's like Lake Topo, which is smack bang in the middle of the
• 15:18
  North Island. And then there's the actual like
• 15:21
  East Coast. Rotorua is like kind of in the
• 15:23
  middle of those two. It's so interesting because
• 15:26
  like, I know nothing and you, you, you're going to educate me
• 15:30
  and the viewers and the listeners.
• 15:31
  I know nothing pretty much about New Zealand, nothing about Maori
• 15:35
  culture, so it's fascinating to hear it.
• 15:39
  Classes in session. Classes in session.
• 15:42
  You want to dive straight in. You want to dive straight.
• 15:44
  In we can go straight in man. Straight into class.
• 15:46
  All three of you are of Maori heritage, correct?
• 15:50
  Yeah. Is that something that is, you
• 15:53
  know, since birth or is it something that you've looked
• 15:56
  into like deep in your lineage? Or is it like your immediate
• 16:01
  family still are involved in Maori heritage?
• 16:06
  You know, like I know, I know literally nothing.
• 16:08
  I don't know if that's like, oh, I found out my ancestors or it's
• 16:12
  like you're born and your parents are like, you know, this
• 16:15
  is who you are. This is.
• 16:16
  It depends on your upbringing, you know, for me it was from
• 16:18
  birth, you know, but obviously anyone that is familiar with how
• 16:22
  colonization works and, and those sorts of things, there are
• 16:25
  plenty of people out there who are in today still finding that
• 16:29
  information now. So I was for, I think the boys
• 16:32
  are in the same boat. We were fortunate to have been
• 16:34
  away from the beginning, you know, raised in the culture,
• 16:38
  raised with the understanding that we are and always will be
• 16:43
  with both. Both of my parents are Maori, my
• 16:46
  grandmother is Scottish. No.
• 16:48
  Fucking way. Shout out the Orkney Islands.
• 16:51
  I'm like both my parents are Scottish so I'm technically
• 16:54
  Scottish but right. English accent lived in England.
• 16:56
  Right, right. Yeah, that'll explain Glasgow.
• 16:58
  Yeah, there we go. Yeah.
• 17:00
  Never been to the Orkney Islands.
• 17:01
  I would like to. I'm sure my grandmother would
• 17:02
  love me too, but so when it when it when you're in those
• 17:06
  fortunate circumstances where you get that knowledge from the
• 17:09
  get go, it's much easier to feel integrated and connected into
• 17:14
  the culture and Maori work on like a it's called the fucker
• 17:19
  Papa system, which is one of those words that makes a lot of
• 17:22
  unfamiliar laugh chuckle. A little bit.
• 17:24
  I just love every word that. You said so far, and that's the
• 17:28
  concept of lineage genealogy for Maori that stems even into the
• 17:35
  environment, the lands, mountains, rivers, oceans, our
• 17:41
  ancestral canoes in which the early proto Polynesian settlers
• 17:46
  arrived to New Zealand on 1000 years ago is all included in our
• 17:53
  concept of lineage. And so any living person on
• 17:57
  Earth that can make a connection to those things today can
• 18:02
  identify as Maori. Especially too, as you know, a
• 18:06
  lot of people around the world are familiar with the concept of
• 18:09
  blood quantum, which is like, I'm 1/2 this quarter, this 8th,
• 18:14
  divided up as many times as you want.
• 18:17
  But Maori are one of the fewer groups around the world that
• 18:21
  have kind of ignored that premise, you know, especially in
• 18:25
  countries like the United States or Canada.
• 18:27
  They actually have like, legal systems that divide their
• 18:31
  indigenous blood up into fractions in order to actually,
• 18:34
  like, legally identify based off of some arbitrary mathematics,
• 18:39
  however that works. Yeah, but New Zealand doesn't
• 18:43
  and. And Maori don't function on any
• 18:46
  of those systems. So in you'll see people who look
• 18:51
  very Maori like Moana type, you know like stereotypical look.
• 18:57
  And then you'll have the more fair skinned blonde, blue eyes
• 19:00
  and everything else in between. Kind of locked me, right?
• 19:03
  Yeah, and you can get the whole range now in in the modern day
• 19:08
  New Zealand. But to Maori, if you have a
• 19:11
  little bit in you, you're Maori. It's all it is, you know, if you
• 19:14
  can make a connection to that lineage that I talk about.
• 19:19
  But that's all it takes, you know, because their premises are
• 19:21
  like the concept around that is like a lot of people go, oh, my
• 19:25
  great, great grandfather was Maori.
• 19:28
  And then like the argument on our side of it is always in.
• 19:32
  Well, then, so is your great, great grandfather and then your
• 19:34
  great grandfather and then your grandfather and your father,
• 19:36
  like they're all still. It doesn't just disappear one
• 19:39
  day. I like that.
• 19:40
  Yeah. And so that's, that's one of the
• 19:42
  sort of things I think that helps our culture thrive in a
• 19:46
  way it does, you know, because a lot of people get shunned by
• 19:48
  that idea of splitting it up or you'd have only so much that you
• 19:51
  can't identify with that anymore.
• 19:54
  Of course, you can also then identify with everything else,
• 19:57
  like I said, Scottish ancestry, English ancestry in there, blah,
• 20:00
  blah, blah. But a lot of people like to
• 20:03
  think that you really can only pick one.
• 20:06
  Yeah, a lot of people like to funnel you.
• 20:08
  Forgive me for the interruption guys, but festival season is
• 20:10
  officially kicking off and I want to let you know about a
• 20:13
  little festival. The Downbeat's going to be out
• 20:15
  and I would love to see you there.
• 20:17
  This May Welcome to Rockville is at the world famous Daytona
• 20:21
  International Speedway in Daytona, Florida from May the
• 20:25
  7th to the 10th. If you've never been, this is
• 20:27
  the year that Rockville celebrates 15 years with over
• 20:30
  160 bands across four days and five stages.
• 20:34
  The lineup is absolutely mental just looking at it.
• 20:37
  You've got everything from Bring Me the Horizon, Architects and
• 20:40
  Motionless In White to Turnstile and Mycam.
• 20:43
  If you're like me and you also really like the really, really
• 20:47
  heavy stuff. I can't believe you can see
• 20:48
  Whitechapel, Behemoth, Cradle Of Filth, Day Aside, and
• 20:52
  Suffocation on the same bill as Foo Fighters and The Offspring.
• 20:55
  If you like horror movies, they've got Ice 9 Kills.
• 20:58
  If you like cartoons, they've got Death Clock.
• 21:00
  There is something for everyone. Four day and single day passes
• 21:04
  are on sale now with plenty of hotel packages and premium
• 21:07
  upgrades available including VIP and the Ultimate Daytona Owners
• 21:11
  Club. Visit Welcome to rockville.com,
• 21:14
  Check out the Mental Insane lineup, book your trip, and come
• 21:19
  join me at one of the premier rock and metal festivals of the
• 21:23
  year. A good example of that is like
• 21:25
  me and the drummer. My brothers ancestry is like our
• 21:30
  grandmother's multi so that makes our dad Maori but his
• 21:34
  father is Dutch and both my mother's parents are Dutch so
• 21:38
  people always were like oh you guys are white boys you know
• 21:42
  but. Maori.
• 21:44
  People or no, it's always it's always what we call Pacquiao,
• 21:48
  which are non Maori or yeah kind of we were always sort of looked
• 21:54
  at in a weird way by those people.
• 21:57
  They kind of used that as a as a reason to kind of invalidate
• 22:01
  what we were doing. Even though me and my brother
• 22:04
  were raised in a kind of Maori cope Papa and we went to cut a
• 22:07
  cope Papa Maori, which is basically Maori preschool and
• 22:11
  Maori, you know, secondary school.
• 22:16
  So that that was kind of we never got any of that from Maori
• 22:21
  because they understood that concept of fuck a pop up.
• 22:23
  But people that are outside of that kind of go half 1/4 hour
• 22:28
  and. Where your.
• 22:28
  Blood is diluted and that's not really how Maori think.
• 22:32
  Maori is if it's in you in any capacity.
• 22:35
  Yeah, you're Maori. That's so awesome.
• 22:37
  Yeah. And the interesting thing about
• 22:39
  what Lewis says too, is it's always interesting.
• 22:40
  Like more often than not to, if you are like leaving, let's say
• 22:46
  you are split just to entertain them, split half and half, then
• 22:51
  the half that they want you to pick is definitely the white.
• 22:55
  Yeah. You know, like.
• 22:56
  That's always how. That's why I had to clarify
• 22:58
  sounding like white people behaviour.
• 22:59
  You know, no one ever goes. Ah, well, then you're half Mali.
• 23:02
  Yeah, Like, no, you're us. Yeah.
• 23:05
  Like it's. Which is part of that mindset
• 23:07
  that the colonialism just brings subconsciously to, you know,
• 23:12
  half the time people just they just don't even know otherwise,
• 23:14
  you know, like half the time. I can't even blame them.
• 23:16
  It's just a lack of education otherwise, you know, in the way
• 23:20
  that the systems are built. Is there discrimination against
• 23:23
  Maoris? Again, I know, I know nothing.
• 23:26
  1000% yeah, it's. Like most indigenous groups
• 23:29
  around the world, you know, in their respective countries,
• 23:32
  Maori are always in the sort of misrepresented statistically and
• 23:38
  all the illegal or criminal situations or whatever the, the
• 23:42
  impoverished and things like that, which is the same patterns
• 23:45
  you see alcoholism and all those sorts of things that you just
• 23:48
  see amongst other minority groups all around the world.
• 23:50
  It's no different from Maori to, you know, currently government
• 23:53
  wise, we're in our most right wing government that we've had
• 23:57
  in a long time, if not even right.
• 24:00
  Same same back home and same here.
• 24:03
  The whole world seems to be running on that trend a little.
• 24:06
  Bit on that side of the pendulum swing.
• 24:07
  So it's no different for us back home.
• 24:10
  You know, this is where the interesting part about this
• 24:13
  experience though, as Maori, like yes, Maori are
• 24:16
  discriminated against. Am I discriminated against with
• 24:21
  pale skin and blue eyes the same as my cousins who are dark
• 24:24
  skinned, dark eyes? No, you know, it is very
• 24:27
  different and then that's where the sometimes, you know, Lewis
• 24:30
  said. He's obviously most of his
• 24:32
  experience in this. When you are of mixed ancestry,
• 24:37
  the negativity coming from non Maori is not always the case.
• 24:41
  You know, sometimes it does come from Maori and I would assume
• 24:45
  like more often than not it's due to the fact that they know
• 24:48
  that they are treated very differently for the way they
• 24:51
  look then the way that we are treated for the way that we
• 24:53
  look, you know. It's like when me and Henry, we
• 24:55
  went to Kurdakopapa Maori and we actually lift Kurdakopapapa
• 25:00
  Maori because we weren't accepted, because we were by far
• 25:05
  the whitest kids. It could have coped up a Maori
• 25:07
  and a lot of kids were kind of like, oh, well then you're not
• 25:11
  Maori because you're not brown like me.
• 25:13
  And you know, I, it's that's more of a social issue rather
• 25:18
  than a Maori issue. I would argue I.
• 25:21
  Was going to say as biracial myself, that's you're going to
• 25:24
  find that in any culture, whether both sides, whether what
• 25:27
  side it is, they're going to look at you differently because
• 25:31
  you are slightly different. Yes.
• 25:33
  And then like, human, that's the human thing, you know, Like for
• 25:36
  some reason us as humans are just obsessed.
• 25:38
  With Obsessed, you look. Different to me, I'm going to
• 25:40
  hate you and kill you over. It it's like it's a shame
• 25:43
  Americans, this is obviously this is obviously a joke come
• 25:47
  in. But like Americans, Americans
• 25:51
  wish they had that kind of Maori.
• 25:54
  If it's in you, Daniel Maori with being Irish.
• 25:58
  Oh yeah. Americans.
• 26:01
  Are fucking obsessed with like, well my great granddad's
• 26:04
  granddad's granddad's granddad's granddad when once went to
• 26:08
  Irish. Yeah I'm Irish.
• 26:09
  March 17th. That's fucking go.
• 26:12
  Yeah, and that's that's a real interesting conversation there
• 26:15
  and I might not even dive into it, but the I always think it's
• 26:18
  interesting. It's when I because, yeah,
• 26:20
  that's that's a whole thing. And I always find it's the
• 26:25
  ordering of the nationality or the ethnicity, right?
• 26:29
  It's like Irish American. I'm like, if anything, you're
• 26:32
  American Irish, the American foreign American, born and
• 26:35
  raised generations. And the American is first, you
• 26:38
  know, like to the rest of the world, you are from a
• 26:40
  nationality perspective, an American.
• 26:42
  But the tricky thing with that conversation is like, and this
• 26:45
  is one thing that we have with Maori because Maori becomes the
• 26:48
  word that encompasses all of it. You know, a lot of Maori don't
• 26:50
  even want to identify as New Zealanders in today's day and
• 26:53
  age. They want their nationality to
• 26:55
  be Maori, but Maori is also an ethnic group.
• 26:59
  It also happens to be the name for the, like, the culture,
• 27:02
  right? Yeah.
• 27:03
  Which causes a lot of confusion because American is the
• 27:06
  nationality. Like you're from like the United
• 27:09
  States of America or you're from the Americas North or whatever.
• 27:13
  You know, if South American people become South America.
• 27:15
  But, you know, if you're a Brazilian, you're a Brazilian,
• 27:17
  you're like, yeah, that's weird. So you get the nationality thing
• 27:20
  mixed up with the ethnic thing, ethnicity.
• 27:23
  So like, yes, you will be nationality, American United
• 27:26
  States, but sure, ethnically Polish, Irish, Italian, you
• 27:30
  know, like America's such a melting pot of culture.
• 27:32
  But because it's one of those places where most of the people
• 27:35
  here aren't like indigenously from here, there's no claim to
• 27:39
  the ethnic belonging of the land itself like Native Americans can
• 27:45
  right? And that's what causes that
• 27:46
  like. Cling on to like.
• 27:48
  Yeah. Because the Irish.
• 27:50
  That is what they are, you know, But they're not culturally Irish
• 27:54
  or from a nationality perspective, they're not Irish,
• 27:56
  but ethnically they're Irish. And like, so that's a whole
• 28:00
  mixed match Rubik's Cube that you.
• 28:02
  Didn't want to get into. Yeah, well, they're trying to
• 28:05
  go. Dusting way into it, that's a
• 28:07
  that's a big conversation, but it is we get that a lot with
• 28:09
  MALDI, you know, causes a lot of confusion, like what are you?
• 28:12
  Is it a nationality? Is it a A.
• 28:13
  Religion, I mean, I'm gonna be like that through this whole
• 28:16
  episode, 'cause I know fucking nothing.
• 28:17
  Yeah. Which is why I was so stoked
• 28:19
  when Natalie sent an e-mail. I was like, fuck yeah, I'll have
• 28:22
  those guys on love. I don't know fucking anything.
• 28:24
  So apologies if I pronounce anything wrong or are you say
• 28:28
  anything that's, you know, considered offensive because I
• 28:32
  don't know. And if I do, then like, be nice,
• 28:36
  but like, call me out on it, right?
• 28:38
  So other people can learn from it.
• 28:39
  Hey, well, you know, that's always the first step that most
• 28:41
  people don't even want to even. Yeah.
• 28:44
  Learn or correct their ignorance, whatever you want to
• 28:47
  call it, you know. And yeah, you've got the right
• 28:49
  guys, though. Anyway, living out of this
• 28:51
  anyway, the fucking tattoos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:55
  Question #1. We're not yet there yet, don't
• 28:59
  worry. Oh wait, we might actually be
• 29:00
  there. I've made a whole living over
• 29:01
  the past four years talking about my face.
• 29:04
  Oh yeah, I was gonna get into that.
• 29:06
  I mean, we can get into this. Just get into that now.
• 29:08
  Yeah, Your Tik Tok's. Banded off.
• 29:10
  Band-Aid off. Your Tik Tok's massive.
• 29:12
  Yeah, yeah, It blew up very quickly in a very small span of
• 29:17
  time. When did that happen?
• 29:18
  Two weeks after I got it done, like literally, it was like we'd
• 29:23
  finished that first of the Gojira tours, which was 2021 in
• 29:26
  the United States. With Knock loose was that?
• 29:28
  With Knock Loose, which was such an awesome tour and actually
• 29:31
  we've been dusting a lot of those same venues on this run
• 29:33
  with Avatar, which has been nice to like to see how it how those
• 29:37
  venues are with different crowds.
• 29:38
  But I'd had been talking with my mum what throughout that tour,
• 29:42
  like about getting it done when I got home, asked if she wanted
• 29:46
  to get hers, her face done on the same day, like Mecca, you
• 29:49
  know, because there's a lot of ritualism around it and
• 29:51
  significance and whatnot. And she was like, yeah, let's do
• 29:55
  it. So I literally, I was in the
• 29:56
  back of the bandwagon like messaging the artist.
• 29:59
  Like, can you do it like, but then we're going back on tour
• 30:02
  with Gojira. Like so if you can slot me in
• 30:05
  right before Christmas, he's like, I'll do the last slot
• 30:07
  before Christmas, which was like December 18th.
• 30:09
  And then in the new year, I was like scrolling through tick
• 30:12
  tock. I had never posted a tick tock
• 30:14
  in my life. I think I'd barely had it
• 30:16
  downloaded. It was like this the new thing
• 30:18
  for me. I'd kind of been like one of the
• 30:20
  those girls not not gonna get. The pan down.
• 30:22
  This a video I got tick tock for a week and tried to poster and I
• 30:28
  was like Nah, I don't want to be a TikTok guy and there's a video
• 30:31
  of me being like 2 are you ever going to get a TikTok and you're
• 30:34
  like. Absolutely.
• 30:35
  Not. And then you blew up on TikTok
• 30:38
  and I was like, all the irony. Yeah, yeah, because the
• 30:41
  management were like, you probably should have some
• 30:43
  personal tik toks, like because it's the thing right now.
• 30:45
  It's like, OK, and now I'm scrolling and then I seen this
• 30:48
  video come up about mukl, you know, about our face tattoos.
• 30:53
  And I was like, oh, I'll stitch it, whatever.
• 30:56
  Yep. See what that's all about?
• 30:57
  And it was like 10 million views or something.
• 31:00
  Ridiculous. This is post having it done.
• 31:02
  Yeah, just after you got it. The first video I ever posted on
• 31:04
  TikTok and it went like stupid viral.
• 31:06
  Great businessman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 31:10
  yeah, yeah. And and then before I know it,
• 31:14
  like, yeah, the virality comes, but then the questions, yeah,
• 31:18
  what the hell is that? What is?
• 31:20
  That we might ever get a job we. Might as well dive in because
• 31:25
  we're already in tattoo world, right?
• 31:27
  I actually did that as a joke. But we're going to be we're
• 31:30
  going to be in it now. So am I.
• 31:33
  How do you pronounce it? So oh.
• 31:35
  Moko. Moko Yeah.
• 31:37
  If I say it like that, is that OK from a wife?
• 31:39
  Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. You know, we're actually this
• 31:42
  little over all the years of doing the social media and
• 31:46
  explaining things Maldi to people on the Internet.
• 31:49
  A lot of people, you know, they get really, like, caught up on
• 31:51
  the pronunciation. Yeah.
• 31:52
  You know, in all fairness to all those people out there too,
• 31:57
  Maldi sometimes can be real sticklers for like, yeah, brutal
• 32:03
  almost. I'm like come on man, how you
• 32:04
  going to expect some like? French people say something
• 32:07
  wrong in French. No, you use.
• 32:10
  A dirt. Yeah, Yeah.
• 32:12
  And so I coined this like little catch phrase that people seem to
• 32:16
  like, which was if it is respect, it's not about the
• 32:19
  perfection of it. It's about the intent behind
• 32:22
  the, you know, and because like people, people don't.
• 32:25
  We've heard people speak English from all sorts of places around
• 32:28
  the world, and they all have accents.
• 32:29
  Everybody's got an accent. You know, you can't always have
• 32:32
  that perfect. So the, the, as long as you're
• 32:35
  trying, you know, it's, it's all you can ask for.
• 32:37
  You can't ask for perfection. Yeah.
• 32:40
  Mocho. Yeah, perfect.
• 32:42
  Nailed it. Am I right there there's
• 32:44
  different types? There is so mocho is the
• 32:47
  all-encompassing term refers to these days.
• 32:51
  There's been a lot of change in the art form over the years, but
• 32:54
  these days it's like the all-encompassing term that
• 32:57
  refers to the specific art style, Maori.
• 33:02
  So that the word mocho is unique to Maori compared to the other
• 33:06
  Pacific Polynesian cultures that all practice some form of
• 33:10
  ritualistic tattooing. So mukul is unique to Maori and
• 33:15
  it refers to the IT anywhere on the body.
• 33:17
  So I have decided to only be covered in mukul.
• 33:20
  So my arms are covered in Mukul, my stomach and my face.
• 33:23
  A lot of people think it just means the face.
• 33:25
  It's, it's actually just the broad term.
• 33:27
  Then each place has like the specific name.
• 33:31
  So actually what I have is what on my face is what's called
• 33:34
  motto order, which is the men's facial markings.
• 33:40
  One of the styles. There was another style called
• 33:43
  matakuria, which is only the bottom half.
• 33:45
  Mine's incomplete, so one day it should be my entire face.
• 33:49
  Fuck. Yeah.
• 33:50
  Right. That's when you go through the
• 33:53
  motions and then the women, of course, are known for the kowai,
• 33:56
  which is just below their lips and chin area.
• 34:01
  And then they will, sometimes you'll see women will have a
• 34:04
  like a diamond shape on their forehead as well.
• 34:06
  And those are kind of like the well known face ones, you know,
• 34:09
  it's the face ones that draw everyone's attention.
• 34:12
  But Mukhor does refer to all of it.
• 34:14
  So it is not not not an incorrect term.
• 34:16
  Does the different placement and pattern mean something depending
• 34:20
  on where it is? Yeah, for sure.
• 34:22
  I mean these days because the actual facial Mukhor head nearly
• 34:28
  been made extinct from colonization and religion is a
• 34:34
  big part of that. Christians, was it?
• 34:36
  Yeah, yeah. I think we had a lot of Anglican
• 34:39
  in New Zealand. I think it's.
• 34:40
  Below Christians. Again, we do have Catholicism,
• 34:44
  Mormonism is very popular really amongst Polynesian groups
• 34:48
  particularly too. So like my dad's family, my dad
• 34:52
  is no longer practicing, but his family, he was the oldest of 13
• 34:56
  and most of his family were all Mormon.
• 34:58
  So you know, while being Maori and continuing to practice some
• 35:02
  elements of of Maori them lost others like.
• 35:06
  What a fucking what a combo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:09
  Maori and Mormon. Yeah, and it's an interesting
• 35:11
  thing actually, like Maori relationship with introduced
• 35:15
  religion as well, because we were one of those cultures that
• 35:19
  attempted to maintain balance between the two, which
• 35:23
  inevitably low leads like because pre colonial Maori
• 35:28
  religious practice was a lot more open.
• 35:31
  There's a polytheistic religions religious system.
• 35:34
  So the idea of introducing another God was not like super
• 35:38
  out of it. But then you find out very
• 35:41
  quickly though that with a monotheistic religion.
• 35:44
  You bring one of those in and then that's.
• 35:45
  The rest of the God, right. So then with that, they, they
• 35:50
  tried to keep the balance. A lot of them, you know, have
• 35:53
  maintained a semblance of balance, but it's always
• 35:56
  slightly skewed in favour of some form of Christianity.
• 36:01
  And so one of the things that was lost heavily throughout that
• 36:03
  time period was was more in general.
• 36:05
  Yeah, particularly on the face until the gangs brought it back
• 36:09
  in about the 70s as a act of defiance.
• 36:13
  Yeah. As gangs do.
• 36:15
  And then the stigma came. And then the stigma came.
• 36:18
  That's how the that's how New Zealand developed.
• 36:20
  It's like, oh, those things mean gangs.
• 36:22
  Yeah, I feel like watching movies in the 90s.
• 36:27
  Remember there was a New Zealand gang, right?
• 36:29
  I mean they look fucking cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:32
  But it was, I mean, until maybe a couple years ago and maybe,
• 36:38
  maybe until your first music video where you had it that I
• 36:43
  was like, oh, he's in a gang. And then I Googled it and was
• 36:47
  like, oh, he's probably not in a gang.
• 36:48
  Right, right, right. That's how far the stigma is
• 36:51
  with that. That's true.
• 36:52
  Pretty deep especially too, because like probably the movie
• 36:55
  you're talking about, which is the movie that everybody talks
• 36:57
  about, is once Warriors. Warriors.
• 36:59
  You know, which is an incredible movie.
• 37:01
  Unreal Music. Anyone, everyone needs to watch
• 37:03
  that movie at least once in their life.
• 37:05
  But, you know, it heavily focuses around the Maori family
• 37:08
  in this urban diaspora. Yeah, which was a part of the
• 37:12
  period and where Maori was starting to be like stripped of
• 37:15
  their culture through modernization, you know.
• 37:17
  And yeah, all the gang members that movie depicts them as
• 37:21
  having, having Mukul, which, yeah, definitely didn't help,
• 37:27
  like, because a lot of people saw it more for the gang side
• 37:30
  than they did the cultural side. You know, fantastic movie, heavy
• 37:34
  movie. That's a big trigger.
• 37:36
  Warning movie for that's not a light watch.
• 37:38
  Not a light watch. Fucking insane acting in it as
• 37:41
  well. Oh yeah.
• 37:41
  Incredible. Oh, incredible.
• 37:43
  Some of the best in the world, I'd say.
• 37:44
  There's a scene in the car. I don't ruin it for anyone.
• 37:46
  I'm not even gonna go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:48
  Fucking just watch it. Just find out if you watch it.
• 37:50
  So where you have it placed, does that specifically mean
• 37:55
  anything other than just, you know, relating to your heritage
• 37:58
  or? This really depends on who you
• 38:01
  ask. So don't come at me anybody back
• 38:04
  home. But for the most part, the like
• 38:06
  2, like really traditional placements of the face and then
• 38:12
  the there's like a very complex art that goes from your like
• 38:16
  knees up to your lower back. Yeah, covers both legs, bums
• 38:20
  waist. Yeah, I know the.
• 38:21
  One, you know, Pooh huddle? Yeah, the Pooh huddle or the
• 38:24
  Peha? God I love the way you say
• 38:26
  words. Just keep saying that.
• 38:29
  For the motto, order it like on the face.
• 38:33
  This was one of the first biggest like misconceptions,
• 38:36
  which is part and parcel with the gang thing was that people
• 38:40
  associated the face with the violence thing.
• 38:42
  Everyone goes, Oh yeah, the warriors.
• 38:44
  Yes, like a warrior markings wrong.
• 38:47
  The leg ones were and one of the reasons I've heard that is the
• 38:54
  around the midriff. It was like the battle belt.
• 38:57
  It was like your armor, it protected you.
• 38:59
  Also, Maori were had a tendency to chop heads off, right, Take
• 39:05
  heads off, eat brains, fun stuff like that.
• 39:08
  Hell yeah. And right.
• 39:11
  So if you needed to identify somebody, you weren't doing it
• 39:13
  with their face, you were going to do it with their legs and
• 39:17
  bum. You know, because of the thing
• 39:18
  with Mukhal is every single one is unique.
• 39:22
  There is no two Mukhal that are the same for the most part.
• 39:26
  By design or by design? Because no two people are the
• 39:30
  same so some might argue that like twins maybe might get the
• 39:34
  same one. I do know that some people do
• 39:36
  get like for example they'll be the first in a generations to
• 39:41
  have more and they would like it to be the same as whatever the
• 39:44
  last ancestor was. I have seen that happen.
• 39:47
  It is rare though. Most artists will encourage you
• 39:49
  to make it some slightly different because you are your
• 39:52
  own person. So when it comes to my face, it
• 39:55
  covers. I was seeing like.
• 39:56
  The short way to describe it is it's like your ID.
• 40:00
  Yeah. And your family tree.
• 40:03
  Cool. Right.
• 40:03
  So for me or my face, it covers my family, my placement of my
• 40:08
  family, my connection to or lack thereof.
• 40:12
  Because that's why I don't have all my face done to
• 40:14
  spirituality, things like this and then my job.
• 40:17
  So as a I was a musician by the time I got it done, so on on it
• 40:22
  is depicted my relationship with my job.
• 40:26
  In the design or in our OK, Because that's what I'd read in
• 40:30
  some research for this that some of it was to do with I think the
• 40:36
  word I read was mana. Yes, yes.
• 40:39
  So mana is the, which is a word actually that is been taken from
• 40:47
  Polynesian cultures, you know, like we're all familiar with it
• 40:50
  in video games. And it all comes from the same
• 40:53
  origin which of sense which like for Maori mana basically means
• 40:58
  like prestige. Prestige that respect.
• 41:01
  On things like this and the general practice carries with it
• 41:09
  a huge amount of mana. So an artist will not give
• 41:14
  muckle to someone they consider to be of low manner.
• 41:18
  However they measure that, you know that can be measured and
• 41:21
  it's not entirely A1 size fits all measurement.
• 41:26
  And so for the for the facial markings, they always follow the
• 41:29
  similar kind of set of rules. Now other places on the body,
• 41:36
  like my arms for example, the arms is probably the one place
• 41:39
  in the modern world. Today in New Zealand, you're
• 41:41
  going to find the most moral sleeves.
• 41:44
  Shoulder to wrist. Alberta wrist.
• 41:46
  Is that Maori or appropriated? It is, it is moral.
• 41:50
  And it was brought about predominantly because of the
• 41:53
  attempt to remove the facial markings from the practice.
• 41:57
  So it was a way that the artists were able to kind of keep the
• 42:00
  tradition alive while trying to keep up with the, you know,
• 42:04
  colonial attempts at removing it.
• 42:07
  So they're like, oh, well, you know, face is unprofessional or
• 42:10
  it's gangs. All right, we'll keep it on the
• 42:12
  under there. You know, like, like most
• 42:13
  tattoos around the world have had to deal with, you know,
• 42:16
  below the under the cuff kind of thing.
• 42:19
  But when you ask people around New Zealand like that, you meet
• 42:22
  with Mukhor what that means on their arms.
• 42:25
  That is a lot broader. That can mean a whole range of
• 42:29
  things. A lot of the time it is as
• 42:31
  simple as it's my family. Most of the time Mukhor people
• 42:34
  get it to honour their heritage, their family.
• 42:39
  Mum and Dad like my arms as right arm as mum, left arm as
• 42:42
  dead, you know so. And the design depicts that.
• 42:46
  It does. It does.
• 42:47
  If I didn't have this on, I'd be able to like show.
• 42:49
  You, I mean, you can tell me and I can get a photo of you later
• 42:52
  and it can be magically super important.
• 42:53
  Yeah, Yeah. I'm just interested.
• 42:55
  Technology. The Face 1 depicts, you know
• 42:59
  your career, right? It's a lovely design, but I'd
• 43:03
  love you to tell me which part of it depicts that.
• 43:06
  Or yeah, so for the music part, it's actually along here under
• 43:08
  my jaw. So there's like these swirls
• 43:12
  that are representative of the way that music travels.
• 43:17
  You know it's. Poetic.
• 43:18
  That's so cool. A lot of it requires a lot of
• 43:20
  poetic. And is that from the artist?
• 43:23
  That's from the artist. So when I showed up like on the
• 43:26
  day, you know, this, this is not sort of thing you get stenciled
• 43:29
  or whatever. It's like freehanded.
• 43:31
  So I sat down with him and he just you just talk the first
• 43:35
  like 2 hours of the session. It's just talking about your
• 43:37
  life. You know, what do you do?
• 43:38
  What have you done? What do you want to do?
• 43:41
  You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 43:43
  And then he goes, OK. And then with him, the the
• 43:46
  artist in question was called Lance and Utter.
• 43:50
  He comes from a long lineage of Mukul revivalists, you know, so
• 43:56
  he's very well practiced in the art form.
• 43:58
  He's probably considered one of the like more prolific artists
• 44:01
  that we have now, especially for facial Mukul.
• 44:03
  Like he's not all Mukul artists are quite like tuned in yet to
• 44:09
  like doing facial Mukul. He is definitely one because his
• 44:12
  family have been doing it since the revival of the 60s and 70s.
• 44:17
  So with the knowledge that he has learnt through all his
• 44:21
  years, takes what I have told him, applies it to his style and
• 44:26
  his understanding of his learnings and.
• 44:30
  Tells a story. Tells his face.
• 44:33
  Tells my story through his eyes. Because another artist will
• 44:37
  probably do it differently, approach it differently.
• 44:40
  So fucking cool. Yeah, and you know, one of the
• 44:42
  cool things that apparently this was back in the golden era, you
• 44:45
  know, say pre colonialism supposedly like, you know, the
• 44:50
  knowledge was so much more widely understood that, you
• 44:55
  know, you could actually recognize people and where
• 44:57
  they're from just by. Like someone could look at that
• 45:00
  and go, that guy's a musician, right?
• 45:02
  Right, that's things like. That thing anyone's ever said on
• 45:04
  this, right? And, you know, we don't have
• 45:06
  that so much anymore. You know the.
• 45:08
  We just told fucking a few 1000. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:10
  Now people can look at me and go, oh, yeah, cool.
• 45:13
  There is one thing that's like, nice and easy to teach, though.
• 45:15
  It's these. They look like sixes, Yeah.
• 45:17
  Or nines right here. And I always forget.
• 45:20
  Now, which way are mine? Flipped downwards.
• 45:23
  Yeah, yeah. Which means I'm the oldest
• 45:24
  child. OK.
• 45:26
  They flip the other way. You're not the oldest of any
• 45:28
  kind. I can't wait to just drop that
• 45:31
  next time I bump into a Maori person.
• 45:33
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You must be the oldest.
• 45:35
  The first time to my knowledge. Yeah.
• 45:37
  Can't wait. How can I remember that?
• 45:39
  OK wait, so down is the oldest. Yeah.
• 45:41
  So down will make it look like sixes.
• 45:43
  Yeah, Yeah. So 6.
• 45:44
  In my head, I'm going to think you're looking down on your
• 45:46
  siblings. There you go, God.
• 45:48
  I can't wait to fuck it one day. It might be 20 years now your.
• 45:52
  Oldest. Yeah.
• 45:54
  So that one's a nice, easy one because in Once Upon a time,
• 45:57
  like if a unfamiliar party was arriving into your village, they
• 46:03
  would have to talk to the oldest.
• 46:05
  And so if they don't know who the oldest is, it was considered
• 46:08
  disrespectful to talk to anyone. But and then they could just
• 46:12
  learn. Yeah.
• 46:13
  All right, 6. Number six, get the fuck out of
• 46:16
  it. He's.
• 46:16
  The guy I need to talk to. So that's a nice easy one that I
• 46:19
  think across the board now is kind of like, you know, because
• 46:23
  like this one along here for the music that's a little more
• 46:26
  obscure. It might not be the same case
• 46:28
  for everybody kind of thing. So it gets a little bit more
• 46:30
  poetic in that sense. But as the hopefully as the
• 46:33
  tradition revives even further, becomes even more known and
• 46:35
  styles become solidified, because right now there's a lot
• 46:38
  of spread amongst the styles, you we hopefully might get back
• 46:43
  into a place where like you can actually truly use it like the
• 46:46
  ID thing that I was talking. About, I mean, I'm going to go
• 46:48
  home and research this. I'm like stoked on this.
• 46:52
  Lewis, I don't want to leave you not talking because your face is
• 46:55
  not tattooed. Got any plans to do it or any
• 46:59
  already on your body? I don't have any moko yet, but
• 47:03
  I've been kind of planning to for years.
• 47:07
  But I guess the thing with me is I do have this kind of
• 47:14
  disconnect almost a lot because of my skin colour.
• 47:20
  I guess I haven't really felt ready to delve into that.
• 47:28
  Yeah, just yet it's quite sad that you feel.
• 47:30
  Right. But I mean, I do a lot of, I do
• 47:32
  a lot of more core artwork in my own time, like my guitar strap.
• 47:36
  On this tour I carved that myself with a Dremel, but I
• 47:41
  just, I just feel like I want to I guess, accept my place in my
• 47:52
  complexion more if that makes any.
• 47:56
  That makes summer sense. It's kind of sad to hear though,
• 47:59
  Like. Yeah.
• 48:00
  But, you know, it's sort of the real, the kind of reality of my
• 48:04
  situation. And, you know, I do, Yeah.
• 48:10
  Also getting more core is expensive.
• 48:13
  And, you know, I've, you know, not always been in a place to be
• 48:19
  able to just go and get more core.
• 48:21
  You know, I don't want to shortchange anyone, especially
• 48:25
  not, you know, tattoo artists or more core artists.
• 48:29
  You know, I am, you know, I suppose I've got a few, a few
• 48:36
  things to sort out in my own life and in my own journey
• 48:40
  before I get there. But, and even if you don't like
• 48:43
  it's, it's, that's fine. It's fine that Maori Maori's in
• 48:47
  you. So you're fucking in.
• 48:48
  I've learned that on this podcast.
• 48:50
  Yeah, definitely. Exactly.
• 48:51
  And it's definitely, that's not an uncommon thing, you know, I
• 48:56
  mean, even I did a podcast for a while couple years back where I
• 49:00
  interviewed Michael artists. I saw that.
• 49:02
  Because the I was getting like, I was like, man, I can't answer
• 49:07
  everything. And even if I did, I feel like
• 49:10
  it would be disingenuine of me to like pitch it as if I was the
• 49:15
  one that had. Information.
• 49:16
  Second hand information is like, I haven't spent my entire life
• 49:19
  studying the traditions of Mukul.
• 49:21
  I'm just a guy that got 1, you know, to further it.
• 49:25
  So yeah, I did that interview series and like people who had
• 49:29
  seen that, one of the questions was because most of the Mukul
• 49:32
  artists themselves don't have facial McCoy, at least, you
• 49:37
  know, which shocks a lot of people.
• 49:39
  Is that because of the gang affiliation?
• 49:41
  Well, it's because of all sorts of things like Lewis are saying,
• 49:43
  you know, disconnect. And, you know, some of them are
• 49:45
  from a generation where they had just been told their entire
• 49:49
  lives, like, don't get it, don't get it.
• 49:51
  And even though they'd come out of it enough to impart it onto
• 49:55
  people, they were still stuck in that.
• 49:58
  You know, it's hard to break out of those things.
• 50:01
  And what's been really cool watching since I've done a lot
• 50:03
  of those interviews, like a lot of those Mukul artists now have
• 50:07
  facial Mukul. Not to say that I was any part
• 50:10
  of that decision, but it's cool to see that growth because I had
• 50:12
  the answer of why they didn't when they didn't, you know?
• 50:16
  And so they're now to see that they had healed that whatever in
• 50:19
  them and felt now that they woke up one day and went, oh, now's
• 50:22
  my time. And they've gone and got it
• 50:24
  done. You go like, hell yeah, dude.
• 50:26
  That's what we love to see and love to hear it.
• 50:28
  But, you know, it's like one of the most common questions I've
• 50:30
  got over the years on my TikTok is I have white skin.
• 50:34
  Am I allowed to get more? My parents are Maori, but you
• 50:38
  know. I know, yeah.
• 50:39
  And I suppose, yeah. Even though, you know, I've,
• 50:43
  I've been doing this and I've grown up, you know, kind of in
• 50:48
  the Maori realm, I have always felt some level of disconnect or
• 50:54
  some level of like, I can never truly understand what it's like
• 50:59
  to be a dark skinned Maori, if that makes any sense.
• 51:03
  And you know, I'm 1000% always wanted to get mocha my whole
• 51:08
  life. And I, you know, I do a lot of
• 51:12
  artwork. I do all sorts of artwork, but
• 51:14
  one of my main forms of artwork is actually drawing mocha.
• 51:20
  But I also feel like I want to build my knowledge and my
• 51:26
  understanding of all of it. And I, I, I am a bit of a
• 51:29
  stickler for things and I am a bit, you know, I'm very scared
• 51:35
  to jump into things unless I feel I can, you know,
• 51:41
  irrefutably just shut someone down if they come at me about
• 51:45
  anything. You know what I mean?
• 51:46
  It's also, it's a huge decision. It's a face.
• 51:48
  Yeah, It's a face tattoo. Even if it wasn't definitely,
• 51:51
  like, even if it wasn't culturally like such a thing.
• 51:55
  It's a fucking face tattoo. That's right.
• 51:57
  That's right. How much shit do you get at the
• 51:58
  border? Yeah, like my entire life as I
• 52:01
  knew would, but changes, you know, Yeah, for positive and
• 52:06
  negative, of course, you know, like.
• 52:08
  But when we were crossing the border and he asked you about
• 52:11
  your Facebook or and then you explain to him kind of a very
• 52:16
  skimmed over like arts, it's a, it's a their traditional
• 52:20
  markings, blah, blah, blah. And then I was Next up.
• 52:22
  He's like, are you part of the same group?
• 52:24
  Why don't you have a, a marking? I was like.
• 52:27
  Essentially what I just did. But then I think this guy was
• 52:30
  like, oh, was the first guy lying?
• 52:32
  And he's actually an MI 13. Or something.
• 52:34
  Yeah, it. Was like a very, I was like,
• 52:36
  dude, a border officers asking me some hard questions and now
• 52:40
  I'm like put on the spot, yeah. I normally have an alright time
• 52:43
  at the border, like for the most part, like there's always just,
• 52:45
  it's a very interesting thing, you know, obviously we're from
• 52:47
  New Zealand. I'm the one who singled out most
• 52:49
  of the time. You are.
• 52:51
  Yeah. I just, I just, I just have.
• 52:53
  A weed smoker, that's what that guy smokes weed, Yeah.
• 52:56
  But 'cause we have this funny thing, right, the New Zealand
• 52:59
  passport's one of those relatively powerful passports.
• 53:02
  So like, we'd be rolling into immigration.
• 53:03
  The guy is looking at me. I can tell, like just on
• 53:06
  looking, he's yeah, tuned in or he's ready to like thing.
• 53:11
  And then I'll slide across the New Zealand Passport and like 9
• 53:14
  out of 10 times they instantly change.
• 53:16
  So. Powerful, the Lord of the.
• 53:17
  Rings I. Like wait wait wait O one or P1
• 53:20
  visa. O2 for me.
• 53:22
  O2. Yeah, he's.
• 53:23
  A 01 he. You're the old one and you're
• 53:25
  the one that gets roasted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
• 53:27
  get. Pulled aside for bomb swabs, all
• 53:30
  sorts. Awesome every time too.
• 53:32
  Like every time. I was like, me and Henry, like
• 53:34
  straight through. And then it's Paul Lewis.
• 53:36
  I like to say usually the 01, they're just like, oh famous, go
• 53:40
  on. In the thing that's visually the
• 53:42
  most mildly about me is the crazy eyes.
• 53:44
  I think it's the people are like I can have.
• 53:48
  A 13 hour flight? Oh, you're doing?
• 53:50
  Like weed? Wait, do you smoke weed?
• 53:52
  Actually, not really at the moment I have, I have been down
• 53:58
  that journey in my life, but I I guess I've kind of got to a
• 54:01
  point where I'm like, I want to have AAI guess a healthy
• 54:05
  relationship with it. So I've, I've, I've really
• 54:08
  chilled off on that, you know what I mean?
• 54:10
  Because it made me fucking mental.
• 54:11
  Yeah, yeah, I got mental medicines hiding herself because
• 54:14
  she smokes more weed than anyone I've ever met in my life.
• 54:16
  I'll. Tell you what, that is good
• 54:19
  water. It is.
• 54:21
  Hey, thanks Monster Energy. Do you want another whiskey?
• 54:24
  You you sort of hinted to a whiskey.
• 54:27
  If you want to offer me, well I would love 1.
• 54:29
  Delicious bottle of whiskey that comes in like a a mythical sack.
• 54:34
  A lot of lot of mana in this. Looks like Hobbit whiskey so.
• 54:39
  Lanterns apparently is the best one.
• 54:41
  It was a gift from Aaron from Underoath.
• 54:45
  Plus 10 plus. Plus 10 fucking drunk.
• 54:51
  I'm not going to have another one because I do have to drive
• 54:53
  later, but you're going to have another one.
• 54:55
  I have to get in. There you go lad, 46% that would
• 55:01
  be why. Me a 46 we're.
• 55:05
  Still on the border thing. I can't believe you don't get
• 55:08
  stopped and you get stopped. He's just too smooth with it,
• 55:11
  man. I think half the time is
• 55:13
  delivery. I'm a very comfortable airport
• 55:15
  person. I've never been nervous in an
• 55:17
  airport a day of my. Life.
• 55:18
  I'm an uncomfortable person, very gene like.
• 55:21
  Read it on the face from a mile. I have major anxiety issues in
• 55:26
  my life constantly. And that's like key #1 doesn't
• 55:30
  matter really what you look like if you just hey man, I have.
• 55:34
  Worse mental health than this guy and people can fucking see.
• 55:38
  It and it pisses. Me off and I feel defeated by
• 55:42
  the world. I don't mean to be all
• 55:47
  depressing. You want to get that seen to me
• 55:53
  the I mean, because I I don't ever get stopped at the border.
• 55:56
  Now I've got an O1 I used to get stopped all the time, but I'll
• 55:59
  get stopped for the random security check every single time
• 56:01
  the minute they can't find a black guy on the flight with me.
• 56:05
  They. Kill the next everyone's white
• 56:07
  that's is probably him and I don't even have that.
• 56:12
  However check me fucking going home and looking at my 23andMe
• 56:16
  to get .00001 Mallory. That means I'm fucking in.
• 56:21
  At the start of every episode. Let's go, let's go.
• 56:25
  Great segue. Were you a fucking pro?
• 56:27
  Did you used to have a podcast? No, not me, surely.
• 56:29
  Let me just check, I don't have anything left on the mock or I
• 56:33
  mean I technically do so pronunciation Mao moko.
• 56:39
  Right. The song, yeah, that song I'm
• 56:41
  assuming is to do with the moko, but it's 100% in Maori TE TA Rao
• 56:49
  Maori. Oh yeah, Terio Maori.
• 56:51
  Terio Maori, is that perfect? Thank you.
• 56:54
  Is that is that the that's the official name for the language?
• 56:57
  That just mean terio means the language OK Maori said Maori
• 57:01
  language. So you can say Terio Paki ha
• 57:04
  which is English or OK Terry or Wee wee.
• 57:07
  Search. Is it wee wee?
• 57:09
  It's wee wee WIWI. OK.
• 57:11
  And even then you'll pronounce it slightly wrong and it'll be.
• 57:14
  Like you're not saying yes. I'm not saying this.
• 57:16
  We just come off tour and our photographer Alexia, I love him
• 57:19
  today. If he's French, though, and then
• 57:20
  I'll say something like, am I saying this right, Jumapel?
• 57:23
  And he's like, I don't know what you're trying to.
• 57:25
  Say. I don't know what you're trying.
• 57:27
  And I'll say Jumapel and then you'll go, I don't know what
• 57:30
  you're trying to say. And I'm like, how do you say my
• 57:32
  name is? And he goes, Juma, pal.
• 57:34
  And I'm like, motherfucker, I just said.
• 57:36
  Just what I said. He didn't go hot enough.
• 57:38
  I didn't go without a little. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:41
  Yeah, so I. Assume that song is about the
• 57:43
  mocha. But yeah, yes.
• 57:45
  Kind of more specifically about the HID trade, Well, it depends.
• 57:49
  On what you're talking about, when I wrote the lyrics, I wrote
• 57:53
  the lyrics from Mocha in general about my experience with mocha
• 57:58
  and what needed to further be a addressed in the general
• 58:01
  understandings around the world towards more.
• 58:04
  But there's one line in there which talks about displaying our
• 58:07
  heads like. Art and the video that.
• 58:10
  Inspired the video. Yeah, OK.
• 58:12
  Which? Then we were like locking
• 58:13
  because that's a lot more heavy metal than the general
• 58:16
  conversation surrounding the the lyrics, Like the lyrics are very
• 58:20
  much, I've been calling it like a pride anthem.
• 58:22
  Like the whole chorus is like, we're the people who wear moku
• 58:25
  MO Moku means to have. OK, so we're the people who have
• 58:31
  mukul. You know, you've tried to get
• 58:34
  rid of it, but it's back and it's going to be better than
• 58:37
  stronger than it's ever been. That's.
• 58:39
  Essentially I'm lucky. So jealous I got nothing like
• 58:42
  that. I got nothing.
• 58:44
  And but the concept of the head trade, which was a very real
• 58:48
  part of the history of Mukul and another one of the main reasons
• 58:52
  that the art form nearly went extinct, it makes for a pretty
• 58:56
  heavy metal video. So we kind of focused in on that
• 58:59
  one line and turned that into the whole premise of the of.
• 59:03
  What is the HID trade? The HID trade was when the
• 59:07
  British arrived, like you know, as they as they went around.
• 59:11
  As we do. You know, they like to.
• 59:13
  They would see things that they thought were interesting and
• 59:15
  want to take it back to England. They were already interested in
• 59:18
  the concept of the shrunken heads from African cultures or
• 59:21
  other cultures around the world that do that kind of thing.
• 59:24
  Then Maori would preserve heads. They weren't shrunken, but they
• 59:27
  were preserved. And one of the quirks about a
• 59:31
  preserved Maori head was that the muckle was still visible on
• 59:35
  the decomposed. Wow.
• 59:38
  OK, So they were like, Oh my God.
• 59:40
  Not only is it a preserved head, it's got some decorations on it.
• 59:45
  We want those so. My brain kind of did the same
• 59:48
  thing there, but. And so they would ask Musk Maori
• 59:54
  tribes to, like, trade it for something.
• 59:56
  Whatever guns. Guns was a muskets was like when
• 59:59
  Maori were introduced, muskets, we had a field day like, you
• 1:00:03
  know, like we always people did, right?
• 1:00:05
  Most people did, yeah. We were.
• 1:00:07
  Already a warring, you know, people and so the idea of the
• 1:00:11
  musket was just like took the warring up to another level.
• 1:00:14
  So guns was very popular, wool blankets, clothing was very
• 1:00:19
  popular. But Mali didn't really want to
• 1:00:24
  give up because the heads were kept for sacred purposes, either
• 1:00:29
  very esteemed chiefs or people, family members that they wanted
• 1:00:32
  to preserve the mana of by maintaining the head because in
• 1:00:36
  Mali culture, the head is considered the most sacred part
• 1:00:38
  of the body. They didn't want to give away
• 1:00:41
  their family. So then they would go out there
• 1:00:45
  and just kill a whole bunch of other Maori to trade their
• 1:00:48
  heads. Classic British.
• 1:00:50
  Like we're going to do something fucked up, but like, can you do
• 1:00:53
  it? Can.
• 1:00:53
  You do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:54
  And we did it. You know, we were happy to do
• 1:00:56
  it. We were already warring over
• 1:00:57
  whatever we wanted to and. Might as well make a quick buck.
• 1:01:00
  Right. And then it caused this like big
• 1:01:02
  chain reaction thing where we were even like just killing
• 1:01:07
  people who didn't have Mohawk and then after the fact, like on
• 1:01:11
  the already decapitated head, putting the muckle on very
• 1:01:14
  quickly, like very half assedly, and then tossing it over to the
• 1:01:18
  Brits to take over wherever. Kind of sick scam.
• 1:01:21
  Right, right. And what then happened because
• 1:01:25
  of that there was in a pre pre to all of that muckle was
• 1:01:30
  supposedly much more prevalent across the people.
• 1:01:34
  You know, like in the earlier, what's the word scrimmage
• 1:01:37
  scrimmage. It's like the sailor artwork.
• 1:01:42
  They would like carve it into their bottles or into whale
• 1:01:44
  teeth. It's like an art form that the
• 1:01:46
  sailors would do. I think it's Scrubbage.
• 1:01:48
  I think you're right. Something like that.
• 1:01:49
  They, a lot of those early like depictions of Maori, like they
• 1:01:54
  had all the people they would depict all had facial moral.
• 1:01:57
  But there's been like one of the like when you've on one hand
• 1:02:00
  you've got the misconception that it's a gang thing.
• 1:02:02
  Yeah. On the other hand, a really,
• 1:02:04
  really big misconception is that it's for chiefs only.
• 1:02:08
  That's become a big thing. Oh, it's the chief tattoo.
• 1:02:10
  So when modern people get it, you're not a chief.
• 1:02:13
  But one of the reasons that that myth started to surface was
• 1:02:19
  because of the head trade chiefs were the only people who could
• 1:02:23
  continue to protect themselves from getting their head locked
• 1:02:26
  off to be sold. So they ended up being the ones
• 1:02:30
  left. The ones left so other people
• 1:02:32
  would not they were like I'm not going to get it done.
• 1:02:34
  I don't want to have my head chopped off.
• 1:02:35
  So so people just stop doing it. Except the chiefs who had war
• 1:02:39
  parties behind them to keep them alive.
• 1:02:41
  So then and then there was an 2 artists, Goldie and Lindauer are
• 1:02:45
  like these two famous European painters because of their
• 1:02:49
  depictions of Maori chiefs. And a lot of them depicted like
• 1:02:53
  the, a lot of the, the exhibitions were called like the
• 1:02:56
  last of the Maori kind of thing. And there were all these
• 1:02:59
  beautiful paintings. They were there incredible
• 1:03:01
  paintings of chiefs and chiefdesses all with their
• 1:03:06
  facial Mughal. They also perpetuated this idea
• 1:03:09
  because then it was like these very, very popular paintings,
• 1:03:12
  all of chiefs only who all had the facial Mughal.
• 1:03:15
  So everyone was like, oh, it's just the chiefs only.
• 1:03:17
  And then 100 years later, everyone's like, yeah, only
• 1:03:19
  Chiefs can get it. It's like all these, like little
• 1:03:22
  things that people don't really realize play a huge role in the
• 1:03:25
  near eradication of. Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  So the whole tradition. You had that What?
• 1:03:30
  What year are we talking for this?
• 1:03:31
  For the HID trade, late 1800s. So then you had, so you had the
• 1:03:36
  1800s, no one getting it done because they didn't want their
• 1:03:39
  head cut off. And then you got the 80s and
• 1:03:41
  90s, no one getting it done because they don't want to.
• 1:03:44
  Gangs don't want to be associated in a gang.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah, I mean, the like the third banger in this was a a
• 1:03:51
  government bill that was called the Tohuna Suppression Act,
• 1:03:56
  which was the on surface level, it was pitched as an idea that
• 1:04:00
  the New Zealand government didn't like the idea of Maori
• 1:04:05
  medicine, OK, like they said, said they made it illegal
• 1:04:10
  basically. What's Maori Madison?
• 1:04:11
  Well, you know, like more holistic by their standards,
• 1:04:14
  natural approach to things. But because the talking
• 1:04:18
  represents like it's always a tricky 1 to expert, but like
• 1:04:24
  priest or shaman. Yeah, OK.
• 1:04:26
  Like it's it's a tricky translated word because it never
• 1:04:29
  quite fits any of the English translations quite accurately.
• 1:04:33
  But the talking there was a word that applied to many experts in
• 1:04:38
  many fields. So when you have a very vague
• 1:04:41
  title like Tohunga suppression act like yes, then maybe they
• 1:04:44
  were trying to target medicine. But what it did was it
• 1:04:47
  prohibited Tohunga from imparting the knowledge on.
• 1:04:51
  So like a professor or something like some of anything of
• 1:04:55
  anything and. So what one of the words for the
• 1:04:57
  Mukul artist, which is what we we just used the word Mukul
• 1:04:59
  artist today, but it's actually tohunga TA Mukul.
• 1:05:03
  OK. So they would have been
• 1:05:04
  suppressed as well. So they stopped teaching people
• 1:05:07
  how to do Mukul. So that was another factor as
• 1:05:09
  well. Like all these many things has
• 1:05:11
  like played a part in. The the world sucks sucks so
• 1:05:15
  much. And the worst thing is there's
• 1:05:16
  so many layers to it. It's very difficult to like, you
• 1:05:19
  know, that's a lot of information you got to like
• 1:05:21
  absorb to understand the big picture, which is why you can
• 1:05:24
  see so many people just go now it's just for chiefs only or now
• 1:05:28
  you can't get it because of this and blah, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:05:30
  blah, blah. But anyway, I said the song by
• 1:05:31
  Mukhal was the, the whole point of that was just a pride anthem
• 1:05:34
  about the art form and then the head trade being a significant
• 1:05:37
  part in the near extinction of the art form.
• 1:05:40
  So makes it it makes for a good video.
• 1:05:42
  Video is fucking awesome. Yeah, yeah, it was a cool one
• 1:05:44
  with the and the fake head, which was like like a.
• 1:05:48
  That, that yeah, now that was freaky because it it, even in
• 1:05:52
  person, it looked real. Who made it?
• 1:05:57
  It was, I believe it was a prop for a Maori TV show like that
• 1:06:01
  plays on Maori Network back home.
• 1:06:04
  It was it's it looked like it's decapitated decomposed head.
• 1:06:10
  In person, he does look like it in the video.
• 1:06:12
  Yes, it was freaky. Like there was this, I don't
• 1:06:15
  even think we used it in the music video, but there was this
• 1:06:18
  one scene where like the head sitting on this like display
• 1:06:25
  pillow and then they took the head off and I had to put my
• 1:06:28
  head through the pillow and like sing the lyrics and I felt
• 1:06:33
  fucking weird about like I felt. Where it been?
• 1:06:37
  If even though it was a rubber prop, I was like like it felt.
• 1:06:43
  It was very. Interesting on that shoot
• 1:06:46
  watching the Maori part of the crew including us and the non
• 1:06:52
  Maori part of the crew reacting to that head.
• 1:06:54
  Like your mom was like my mom couldn't.
• 1:06:57
  Even be in the same room, you know, she couldn't even look
• 1:06:59
  even though we knew it was fake. You know, like I said, the head
• 1:07:01
  is a very sacred part of the culture.
• 1:07:03
  The idea of the traded heads thing, and some people call them
• 1:07:07
  stolen heads, stolen by somebody.
• 1:07:09
  You know, arguably it was stolen from the Maori that killed the
• 1:07:12
  Maori prison to get it in the first place.
• 1:07:15
  A lot of people lay a lot of the blame on the British.
• 1:07:17
  Yeah, it's an interesting one that.
• 1:07:18
  Blame us, I always. Find it interesting though,
• 1:07:20
  because I'm like, well they wouldn't have got them though
• 1:07:22
  because they weren't killing them.
• 1:07:23
  The British weren't killing them for them themselves.
• 1:07:25
  So I'm like, it took two parties, but they were still
• 1:07:27
  stolen because just because the Maori took it.
• 1:07:30
  British people coming in, we're like, oh, you want?
• 1:07:32
  This they want to. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:33
  You want this, I want that. You want this more than I want
• 1:07:35
  that to go do it for me, right? So that like concept of it, even
• 1:07:39
  though we knew it was fake, a lot of the Maori in that shoot
• 1:07:42
  were like, oh man, this is a. Yeah, fucking ancestors.
• 1:07:45
  It was weird like. Especially too, because we know
• 1:07:48
  like another one of the messages about the video was to bring
• 1:07:52
  attention to the fact that places like the British Museum,
• 1:07:54
  they still have them, like, somebody's real ancestor is
• 1:07:58
  sitting down in a box in the basement of the British Museum.
• 1:08:01
  And Maori have tried for years and years to get the kids back.
• 1:08:05
  They have gotten quite a lot back, you know, different tribes
• 1:08:07
  and that have managed a lot. Of the matches or it's put them
• 1:08:10
  in the basement. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:11
  Yeah, yeah. But there's still a lot out
• 1:08:12
  there. Accent.
• 1:08:13
  So that was another one of the reasons for that video too, just
• 1:08:15
  to put a little bit of eyes on the fact that there are still
• 1:08:17
  people's ancestors sitting somewhere out there and people
• 1:08:21
  do want them returned. Did you get any?
• 1:08:23
  Like did that give any push to the movement?
• 1:08:27
  I. Don't know, you know, I don't
• 1:08:28
  know. It's a lot of people just were
• 1:08:32
  even introduced to the idea in the 1st place.
• 1:08:34
  They're like holy here. Yeah, what do you mean a lot of?
• 1:08:35
  People don't even think it was real, like like that.
• 1:08:38
  There was a thing. They're like, oh, this is just a
• 1:08:39
  video. Thing right, it's pretty fucking
• 1:08:41
  terrible because. It sounds ancestors, Hey,
• 1:08:44
  trading heads around, you know, I was like, no, it was, it was a
• 1:08:46
  thing. Someone's ancestors head is just
• 1:08:48
  in a box in a box downstairs. I paid for that, so I'll keep
• 1:08:54
  it. Right, while we just last, last
• 1:08:57
  thing on the tattoos and the family stuff you mentioned, you
• 1:09:00
  said to your mom that does she want to get it done at the same
• 1:09:04
  time as you? So she got it done.
• 1:09:06
  So before her, who was the last person in your lineage that had
• 1:09:10
  it? On her family, her sister, her
• 1:09:12
  older sister had it, but then before her, my my auntie was one
• 1:09:17
  of the first in a while because like so it's my mom's mom that
• 1:09:23
  is the Scottish 1. So her father's the Maori, but
• 1:09:26
  he didn't have it and great grandfather didn't have it.
• 1:09:33
  It's a lot. It's a long way back, you know,
• 1:09:35
  So great. Great.
• 1:09:36
  Assuming maybe. Great.
• 1:09:37
  Great. Yeah, the photo I have of the
• 1:09:39
  person I was named after, I do have a photo of the the man I
• 1:09:43
  was named after and I'm not even sure if he has it.
• 1:09:47
  So maybe his father may have been the last one.
• 1:09:49
  And there's no photo of him. No, there is a painting of his
• 1:09:55
  first cousin and so. With.
• 1:09:58
  The and he has it. So he was painted by one of
• 1:10:01
  those artists I've mentioned earlier.
• 1:10:02
  And so I have his paint, not an original, but I have his
• 1:10:05
  painting a print of it in my room, in my in my house, because
• 1:10:08
  he is one of the last like actual known answers And he had
• 1:10:11
  no offspring. So then our line is the closest
• 1:10:17
  line to him. So he is actually one of the
• 1:10:21
  only ones we have of proof that had it, but we can only assume
• 1:10:24
  that his father had it. And maybe the cut off was there.
• 1:10:27
  Right there in his generation. I feel like I'm at school but I
• 1:10:32
  want to learn, I don't think. I don't even know if anyone
• 1:10:36
  within the five generations of my multi family have had it.
• 1:10:41
  If I'm thinking of if I'm looking back on, you know, my
• 1:10:45
  dad's got poo huddle and which is the markings that go, you
• 1:10:49
  know, from your. Is that the armour one?
• 1:10:52
  Yeah, the Abdo. So he's got the tattoo ATOA and
• 1:10:54
  he's got the Mangwa party in the middle for protection and
• 1:10:59
  Henry's actually got his top, his poodle started.
• 1:11:03
  So he's got. The Henry's the drummer, your
• 1:11:05
  brother. Yeah, Henry's my brother, and
• 1:11:07
  he's got his. Basically the spirals on his
• 1:11:10
  butt started. Oh cool.
• 1:11:12
  But my dad's got the whole whole shebang down to pastor's knees
• 1:11:16
  all the way up here. If the number I just texted is
• 1:11:19
  yours, then. Otherwise, you've just texted a
• 1:11:22
  random person. Lovely painting.
• 1:11:24
  No, no, I've got it. It was you.
• 1:11:28
  That's fucking AI. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good it looks AI.
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, yeah, it's I've never actually seen the real picture
• 1:11:36
  either. One day I've been hunting it
• 1:11:38
  like because it moves around I believe the the original.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah. You want to try and buy that
• 1:11:42
  one? Yeah, I'll be like.
• 1:11:43
  I haven't even seen it. Coming home, I got it right
• 1:11:46
  here. Yeah, so he doesn't.
• 1:11:48
  He hasn't even showed me that. Oh yeah, fucking AI.
• 1:11:51
  That's that. GPG.
• 1:11:53
  But they love the must. But heaps of my ancestors have
• 1:11:55
  that mustache too, yeah. They love the mustache back
• 1:11:58
  then. Grow one out, boy.
• 1:11:59
  I can't grow 1. You can't grow one.
• 1:12:01
  No, that's why I got this done. I'm a good.
• 1:12:04
  Girl, you said. You're an Xbox.
• 1:12:05
  Girl, Yeah, yeah, got rid of all my hair.
• 1:12:07
  No, I still got a full bloody head of curlies up top.
• 1:12:10
  What was the? What was the build it ARC gave
• 1:12:12
  it up? Yeah, yeah, when I joined the
• 1:12:14
  band. I just I haven't quite figured.
• 1:12:15
  Out the balance to maintain it. First tour I lost 18 kilos.
• 1:12:20
  Damn, I lost 7 LB. I'm a pounds guy now 'cause I
• 1:12:26
  live here, so we'll say I don't even know three and a bit kilos
• 1:12:29
  on that tour. We just did.
• 1:12:30
  Yeah, because just fucking not eating enough, doing all that.
• 1:12:33
  Shit. And I was like, man, I we're not
• 1:12:36
  in a I haven't figured that balance out yet.
• 1:12:37
  I was like, maybe one day I'll bring it back like.
• 1:12:40
  You go to the gym. Though I that's what I like
• 1:12:42
  basically cold Turkey did because I was like I started
• 1:12:45
  doing other stuff just to stay physical.
• 1:12:47
  But I was like I dedicated so much time to it that when I
• 1:12:50
  couldn't dedicate 100% I was like it's not even worth my
• 1:12:54
  time. I didn't even want to give him
• 1:12:55
  50. My ex-girlfriend was like, you
• 1:12:56
  should just go to the gym. And I was like, no.
• 1:12:58
  I had a friend not interested that is like similar thing.
• 1:13:02
  It was like almost pro bodybuilder.
• 1:13:05
  I mean, I think you whatever, the one before Pro is, I can't
• 1:13:07
  remember, but like competing and stuff, same thing.
• 1:13:10
  And then he sent me yeah. I think there was a name for
• 1:13:13
  like 1, whether NFBB whatever. The right, right, right.
• 1:13:16
  But like same thing, he started going on tour and he just
• 1:13:21
  dropped it fully. Never asked this question on the
• 1:13:24
  podcast ever. But I feel like given your Maori
• 1:13:29
  heritage, predominantly your lyrics being in Terrell Maori.
• 1:13:36
  Yes, Sir, let's go. Where'd the name come from?
• 1:13:40
  Oh. That's a question.
• 1:13:41
  Alien weaponry. So originally the name came from
• 1:13:46
  who's in District 9. Love it.
• 1:13:49
  I'm fucking real movie. It's great.
• 1:13:51
  It's unique, right? Well, I could talk about it all
• 1:13:53
  day. I've been trying.
• 1:13:54
  I've told man. You're the fucking prunes.
• 1:13:56
  You're the fucking prunes brew. So basically me and Henry 8 and
• 1:14:01
  10, somehow we watched District 9 at 8:00 and 10:00.
• 1:14:05
  Yeah. You started the band at 8:00 and
• 1:14:07
  10:00. Yeah, and, you know, it's as
• 1:14:11
  simple as that movie has aliens. Aliens have sick fucking
• 1:14:15
  weaponry. Yeah, alien weaponry.
• 1:14:19
  And like, I suppose the band's been going since 2010, but we
• 1:14:26
  wrote our first Maori song, and I don't remember what.
• 1:14:30
  Yeah, it must have been like, 20, 13 or 15.
• 1:14:38
  And you know that band name. You know, we always liked the
• 1:14:42
  band name. But I suppose another way of
• 1:14:45
  thinking about it, we didn't think about it when we named the
• 1:14:47
  band, but like when the British first introduced muskets to New
• 1:14:53
  Zealand, to the Maori, they were alien weaponry.
• 1:14:58
  You know, that was a whole different realm of weaponry.
• 1:15:02
  You know, used to be able to take a great chief to kill
• 1:15:05
  another great chief, and now some fucking idiot on a hilltop.
• 1:15:10
  Shoots him in the head. Yeah.
• 1:15:11
  I mean, just scrap. Just just make it that.
• 1:15:16
  Well, that's that's not me. Not that.
• 1:15:19
  But District 9 is a fucking sick.
• 1:15:21
  Film but also District 9 does have that sociopolitical fucking
• 1:15:27
  commentary. Or do it, you know, the
• 1:15:31
  displacement of people and they look different, they put.
• 1:15:35
  Them in this fucking corner. I don't want them living near
• 1:15:38
  me. You've got such a great like
• 1:15:41
  apartheid story in a story about aliens.
• 1:15:45
  It's fucking. Incredible.
• 1:15:46
  South Africa too. What a what a sitting you know.
• 1:15:49
  Yeah, I always one thing, I always think that was like
• 1:15:51
  sweet, just about the actual origin of that, because I
• 1:15:54
  remember actually when that like it was like a fan theory that
• 1:15:57
  started like someone had just commented like, Oh yeah, 'cause
• 1:16:00
  the muskets and gunpowder was alien weaponry and they're kind
• 1:16:03
  of. Like you should have just taken
• 1:16:04
  it. You shouldn't be admitting this.
• 1:16:06
  But I always thought there was this like nice sort of innocence
• 1:16:09
  to it, like, 'cause it, it also perfectly explains like the
• 1:16:12
  history of the band, you know? Like that, the band has been
• 1:16:14
  around since the brothers were boys, you know?
• 1:16:17
  Little boys naming a band our. Band is, we talk about this
• 1:16:20
  often, you know, like when we're touring with a band right now,
• 1:16:22
  like Avatar, who have this theatrical element to them and
• 1:16:24
  they like having, having fun, like in a humorous way on stage
• 1:16:29
  and presenting themselves. You know, our music is always so
• 1:16:31
  serious. The bands image is like so
• 1:16:33
  serious. It's this cultural thing,
• 1:16:35
  political thing, you know, our stage persona is always very
• 1:16:38
  serious. I always like this kind of
• 1:16:40
  contrast of like, so what's the reason behind the names?
• 1:16:43
  Like oh I was an 8 year old kid and I like this.
• 1:16:45
  Movie And honestly, I wouldn't. I hate that question because the
• 1:16:48
  one thing I do about this podcast is like obviously being
• 1:16:51
  in a band, like I despise press. Like I hate it.
• 1:16:54
  I hate festival press. Are you OK?
• 1:16:58
  Are you having fun? Oh dude, I fuck it.
• 1:17:00
  This is chill though, because you're chill and this you know,
• 1:17:03
  it's not like. Like what's your?
• 1:17:05
  Top What's that bad? You know I have.
• 1:17:07
  To think of a top ten and explain to you why I just like
• 1:17:10
  music. Shut the fuck up.
• 1:17:11
  You know, like I get mad when people ask me.
• 1:17:14
  I just. The usual stuff.
• 1:17:16
  I and sometimes I do, you know, I'm guilty of doing it because
• 1:17:20
  it's stuff people want to know about.
• 1:17:21
  But like that I just called it festival press because it's like
• 1:17:25
  when someone doesn't know who the fuck you are or what you're
• 1:17:27
  about. And then so what's the band
• 1:17:29
  name, the new album? And then they just, they drop
• 1:17:32
  the line. What's the funniest thing he's
• 1:17:33
  done on tour? We get.
• 1:17:34
  I mean that one sometimes. As if we tell you.
• 1:17:37
  Only if it comes out like naturally but like the name one
• 1:17:41
  I would never ever do other than like every single bit of your
• 1:17:46
  lyrics are videos. I can see the heritage and then
• 1:17:50
  the name is wacky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:53
  Whoever that Reddit user is that made that fucking thing up.
• 1:17:57
  They lost it off and I still see it.
• 1:17:59
  Like, I still see it every now and then.
• 1:18:01
  Like people go, yeah, I read somewhere that like it was this.
• 1:18:03
  I was like wow. People we like.
• 1:18:05
  So people also claim that I know them.
• 1:18:09
  They're not poor, he and they're my cousins.
• 1:18:11
  People say all sorts of parasocial shit.
• 1:18:15
  All over the place. Yeah, I I get that a lot.
• 1:18:17
  It happens. It happens.
• 1:18:18
  I learned that plenty of times in my social media journey with
• 1:18:22
  the TikTok blowing up. It's like that's it's, it's
• 1:18:24
  broken glass out there, man. Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  You just you just have to just read it and ignore it or just
• 1:18:29
  don't read. It.
• 1:18:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I like I I feel like
• 1:18:32
  one of the reasons I was able to succeed in that space was I
• 1:18:34
  couldn't care less what you say about me half the time, good or
• 1:18:37
  bad. Like I don't need my validation
• 1:18:39
  from you. I also don't need the criticism
• 1:18:41
  from you within reason. Sometimes criticism is
• 1:18:44
  warranted. I could say that I was probably
• 1:18:46
  warranted a little bit of criticism.
• 1:18:48
  Right. You know, I've had, I've had the
• 1:18:50
  odd thing where I've said something slightly out of pass
• 1:18:51
  and you know, when it comes to cultural stuff is only so final
• 1:18:55
  line, you know, and I'm like, Oh yeah, my bad.
• 1:18:57
  You know that that was on me. Yeah, but that that.
• 1:19:00
  It's different. You must be making decent money
• 1:19:02
  on that TikTok now. Well, I've, I've been actually
• 1:19:04
  withdrawing because I was finding like 1 people wanted
• 1:19:12
  more and more and more as they do, but I was not willing to
• 1:19:15
  give more and more because it was not my place to do so.
• 1:19:17
  Which is why I did the podcasting, right.
• 1:19:19
  But of course that wasn't as popular, which is fine with me
• 1:19:22
  at the time. I was like, it doesn't matter.
• 1:19:24
  It's not about popularity, it's about what's right.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah, especially in this context.
• 1:19:27
  You know, it's not like I'm running around just showing you
• 1:19:29
  what I do in a day. I'm actively educating on a very
• 1:19:33
  broad and in depth culture. There's only so much you can
• 1:19:36
  teach on the Internet. And I was just to say I'm
• 1:19:38
  basically like a signpost, like a road sign saying like, oh, you
• 1:19:42
  can go this way for this. I can put as much information on
• 1:19:46
  the sign, but the the actual thing is going to be in the
• 1:19:49
  library down the road, right? It's not your fault if someone
• 1:19:51
  turns left when it's his turn. Right.
• 1:19:54
  And so then I was like, all right, I'll just stop doing it.
• 1:20:01
  And I literally just like stopped.
• 1:20:02
  Like I haven't posted like. Dedicated Maori content.
• 1:20:05
  I've been putting out the last of the clips from the podcast,
• 1:20:08
  just kind of weaning them off. And then I, you know, I'm like,
• 1:20:11
  do something else. And that's because because you
• 1:20:16
  got sick of it. Well, because I wanted to 1 stay
• 1:20:19
  genuine in the 'cause, right? So I could have kept going on
• 1:20:22
  with the Maori stuff and spitting out a whole bunch of
• 1:20:25
  whatever just because it was popular and paying the bills.
• 1:20:28
  But I didn't want to, you know, ethically.
• 1:20:31
  Not the same at all, but with parallels every episode or clip
• 1:20:39
  that I put up which inspires conflict right in the comments.
• 1:20:46
  I make the most money from and I've it fucking kills me.
• 1:20:51
  Like even if I haven't even done it on purpose, I can't put
• 1:20:54
  something like I put one up the other day Will Ramos from Lorna
• 1:20:59
  Shaw. And like, we're talking about
• 1:21:00
  his vocal techniques and I just say one line, right?
• 1:21:03
  Which was, you know, in the world of death metal vocals, you
• 1:21:07
  are arguably one of the goats, right?
• 1:21:10
  Yeah, because he is. He can fucking the band selling
• 1:21:13
  out a pinnacle was fucking 7000 people in Nashville.
• 1:21:16
  And they sound like that. Like arguably being the big
• 1:21:19
  word, one of the goats fucking. I put up a clip of it yesterday.
• 1:21:24
  Not even TikTok, YouTube Shorts 200,000 views or yesterday and
• 1:21:30
  it's just hatred Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:33
  And it kills me because it's like I need that for the
• 1:21:40
  podcast. I need more eyes on the podcast,
• 1:21:42
  but I'm the result of all this conflict.
• 1:21:47
  Right. Just.
• 1:21:48
  Fucking me? No, totally.
• 1:21:49
  And it makes me want to stop by. Fucking can't.
• 1:21:51
  I'll pay my fucking. Bills, I know, like you want to
• 1:21:53
  harbour a certain environment, but like, yeah, hatred or
• 1:21:56
  negativity is the driving force on the Internet.
• 1:21:58
  You know, like the videos of mine that consistently without
• 1:22:02
  fail would do absolute numbers always revolved around telling
• 1:22:07
  people that they couldn't get muckle because they're not Mali.
• 1:22:11
  Particularly Americans. Sorry, Americans absolutely lose
• 1:22:14
  their minds when they're told that they can't do something.
• 1:22:18
  Those videos without fail boom light up every time.
• 1:22:22
  It's a horrible foundation for the for the years to come.
• 1:22:25
  It's when every video that is put in front of you is conflict
• 1:22:30
  and for for you it must be even more you like you have an actual
• 1:22:35
  cultural. Responsibility.
• 1:22:37
  Right. Right.
• 1:22:38
  But for me, it's just like, you know, I hate it.
• 1:22:42
  But at the end of the day it's just people fucking arguing.
• 1:22:44
  Like I'm like, I don't, I care and it sucks and I try not to do
• 1:22:48
  it, but when it happens, it's not like a cultural cultural.
• 1:22:52
  Why can't I? Fucking say that word.
• 1:22:54
  It's not a culturally relevant thing to me, so it doesn't have
• 1:23:01
  it doesn't carry that weight, but for you that must fucking
• 1:23:03
  suck. Yeah, it was an interesting
• 1:23:05
  thing, like every time something like that would happen and I was
• 1:23:07
  like, well, New Zealand's a little different though, you
• 1:23:10
  know, we don't have creative funds, things like that.
• 1:23:12
  So I'm not actually making money directly off my videos.
• 1:23:15
  Damn that. Sucks.
• 1:23:16
  But more eyes on the videos just meant more eyes from sponsors
• 1:23:19
  and, yeah, people that would pay you to do stuff or whatever, you
• 1:23:22
  know, and like particularly TikTok themself.
• 1:23:25
  Like I did this big campaign with TikTok and they pay you to
• 1:23:28
  do videos. Like, that wasn't a creative,
• 1:23:30
  fun thing, you know, because, yeah, New Zealand doesn't have
• 1:23:32
  it. So I was never so influenced per
• 1:23:36
  SE on the views because it didn't amount to anything.
• 1:23:39
  Oh OK yeah, but still in the hair in your head.
• 1:23:41
  Views are a type. It's.
• 1:23:43
  A thing because then when the business goes, oh hey, what are
• 1:23:46
  your views on a month, then you go not right now.
• 1:23:49
  I'll be only be like, oh, it's only 100,000 or something.
• 1:23:51
  And then Once Upon a time it would have been 10 million or
• 1:23:53
  something. Because you're causing all these
• 1:23:55
  fucking. Causing all these rows with
• 1:23:56
  people. And I was used to think like it
• 1:23:59
  was nice that my I always felt that my audience in general,
• 1:24:05
  like was pretty good. Like most of my videos.
• 1:24:09
  You can go into the comments and it was all like, you know, but
• 1:24:11
  those particularly viral ones, like the crazy, crazy number
• 1:24:15
  ones were always outrage, you know, like without fail.
• 1:24:20
  It sucks. There's no answer for it either.
• 1:24:23
  No human nature. I feel like, I mean, I know you
• 1:24:26
  stopped doing it, but like the podcast was the right move in
• 1:24:32
  terms of like, you know, I don't know everything.
• 1:24:34
  Let's bring on someone that knows more than me.
• 1:24:36
  You get to learn. Everyone else gets to learn,
• 1:24:39
  right? But you weren't causing that
• 1:24:40
  outrage. Well, it was interesting because
• 1:24:42
  even like even as I weighing off like still like I had one just
• 1:24:46
  the other day, get numbers, you know, more than usual.
• 1:24:49
  And for the same reasons, like people got really mad at it, you
• 1:24:52
  know, and it's always an interesting thing too, because
• 1:24:56
  I'm like, I'm you can argue with me all you want, right?
• 1:25:00
  I'm just a guy. I'm a guy that has it.
• 1:25:03
  I don't claim to know everything.
• 1:25:04
  If I've made something wrong, whatever.
• 1:25:06
  But these are videos now with the people who do it, you know,
• 1:25:09
  you're just a random guy and you've decided to argue with the
• 1:25:12
  literal art master of the tradition in this context.
• 1:25:17
  And they still go crazy over that, you know?
• 1:25:19
  So I'm like, man, sometimes you just can't.
• 1:25:20
  There's no winning, you know. The Internet's a place where
• 1:25:24
  people say whatever the fuck they want because they know
• 1:25:30
  they're not going to get that real world consequence back to
• 1:25:33
  them. Apart from some dude being like,
• 1:25:36
  you're an idiot. You know, they're not going to
• 1:25:37
  get punched in the head, They're not going to get screamed at.
• 1:25:40
  They're not, you know, it's, it's kind of like some people
• 1:25:43
  just like to fucking poke other people too.
• 1:25:46
  And it can be good. For like, you know, blowing up
• 1:25:49
  comments and blowing up views, but at the end of the day, it's
• 1:25:52
  like, man, the Internet's a fucking wicked basis.
• 1:25:58
  I personally have always, I've had this weird relationship with
• 1:26:01
  the Internet and technology. Like I tell Tudong all the time.
• 1:26:05
  I'm like odd. I have a technology curse and
• 1:26:08
  it's like I sometimes do, but also I think I sometimes just
• 1:26:12
  have always hated the way the world's going because of that
• 1:26:15
  way. Wrote a whole song.
• 1:26:17
  About it, yeah, right. Plenty of songs about it.
• 1:26:20
  But then like these days it's like, that's why I was so
• 1:26:23
  resistant to upgrading to digital and now Neural have sent
• 1:26:28
  me two quad cortexes and then I'm like oh fuck.
• 1:26:31
  There's a sick bro. There's a sick like I.
• 1:26:35
  Mean they sponsor the podcast, so that's fucking.
• 1:26:37
  You're this piece. You make some good shit and I
• 1:26:40
  hate computers, but your one's good.
• 1:26:43
  You've already heard me gas them up.
• 1:26:45
  About an hour and a half ago, we did it again.
• 1:26:48
  They're the fucking best. They are the fucking.
• 1:26:50
  Best. I've never had a better guitar
• 1:26:52
  TuneIn my whole life. It is the only one that I know,
• 1:26:55
  all of my analogue friends that are like, I'm never fucking
• 1:26:58
  doing it. And then they get that little
• 1:26:59
  fucking box and they're like, you mean I can just take this on
• 1:27:03
  a plane, dude? I I was like in the green room,
• 1:27:06
  like just like I was intonating my guitar and I was using it as
• 1:27:10
  a tuner, which is like using a fucking super computer to play
• 1:27:15
  Minecraft. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you,
• 1:27:19
  you, I know you sold Matt from. Spirit.
• 1:27:20
  Yeah, dude on it too. I was literally like I had to I.
• 1:27:24
  Had a fucking good band. I had to convince the bed.
• 1:27:26
  I was like, ah, do you wanna plug your regular?
• 1:27:28
  I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, maybe.
• 1:27:30
  I was like, yeah, it's here if you wanna plug in.
• 1:27:32
  And then I was like chugging on it.
• 1:27:33
  And then I think Stu hit a jam on it and he put my headphones
• 1:27:36
  on. He was like, oh.
• 1:27:38
  And you still have cabs or you? No straight, I think Neural.
• 1:27:43
  I'm still using a couple pedals, but then next to her I'm like,
• 1:27:46
  fuck that. I'm just gonna like get.
• 1:27:47
  It all on the thing. Dude, 'cause they fix.
• 1:27:52
  Yeah. Do you, you guys wanna click?
• 1:27:54
  Yeah, Yeah. Time, code, time code whole set.
• 1:27:58
  Yeah. So it's gonna be.
• 1:27:59
  It's gonna be. Like I I still foot switch
• 1:28:01
  everything 'cause I'm like I'm one of those young guys that's
• 1:28:05
  like convinced I'm an old guy if that makes sense.
• 1:28:08
  Like you said, he's 23. Yeah, you are a young boy.
• 1:28:11
  How old are you? 26 Fuck yeah.
• 1:28:14
  I'm so old. Good for you guys making fucking
• 1:28:19
  moves at that age on the other side of the fucking world.
• 1:28:21
  I mean, I've been in the band for five years and I was in my
• 1:28:24
  fifth year and they would already, you know, been doing
• 1:28:26
  the international tours when I knew them in high school, you
• 1:28:29
  know, which was. Crazy.
• 1:28:30
  I'm a young guy, but I've been doing it for a while now.
• 1:28:34
  I mean eight. Were you 8 or you were 10?
• 1:28:36
  I was 8 when we started the band and then we started touring
• 1:28:40
  internationally. I think 20, 17 or 18.
• 1:28:44
  And what? Were you in 201816?
• 1:28:49
  Touring internationally at 16. Yeah, and you're playing
• 1:28:51
  walking. The hacker.
• 1:28:53
  Right. The fuck is it?
• 1:28:56
  That is a big question as well. From my OK, from my
• 1:28:59
  understanding, so I saw it all the time, my dad would watch
• 1:29:02
  rugby, I saw the old All Blacks do it and I remember just
• 1:29:05
  thinking that looks fucking sick.
• 1:29:06
  Right? From my understanding there's
• 1:29:10
  it's a dance either for war or what's the other one.
• 1:29:19
  There's like a a different version of it.
• 1:29:22
  I don't know if I'm wrong. To someone.
• 1:29:25
  Oh yeah, like in a celebration or something like that.
• 1:29:28
  Yeah, it's it's taken on a very broad encompassing use now.
• 1:29:33
  I mean like we do it at the start of our set every night,
• 1:29:35
  you know, and it's simplest form.
• 1:29:37
  Once Upon a time it was the pre war ritual hype up threat, you
• 1:29:42
  know, like so the everyone always thinks when I think of
• 1:29:45
  the hacker, they think of the tongue poking out, you know,
• 1:29:47
  like that had a function. It was a threat to the enemy
• 1:29:51
  that you were going to eat them. I've got a YouTube motherfucker.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah. That's so sad.
• 1:29:55
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:56
  But again, because this and it's a deep answer, you know, about
• 1:30:01
  multicultural values is the thing about when I said before
• 1:30:04
  about the sacred and mana and things like this, there's two
• 1:30:08
  concepts in multiculture that really form the like strong
• 1:30:12
  basis to most of the rules and it's tapu and Noah.
• 1:30:18
  Tapu meaning sacred. Tapu is actually all the
• 1:30:21
  variance of tapu was actually the origin of the English word
• 1:30:24
  taboo was a mispronunciation of it, which is now we see as
• 1:30:29
  prohibited, you know, so tapu, which is a word that you can see
• 1:30:33
  all across Polynesia in many different forms, Kapu in Hawaii
• 1:30:37
  and blah, blah, blah, basically means sacred.
• 1:30:39
  And then Noah is the opposite of that and those two realms should
• 1:30:43
  never cross. So the human body is hugely
• 1:30:48
  tapu. Mostly so our heads and food is
• 1:30:53
  nor. So it's like very unsacred.
• 1:30:56
  So when you do a lot of Maori ritual, food is always happening
• 1:31:00
  at the end because it's sort of like the cleanse.
• 1:31:02
  It resets you back into a non sacred space.
• 1:31:04
  So the threat of eating somebody wasn't just a threat to eat
• 1:31:07
  someone, it was actually considered like the highest
• 1:31:10
  insult because you were eating, making something so sacred like
• 1:31:14
  a human and turning it into. Food.
• 1:31:15
  You're turning their most sacred thing into your least sacred
• 1:31:19
  thing. Exactly.
• 1:31:20
  So Oh shit, yeah. So actually like, and everyone
• 1:31:23
  always asks, like I said, I'll I'll answer it before you even
• 1:31:25
  ask about swear words, right. In a foreign language, a lot of
• 1:31:29
  people are looking for variance of shit, fuck whatever, you
• 1:31:31
  know, like those Western ideas of a swear word, but because
• 1:31:37
  like that's that's too deep of a conversation.
• 1:31:40
  But like, the origin of swear words have like, a lot of depth
• 1:31:43
  behind them. Maori culture didn't consider
• 1:31:46
  things like sex or pooping like that offensive.
• 1:31:50
  So it wasn't a thing that was considered offensive.
• 1:31:52
  But the eating thing was so like the swear word that is normally
• 1:31:56
  attributed to Maori's poco kohua, which means to boil and
• 1:32:00
  eat your head. And that was essentially like
• 1:32:02
  the highest form of insult. It was like calling someone or
• 1:32:05
  whatever. How in a sentence?
• 1:32:07
  How would it be said? No, just dropped.
• 1:32:09
  Just just. You've done something insulting
• 1:32:11
  like, I don't know, you've stolen my wife.
• 1:32:13
  I. Will boy.
• 1:32:15
  On Eat Your head, Chaotic Kuri is another one, which means dog
• 1:32:19
  food. So that's even going lesser than
• 1:32:21
  a human won't even eat you. We'll feed you to the dog.
• 1:32:23
  I mean, that's got we actually say that in stray all the time
• 1:32:26
  when when catering is dog shit. Really just be like, wait, even
• 1:32:30
  then I just said dog shit. Yeah, like what?
• 1:32:32
  What's catering saying? There's like dog food.
• 1:32:33
  Yeah, there you go, Chaotic Kuri.
• 1:32:36
  Yeah, I'm saying that. I'm saying that.
• 1:32:38
  Yeah, but so that's what the tongue, the whole tongue thing
• 1:32:40
  is with the hucker. So it was like threat, morale
• 1:32:42
  boosting, you know, challenge you don't like, you want to add.
• 1:32:46
  Something, yeah, I suppose I I was at the end understanding
• 1:32:51
  that if your hacker was fierce enough, the enemy tribal war
• 1:32:55
  party would be so scared that they'd be like, all right, we
• 1:33:00
  ain't going to fight, you know? We believe you.
• 1:33:03
  You're going to fuck us up and eat us, you know, so we're not,
• 1:33:07
  we're not even going to bother fighting you.
• 1:33:09
  So sometimes the hacker would actually resolve the battle
• 1:33:11
  without having to slaughter, you know, heaps of hundreds of
• 1:33:16
  hundreds of warriors, you know, and they're just like, all
• 1:33:18
  right, sweet. And there's the very famous
• 1:33:23
  story during the world wars actually, of the multi battalion
• 1:33:28
  feeling like they were ambushed by Germans.
• 1:33:32
  You can say German, I can't remember who they started the
• 1:33:35
  whole yeah. Someone on the opposite side and
• 1:33:38
  they were like, it's a suicide mission.
• 1:33:42
  Let's just one last hurrah that they got up into the haka and
• 1:33:46
  the Germans ran away. Like it's a very famous story
• 1:33:50
  from the walls back home in New Zealand as like an example of
• 1:33:53
  the haka in modern use, actually.
• 1:33:57
  I'm actually having a gun and then seeing that and being like,
• 1:34:00
  fuck me. Nope.
• 1:34:02
  Yeah, not doing that. Yeah, supposedly that was like,
• 1:34:04
  that was exactly what happens. That's quite a that I remember
• 1:34:07
  that circulated a lot, that story growing up through schools
• 1:34:09
  and that. But in the modern context now,
• 1:34:12
  because we're obviously not warring each other, it has
• 1:34:15
  become partially because of the All Blacks, like Rugbys use of
• 1:34:20
  it as a challenge to the team, you know, like that, the sport.
• 1:34:23
  Kind of warring and it. Works, you know, sports is a
• 1:34:25
  good example. You were trying to best somebody
• 1:34:27
  in an environment where you are putting them up to the
• 1:34:29
  challenge, but because of what the hackers, rugby did for the
• 1:34:33
  culture like it has become. The thing matched it as well.
• 1:34:36
  Right. You know, when we say we're from
• 1:34:38
  New Zealand or we're Maori, everyone goes hacker, All
• 1:34:40
  Blacks. Yeah, it's normally like the
• 1:34:42
  first 2 words that follow. So the rugby has made the hacker
• 1:34:46
  such a cultural identifier for Maori and for New Zealand that
• 1:34:50
  its use in modern time has evolved to fit that as well.
• 1:34:54
  So like Lewis was saying, now you've got celebrations.
• 1:34:56
  So quite often you'll see hacker at weddings.
• 1:34:58
  Yeah, funerals, graduations, you know, live shows.
• 1:35:04
  Sort of sort of not you know, it's it's it's a very common
• 1:35:08
  thing when you you know, even even non multi, just normal high
• 1:35:13
  school in New Zealand, you know someone of multi descent gets a
• 1:35:17
  prestigious award at high school.
• 1:35:19
  You'll just hear. So then 10 fucking 2050 people
• 1:35:25
  will get up and just do this haka and everyone will be like
• 1:35:28
  fucking jerk, you know? Because a lot of it seems like
• 1:35:30
  quite synchronized. Yes, it's a tricky thing because
• 1:35:33
  like haka is the term, but there are many haka.
• 1:35:36
  Yeah, like the haka we do at the start of our said ah ha, chiara
• 1:35:39
  is very specific to mine and my brother's genealogy.
• 1:35:44
  It's our, it's the Chiara haka. And that's kind of where we fuck
• 1:35:48
  a Papa too. And the hacker that the All
• 1:35:50
  Blacks to is actually come out there.
• 1:35:52
  And it's it's a very interesting story, that is.
• 1:35:56
  That is, but they I think they even have their own one now too.
• 1:35:58
  They've had one like made for them as well.
• 1:36:00
  They used to do come out there a lot and they've added bits to it
• 1:36:03
  and but like the one that we do at the start of the set, for
• 1:36:05
  example, I learned because I joined the band.
• 1:36:08
  So if I was in an environment where that was being used
• 1:36:11
  organically before the band, I wouldn't be able to join in.
• 1:36:14
  I don't know it I grew up in a different family, different
• 1:36:16
  tribes so I learned different hacker.
• 1:36:19
  But maybe 1 where we would all know is like we went to the same
• 1:36:22
  school. So then schools often have a
• 1:36:24
  hacker made for them or we use the Napuhi one which is the
• 1:36:26
  local tribe. So at the AT school, if someone
• 1:36:30
  wanted to do the hacker for someone graduating, chances are
• 1:36:35
  the entire school knows it. So then anybody can join them
• 1:36:37
  because they want to. But so there are ones that are
• 1:36:40
  taught with choreography, and you do learn it.
• 1:36:43
  So that's why, you know, a lot of them are synchronized because
• 1:36:45
  they are. But the organicness is that
• 1:36:48
  they're not always like, no one goes, we're going to do the
• 1:36:51
  hacker. Yeah, but someone will start it.
• 1:36:53
  You do that if you know do this. Yeah.
• 1:36:55
  Someone will stand up and then everyone will be like.
• 1:36:59
  And they would they would recognize which one they were
• 1:37:01
  dimming. Yes, if they knew it, yeah.
• 1:37:03
  If they knew it. So now, like if I hear I had the
• 1:37:06
  other one here, which is the one at the start of the set, I'm
• 1:37:08
  like, oh, I know that one now you're coming with.
• 1:37:10
  What the fuck? Yeah, I can jump in now.
• 1:37:12
  And you know, it happens every now and then when it happens.
• 1:37:15
  I've been at places where I don't know the hacker, you know,
• 1:37:17
  like when I was at university before the band, our university
• 1:37:21
  split, you can opt in or out, but they split the graduations
• 1:37:24
  between everyone else and Maori because they know that like when
• 1:37:29
  Maori walk across the stage, the likelihood of people standing up
• 1:37:32
  and then doing a 3 minute hacker is very likely so.
• 1:37:36
  It's fucking always. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:37
  But so in those environments, for example, like 90% of those
• 1:37:41
  hacker I have never heard in my life.
• 1:37:43
  Yeah. So I'm just sitting there and
• 1:37:44
  watching and enjoying it, you know, And then every now and
• 1:37:47
  then one will come across and they go, oh, I know this one.
• 1:37:49
  All right, I'll jump up. I don't even know the person,
• 1:37:50
  but you just. Jump.
• 1:37:52
  In jumping into some support so. And it's kind of funny how the
• 1:37:56
  how the modernization has come about too, because, you know,
• 1:37:59
  back in the day, I would have never known Arangapu here
• 1:38:03
  because Charua and Gapu, he historically hated each other.
• 1:38:08
  They were two different and, and they were, they were very much
• 1:38:12
  opposed. And I know I had Chara here and
• 1:38:15
  I know Arangapur here because I went to school in Northland,
• 1:38:19
  which is predominantly Napo here.
• 1:38:21
  And they're they're the ones that first got the muskets like
• 1:38:25
  Hongi Hika traded as suit of armour he got gifted from King
• 1:38:29
  George for like 800 genuine good muskets and then he came back to
• 1:38:35
  New Zealand and fucked up everyone that rolled them.
• 1:38:37
  Basically 8. Hundred.
• 1:38:39
  A lot. Yeah yeah and gap we are
• 1:38:41
  considered like the biggest collective tribe of of Maori in
• 1:38:44
  the country. They take up majority of the
• 1:38:47
  upper North Island region. And yeah in Hongihika who the
• 1:38:51
  the boys viral song Kaitangata was like about.
• 1:38:55
  It's about him fucking age. Our our our family basically.
• 1:38:59
  Damn. That's fucking awesome.
• 1:39:02
  I feel this is great. I'm.
• 1:39:04
  Perfectly heavy metal, but. You know what?
• 1:39:07
  It's like, it's so honest because it's your heritage, but
• 1:39:11
  it's like so fucking unique. Like, so unique.
• 1:39:15
  Yeah, I'm like amazed. It's like a lot of people, like
• 1:39:17
  one of the comments we always get is like, one thing I love
• 1:39:20
  about alien weaponry is you get the head bang and history.
• 1:39:23
  Like, yeah. I'm right now I am having a head
• 1:39:26
  bang in history right now and some.
• 1:39:28
  People have described this as kind of folk metal, which I
• 1:39:31
  guess is kind of true, but also at the same time like we don't
• 1:39:36
  have the fiddles. And yeah, don't sound like Lord
• 1:39:38
  of the Rings. But.
• 1:39:40
  It's in the the word folk. I guess it makes sense.
• 1:39:44
  Yeah, it's like I see people called bloody wood folk music
• 1:39:47
  all the time and all that. Because then, you know, a lot of
• 1:39:48
  people, like they're one of those ones we get brought up
• 1:39:50
  alongside a lot of the time, you know, for the same kind of
• 1:39:52
  things like singing, different language, cultural elements, you
• 1:39:55
  know, they've got their cultural instruments and things like that
• 1:39:58
  happening. So The Who you know.
• 1:40:00
  Everyone. Compared us to simpleture.
• 1:40:03
  Well, they still do all the time.
• 1:40:05
  And it's like if I was like, you're a massive Simpleture
• 1:40:07
  fans, right? And it's like we never actually
• 1:40:09
  like really heard Sepulturism really until people started.
• 1:40:15
  I think I heard sepulturism music way back in the day.
• 1:40:19
  One of my friend's mums and I think she called it Sepultura.
• 1:40:24
  I think I called it that back in the day when?
• 1:40:26
  I was a kid and it's like the reason people draw the
• 1:40:29
  comparison is because of that kind of indigenous element.
• 1:40:33
  You do use some, I'm assuming native percussion which roots
• 1:40:40
  Sepultura is big on Brazilian. And then we use kind of what we
• 1:40:45
  call Tal lapuda, which is like traditional Maori instruments
• 1:40:48
  like Kuowo and. I guess, I guess it's because
• 1:40:53
  there hasn't been much legitimately tribal music tribal
• 1:40:57
  that sounds wrong. That's it's a funny word, that
• 1:41:00
  word. We always have a I know that
• 1:41:02
  Henry gets particularly irked by that word.
• 1:41:04
  I irked myself. It's a weird one because it's
• 1:41:06
  not that it's wrong, but but like that's always the
• 1:41:09
  comparison with Sepultura, right?
• 1:41:11
  It's like the the word that normally follows.
• 1:41:12
  Are you guys must be inspired by Sepultura because it's so
• 1:41:15
  tribal. It's always the like thing and I
• 1:41:19
  think like there is, you know, the jungle rhythm thing.
• 1:41:23
  There must be a better word. It's kind of like saying I have
• 1:41:26
  more and I've got a tribal bro, you know, it's that same sort
• 1:41:31
  of. It's a tricky one because I also
• 1:41:33
  find like it also what it is the word.
• 1:41:36
  Do you know what I mean? That's why I have there were.
• 1:41:38
  Tribes, you know, I guess you can, but it's a it's a.
• 1:41:41
  Very just way of. I think that sometimes it feels
• 1:41:46
  a little bit not infantilizing. Dismissive.
• 1:41:51
  It makes you seem like lesser, like when you hear the word
• 1:41:53
  tribal it makes you think like Stone Age.
• 1:41:56
  It's very. Vague.
• 1:41:57
  As well it is, there's no. Like pride in you're like being,
• 1:42:02
  oh, tribal, you know? What tribe from where from you
• 1:42:05
  know? And also tribalism in general
• 1:42:08
  now is a term for the fucking Internet or people just being
• 1:42:14
  you know, of 1 thought pattern or the other.
• 1:42:18
  Yes, they're of lesser thought. Let me even try.
• 1:42:21
  I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say there's not that much
• 1:42:26
  world music influence metal like there really isn't particularly
• 1:42:31
  nothing as big as Roots Sepultura.
• 1:42:34
  So I get the comparison and I do.
• 1:42:38
  I would say you guys are more like, I mean kind of it's like
• 1:42:43
  groove metal If I if I had to like put a name on it.
• 1:42:46
  I would have always because everyone calls us Thresh and
• 1:42:50
  I've and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm like the least genre Nazi person
• 1:42:55
  ever, but I'm like. When I really.
• 1:42:57
  Objectively, listen to the music that Alien Weaponry makes.
• 1:43:02
  There's only a handful of songs that are like, you know, got
• 1:43:07
  that thrash. A lot of it's slower tempo, more
• 1:43:11
  in tune with bands like Lamb of God and like you know, it's
• 1:43:16
  definitely, I'd say more groove influence.
• 1:43:19
  And we definitely found that out when we did the Kerry King tour.
• 1:43:22
  Kerry King, Municipal Waste. Well, not that they hate it, but
• 1:43:25
  then, like, everyone, like everyone's always like, oh,
• 1:43:27
  yeah, thrash, thrash, heavy metal, thrash, groove, you know,
• 1:43:31
  Yeah. But when you're actually playing
• 1:43:32
  with two thrash, thrash bands, you feel like you are banging
• 1:43:36
  bongos. You know, it's like we felt like
• 1:43:39
  we were slow as on that. Did it?
• 1:43:41
  Did it go well though? Oh.
• 1:43:42
  Yeah, it was cool, man. You know it's cool.
• 1:43:43
  It's not a bad thing. Always that.
• 1:43:45
  For me as a viewer, like I, I can't do 3 thrash bands in a
• 1:43:49
  row. Give me something in the middle.
• 1:43:51
  Well, I think a lot. Of the little bit tribe.
• 1:43:53
  Yeah. You know, one of the words
• 1:43:55
  actually that I do think better encompasses the response,
• 1:43:59
  because normally it's about the response that people get, right?
• 1:44:01
  Like when people listen, they feel tribal, primal.
• 1:44:06
  I always think primal is a better one because it's a little
• 1:44:08
  more instinctual. You know, everybody can have a
• 1:44:11
  primal instinct, a primal response to something.
• 1:44:15
  And that when they hear that type of rhythm and things like
• 1:44:17
  the hacker, it's like a very, that collective sound that the
• 1:44:20
  hacker gives where people feel like, oh, I feel like I should
• 1:44:23
  join in with this. They don't even know why.
• 1:44:25
  They're just going, you know, in the crowd that it's a primal
• 1:44:31
  like response and. Primal's the term we go him a
• 1:44:34
  primal grief metal. You know, and it's cool, man,
• 1:44:36
  because like I was saying, you got bloody wood, you got The
• 1:44:38
  Who, you know, you got a bunch of like Scandinavian bands that
• 1:44:40
  aren't singing in English. I never remember their name.
• 1:44:43
  I think you guys went and saw the more Henry went and watched
• 1:44:44
  them at power station. The lady's got like the big
• 1:44:46
  antlers and. Stuff High Highland.
• 1:44:49
  Highland. I went and saw them live,
• 1:44:51
  actually, yeah, I went and saw them with my there's.
• 1:44:54
  All these There's a great band from New Zealand actually.
• 1:44:56
  We toured them a lot. Shepherds Rain.
• 1:44:57
  Shepherds Rain if anyone likes alien weaponry for Maori,
• 1:45:01
  Shepherd's reign is Samoan. Same premise.
• 1:45:04
  You know, they're one of the people that actually put me onto
• 1:45:07
  Quad cause they've been on Quad for a while now.
• 1:45:09
  The. Style of metal is a little
• 1:45:11
  different. It's a little more like power.
• 1:45:12
  Metally, yeah, In Samoa. I mean, just what are they
• 1:45:15
  called? Shepherd.
• 1:45:15
  'S Shepherd's reign. That's a power metal name, if
• 1:45:18
  ever. But reign is in reign, like the
• 1:45:20
  reign of the king is of the. King Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:23
  Yeah, yeah, a great band, but you know, there's so much more
• 1:45:25
  of it now out there. Metal that is.
• 1:45:28
  You know, everyone always uses Rammstein as the like,
• 1:45:32
  non-english band, you know, but you're still speaking a very
• 1:45:35
  popular language, you know. So it's one thing to garnish
• 1:45:39
  popularity in a language that 800,000 Maori.
• 1:45:43
  How many of 100,000 people speak Maori?
• 1:45:47
  Is that the demographic? Don't get are you?
• 1:45:49
  Are you? Fluent in it?
• 1:45:50
  Nope, that was one of the things.
• 1:45:52
  I wouldn't consider myself. What is writing lyrics look
• 1:45:56
  like? Yeah, well.
• 1:45:57
  That's a that's a very collaborative process and also
• 1:46:01
  takes, you know, you can write lyrics or write the concept of a
• 1:46:06
  song and then send it to someone who, you know, I guess Maori is
• 1:46:11
  a very family based Co Papa. Meaning what does making Co Papa
• 1:46:17
  translate to see motor coal. Yeah.
• 1:46:21
  Yeah. So like, you know, between the
• 1:46:27
  three of us, we've, I guess fluent, but then even then we'll
• 1:46:31
  send it off to. We use my uncle on this recent
• 1:46:35
  album. And it'll be like, oh, I'd I'd
• 1:46:37
  swap that word out for this word that makes more sense.
• 1:46:40
  I wouldn't say it like that. I'd say it like this blah, blah,
• 1:46:44
  blah, blah, blah. You know, absolutely sure.
• 1:46:48
  Kind of a proof. Proof checkers so to speak.
• 1:46:53
  You know what I mean? I mean like not again, not
• 1:46:56
  drawing a comparison, but a parallel like obviously Stray,
• 1:46:59
  we write a hell of a lot about essentially other people's
• 1:47:03
  problems, right? So we would always, we write
• 1:47:06
  lyrics and then we would send that to someone we know with
• 1:47:10
  their lived experience. Like that makes sense.
• 1:47:13
  Sometimes they come back and be like, this is some white people
• 1:47:17
  and then we and then we're like, OK, so like, you know, help us
• 1:47:20
  out on this because it's so much better to get it from from from
• 1:47:26
  someone who, you know, lived that experience.
• 1:47:27
  Yes, and luckily for us too, like like contextually the
• 1:47:32
  lyrics and the intent we never have any issues with because you
• 1:47:37
  know, like we live and breathe it.
• 1:47:39
  But then it's just like it just grammar policing, you know, But
• 1:47:42
  when you, when you're singing that to a crowd, even though you
• 1:47:46
  know, 99.9% of those people have no idea what you could sing
• 1:47:49
  whatever bloody words you want, you just, you would like to
• 1:47:52
  know, you know, and like. Sometimes he who's a stickler,
• 1:47:55
  we'll see it and yeah, you can't be doing that.
• 1:47:58
  Respect. Exactly the lineages you know.
• 1:48:00
  Not to everybody, but in our for our people, language is also
• 1:48:04
  sacred. You know language is taboo, so.
• 1:48:06
  I'll give you a great example. So we have like, obviously our
• 1:48:12
  biggest music video is Kaitanata.
• 1:48:14
  It's got millions of views on the Internet and there's a kind
• 1:48:20
  of a screen grab from that video that we have as one of our merch
• 1:48:23
  designs, which is like the chief like.
• 1:48:27
  Yeah. Pulling a pukana with a Thai aha
• 1:48:30
  and of course Aliexpress loves to RIP style classic.
• 1:48:35
  And what they did was they ripped that image and they put
• 1:48:37
  it on a coffee mug. So they took something that was
• 1:48:39
  very tappu, which is this dude's head in face.
• 1:48:43
  Tappu beanie sacred. Sacred and they put it on
• 1:48:45
  something very Noah as in you know you're consuming food
• 1:48:50
  basically an insult and so Aliexpress when in you know some
• 1:48:57
  wicked there's like a album cover stretched across like a
• 1:49:02
  steering wheel cover wicked ones out there.
• 1:49:06
  But basically, they put this image on a coffee cup and we got
• 1:49:11
  a very, very, I wouldn't even say angry, but a very stressed
• 1:49:17
  e-mail from one of our elderly relatives saying, you can't be
• 1:49:21
  doing that. And we're kind of trying, trying
• 1:49:23
  to explain to it, this is not us.
• 1:49:25
  This is someone stealing your design and selling it on
• 1:49:29
  Aliexpress. But what they did was they took
• 1:49:31
  something sacred and put it on something that's, you know,
• 1:49:34
  consuming food. What was the word for Noah?
• 1:49:37
  Noah. Yeah, and, and it was kind of
• 1:49:40
  that weird thing where we're like, oh fuck, like and you
• 1:49:44
  can't technology, you can't, there's nothing, there's
• 1:49:48
  nothing. There's not much you can do
• 1:49:49
  about Aliexpress. That's always gonna be there,
• 1:49:52
  but interesting. But it but it's that thing where
• 1:49:54
  we like, oh shit, like yeah, we would have never put it on a
• 1:49:57
  coffee cup 'cause we have that knowledge of.
• 1:49:59
  Yeah. You know I wouldn't have had
• 1:50:00
  that knowledge, right? Yeah.
• 1:50:01
  But then of course, you know, they're like, oh, people buy
• 1:50:04
  that shirt, let's put it on everything, let's put it on
• 1:50:07
  this, let's put it on that, and then you put it on a food item
• 1:50:09
  that's hugely disrespectful and multiculture.
• 1:50:12
  And we kind of, I wouldn't say got in trouble, but we had to
• 1:50:16
  kind of carefully explain the situation to our our elderly
• 1:50:21
  relatives, I suppose. Is that one of the unique
• 1:50:23
  things, you know, when you're dealing with an image and a
• 1:50:26
  brand that isn't just a image and a brand that you can do
• 1:50:29
  whatever you want with it, you know?
• 1:50:31
  It's really interesting, like I would never have known that.
• 1:50:34
  Yeah. And I always remember that one,
• 1:50:35
  like, yeah. It's also really cool, like I
• 1:50:38
  don't know, like everyone being insulted and offended by the
• 1:50:43
  same shit these days. It's like kind of cool to be
• 1:50:45
  like that thing was the most insulting thing you could do and
• 1:50:50
  to like, you know, western person.
• 1:50:53
  I'm like, if you did not told me the context behind it, I'd have
• 1:50:57
  been like, it's a face on a coffee, right?
• 1:51:00
  But now understanding it, I'm like it doesn't seem.
• 1:51:02
  It doesn't seem like a big deal to someone who isn't.
• 1:51:06
  I guess board up that way or is there hasn't been taught that
• 1:51:10
  way? This is here's a question, are
• 1:51:11
  there any Maori black metal bands that flip everything so
• 1:51:16
  they'll do like against Maori? Now that would that was a lot.
• 1:51:21
  That's an idea. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:51:24
  That would cause something, that's for sure.
• 1:51:25
  There's not already, not even that many multi bands.
• 1:51:28
  You know, that's already a market that is like, I think.
• 1:51:31
  Dwindling. Blackmail was only because I
• 1:51:33
  thought of the way that they invert everything that religion
• 1:51:35
  does. So I guess it would have to be,
• 1:51:38
  I guess we just have to be white people, British people, just a
• 1:51:41
  white supremacist band coming out and just doing anti Maori's
• 1:51:45
  well. Actually the funniest thing
• 1:51:46
  right now. Of course that was the biggest
• 1:51:47
  anti Maori are actually New Zealanders.
• 1:51:49
  Really like. They're not the British anymore.
• 1:51:51
  The British are so far detached from that history.
• 1:51:54
  That's just like, because we get that question a lot, Like, I'm
• 1:51:56
  British, people are gonna be mad at me.
• 1:51:58
  I'm like, no. I mean, if you're mad at me, the
• 1:52:00
  whole fucking world is mad at me.
• 1:52:02
  We had it all, boys. Like the modern Maori now like
• 1:52:05
  doesn't see Britain as the in the media.
• 1:52:09
  It's like it's the. People that that are like, I
• 1:52:12
  don't know why the Marys keep complaining about everything.
• 1:52:17
  They're lazy. So is it similar to the dynamic
• 1:52:20
  in Australia with? Aboriginal not as bad, I
• 1:52:23
  wouldn't say. Because they didn't play.
• 1:52:26
  The aboriginals got shafted. Pretty damn.
• 1:52:29
  High and they still are like I'm in a bar recently in Australia
• 1:52:36
  and they're a guy came up to me and was like, I'm I'm like
• 1:52:40
  Saturday he was a bit drunk and you sat down we're having a chat
• 1:52:42
  or whatever. Like what you up to?
• 1:52:44
  I played in a band, did a show or whatever and he's like, I'm
• 1:52:47
  Aboriginal and I was like cool. And then he was like, are you OK
• 1:52:50
  with that? And I was like, fucking, I'm
• 1:52:53
  like, I know enough of the history of your country, like.
• 1:52:56
  You know, and a good example actually about the situation
• 1:52:59
  over there were like the First Nations in Australia is like
• 1:53:02
  Maori. There's a lot of Maori that live
• 1:53:05
  in Australia. Maori wanted to have a Maori
• 1:53:08
  built, which is like our temple grounds, sacred grounds.
• 1:53:16
  And it caused a huge uproar because like First Nations,
• 1:53:21
  Australia can't even have their land.
• 1:53:23
  And we are like asking for permission to use the land to
• 1:53:27
  build our stuff. And a lot of Maori back home in
• 1:53:30
  New Zealand thought it was just the most outrageously
• 1:53:33
  disrespectful thing ever. But it's like, that's how more
• 1:53:37
  fortunate we are that we can even pitch that idea to them in
• 1:53:40
  their own country because the Australian system is just.
• 1:53:43
  So and I assume it had to be pitched to the white man?
• 1:53:46
  Probably. Yeah, I'm not.
• 1:53:48
  Yeah, yeah. Fuck me.
• 1:53:50
  That's a kettle of fish. Let's not.
• 1:53:52
  Yeah, yeah, that's a whole kettle of fish.
• 1:53:54
  Let's get. Political.
• 1:53:56
  No, we're going to get the opposite political because we
• 1:53:58
  are fucking running out of time because I'm having too much fun.
• 1:54:00
  Primer Speed run Festival. Interview Yeah, yeah, we do the
• 1:54:03
  festival bit now. Have you had before we do that?
• 1:54:05
  Have you had fun? Oh yeah, dude, definitely this.
• 1:54:07
  Is a nice way to break up the 9 hours of travelling.
• 1:54:09
  I'm fucking so thankful that you did it after that.
• 1:54:12
  Like, that sucks. I'm sorry.
• 1:54:15
  OK, Terra. Yes, Terra, What does?
• 1:54:17
  That mean God. In this context it means the sun
• 1:54:21
  the. Sun.
• 1:54:22
  It's the short, short name for Tamanui Terra, which is that the
• 1:54:27
  actual personification of the that is the Sun and our stories.
• 1:54:31
  And that was just too long for the front cover.
• 1:54:34
  It's kind of there's a very there's a few very kind of
• 1:54:39
  famous, almost folklore stories that as milder you kind of know
• 1:54:45
  growing up and the story of Maui and the sun.
• 1:54:50
  Like, I mean, it's, it's literally in the Disney, it is
• 1:54:55
  Moana, you know the line where he's like.
• 1:54:59
  I'm the guy who slowed down the sun.
• 1:55:01
  Like that's. Do you know this line?
• 1:55:03
  I'd haven't seen it. Yes, he also talks about how he
• 1:55:06
  killed Neil and sprouted coconut trees.
• 1:55:09
  Yes, in that yeah, fish the islands up out of the ocean.
• 1:55:12
  So that's the story of him fishing up the North Island of
• 1:55:14
  New Zealand. Out of the ocean?
• 1:55:16
  Well, Maui fished up all the Pacific islands.
• 1:55:18
  Yeah, You know, he's a Pacific Polynesian demigod.
• 1:55:21
  Not unique to us. And well, yeah, one of the he
• 1:55:24
  was kind of like a Polynesian Hercules, you know, completely a
• 1:55:26
  bunch of feats that explain the world around us.
• 1:55:29
  And one of them was slowing down the sun to give us the day.
• 1:55:33
  I guess the the the very just glossed over version is the sun
• 1:55:38
  was racing across the sky super fast here, almost like oh shit,
• 1:55:43
  I got I can't don't even have. Time to shit in the day and.
• 1:55:46
  Then what? It's it's already night time.
• 1:55:48
  And then Mario was like enough. And so he went to the pit that
• 1:55:52
  the sun rose out of with his brothers and basically they
• 1:55:56
  chucked the spagnet or ropes, you know, there's a few
• 1:55:59
  variations of the story, but basically held the sun down and
• 1:56:03
  he was like, you need to slow down and he just wake.
• 1:56:08
  The shit out of the. Sun, the sun was like oh girl,
• 1:56:10
  slow down, give you a proper day.
• 1:56:14
  I'll give you a proper day. Yeah, you have some more hours.
• 1:56:17
  How did the Randy Blythe thing come about?
• 1:56:19
  Oh. Yeah, yeah, that's a funny 1 so.
• 1:56:22
  I'm a super. I'm like.
• 1:56:24
  I can hear it bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:56:28
  I never approached Randy about anything 'cause I'm too fucking
• 1:56:31
  scared to. Yeah, Randy had come across my
• 1:56:35
  videos. The TikTok ones.
• 1:56:37
  The TikTok ones but like on Instagram, 'cause they cross
• 1:56:39
  post. But like it was those those
• 1:56:40
  videos, not music ones. And it was of a book that I had
• 1:56:44
  recommended as an introduction to Maori customary practice.
• 1:56:48
  Recommend the book. T Kanga TIKANGA by Katie Opai,
• 1:56:53
  who's actually one of my relatives.
• 1:56:55
  And it's a really, really awesome book.
• 1:56:57
  Like it's like takes all this really complex stuff, kind of
• 1:57:00
  like what we've been talking about tonight and compresses it
• 1:57:02
  into like a really perfect introductory for like anybody in
• 1:57:06
  the world could get a grasp of a much deeper understanding than
• 1:57:10
  most people already have. Randy bought it.
• 1:57:14
  I wake up one day. I see this message in my
• 1:57:15
  Instagram going hey, man 1. I like you guys band the two.
• 1:57:20
  I bought this book and I really like it.
• 1:57:21
  I was like, cool, nice to meet you, you know, nice to.
• 1:57:24
  Meet you Randy Blythe from. Right now me, admittedly, I was
• 1:57:28
  never a huge middle head, so I didn't really I knew these guys
• 1:57:33
  loved them, especially Lewis. So, so for me, it was just kind
• 1:57:36
  of, oh cool, Randy, you know, but I that was about it.
• 1:57:39
  And then Fast forward months later and we had been getting a
• 1:57:45
  film, like a documentary filmed about the band.
• 1:57:49
  Well, they've been adding it for years, but like, and it was
• 1:57:53
  continued until since I had joined and the director managed
• 1:58:00
  to get Randy on the interview to talk about the band.
• 1:58:06
  So then that was like another thing where I was like, oh, he
• 1:58:08
  really knows the ban. Like he and if you ever get to
• 1:58:11
  see that documentary out there, like.
• 1:58:12
  Is it out yet or is it still being made?
• 1:58:15
  And it's done and it's been out for a few years now, but only
• 1:58:18
  Australia and New Zealand like Geo locked so.
• 1:58:21
  Really. Yes, it sucks.
• 1:58:22
  It is, I'm pretty sure. So like, unless you're gonna hit
• 1:58:24
  the old VPN trick, it's basically unwatchable for anyone
• 1:58:28
  outside. 'Cause I bought it for 25 bucks
• 1:58:30
  on Google movies. So that's its current issue is
• 1:58:32
  what's it called international license?
• 1:58:34
  It's called alien weaponry. Kuatu Putiara.
• 1:58:37
  Yeah, there's the I guess. Yeah, Alien.
• 1:58:40
  It's. A cool daco, but yeah, Randy's
• 1:58:44
  in it quite a lot. And so when I'd seen that, I was
• 1:58:46
  like, oh man, not only does he just seen my video one day, but
• 1:58:49
  he knows enough about the band to talk about us on a
• 1:58:51
  documentary. So then Fast forward again,
• 1:58:55
  we're writing the demos for the new album and there was a song,
• 1:58:59
  originally it was a song called Hanging By a Thread, which is on
• 1:59:01
  the album. I had been sitting in my car
• 1:59:05
  just listening to the demos and I went, man, this song would
• 1:59:07
  sound really good with something on it.
• 1:59:08
  Or maybe it's another vocal, you know, like I was like, oh, I
• 1:59:11
  don't know who to ask. And we'd done tours with
• 1:59:12
  Employed to serve with the Gojira Run or I thought Justine
• 1:59:16
  maybe. And I even thought Brian from
• 1:59:18
  Knock Loose, but both of them are quite high screams.
• 1:59:20
  And I was like, ah, it's not quite the right thing.
• 1:59:22
  And then all of a sudden I was like, Oh my God, Randy, Randy.
• 1:59:26
  I was like, I have the contact. He broke the ice.
• 1:59:29
  He'd already messaged me, you know, and then I know that he
• 1:59:32
  knows the band enough that he might even consider it.
• 1:59:34
  So I just sent him a message on Instagram and I was like, hey,
• 1:59:37
  man, we got the song. What would you think?
• 1:59:38
  He's like, yes, you'll send it through and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:59:41
  And then, you know, band schedules happen and like,
• 1:59:43
  months, months go by. And then we find out we're
• 1:59:46
  working with Josh Wilbur, who, for anyone who doesn't know, has
• 1:59:50
  produced like every Lamb of God record, so he's very familiar
• 1:59:54
  with. Randy and he produced this he.
• 1:59:55
  Produced. Our record, Yeah.
• 1:59:56
  It was our first time working with him, which was awesome.
• 1:59:58
  So we hit the studio. We tell him, oh, hey, man, we
• 2:00:01
  got Randy on a song. And Josh at first thought we
• 2:00:03
  were asking. He's like, oh, I can't ask for
• 2:00:05
  you. I was like, no, bro, we already
• 2:00:06
  got it. He was like, oh, really?
• 2:00:09
  Yeah, we just need you to do it, you know, like, figure out how
• 2:00:12
  to record it. And then through the process
• 2:00:14
  that we told him the song hanging by a thread and he goes,
• 2:00:17
  oh. Oh.
• 2:00:19
  I think it was one of the members was like, they've got a
• 2:00:21
  song called Hanging by a Threat. Like the main hook is hanging by
• 2:00:25
  a threat. Oh yeah.
• 2:00:26
  Which is the first song off of the last album?
• 2:00:30
  Yep I think. And so it was like either change
• 2:00:34
  the lyric or change the song. And I was like, I know.
• 2:00:37
  I was too stubborn on the lyric. I was like, I don't know how
• 2:00:41
  good for you. I don't know.
• 2:00:43
  You got that vibe about you. He's got that quiet.
• 2:00:46
  But like, don't fuck with my vision.
• 2:00:48
  Pretty much, yeah. So can change the song and it
• 2:00:52
  became Tiny far, which Randy loved.
• 2:00:55
  Arguably kind of worked out better.
• 2:00:58
  As well. Yeah.
• 2:00:58
  Like it was one at the time because Tanifar originally was
• 2:01:02
  all Maori. So like, in our heads we
• 2:01:04
  weren't, you know, like it was like, don't even consider it.
• 2:01:06
  But then when the idea of Randy came up, we were like, well, we
• 2:01:11
  could do a English verse ourselves, You know, we do have
• 2:01:14
  bilingual songs. So it was like first verse
• 2:01:15
  English, second verse Maori, third verse Randy.
• 2:01:19
  In his own language. Right.
• 2:01:20
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah. In Randy language.
• 2:01:22
  And Randy then was very, very keen because he loved the whole
• 2:01:25
  Maori side of things, you know? And he was like, he's always a
• 2:01:28
  big proponent for Native American stuff.
• 2:01:30
  And so he was always like, he was like, oh, I'm so in.
• 2:01:32
  So Josh flew to Randy's house after we all wrapped up and did
• 2:01:37
  the thing and the rest is history, you know?
• 2:01:40
  Fucking rips, dude. Fucking rips.
• 2:01:42
  And like Lewis said, it ended up better.
• 2:01:44
  I mean, we had an idea that it would sound nice on hanging by a
• 2:01:46
  thread. Like Lewis did his best Randy
• 2:01:48
  impression for the demo, you know?
• 2:01:49
  But then when we got what Josh had got out of Randy for Tony
• 2:01:54
  Far, yeah, we were like oh man, even better because the Tony Far
• 2:01:57
  also could get Randye famous cleans like the speaking.
• 2:02:01
  So we got him both speaking. You got Randy Gravelly fucking.
• 2:02:04
  And then the full blown Randy growling, you know, so it ended
• 2:02:07
  up super sweet. And then we got to get him on
• 2:02:09
  for the video, which he filmed in his hotel room while he was
• 2:02:11
  on his book tour. Like AG dude, he went out and
• 2:02:14
  like got a suit, got some makeup and did his whole.
• 2:02:16
  He had like all these ideas for his bit and then he just filmed
• 2:02:19
  it and then sent it to us. He filmed it on his phone.
• 2:02:22
  Yeah, well, he actually had like a little camera thing that he
• 2:02:24
  must carry on with him. Mean photographer 'cause.
• 2:02:27
  He's always, Oh yeah, 'cause I'm thinking in my head, I'm like,
• 2:02:29
  didn't look like a fucking phone, but he's a photographer.
• 2:02:31
  Yes, but also we dress it up a little bit with the effects of
• 2:02:34
  the Yeah, for the video's sake. We were supposed to have him on
• 2:02:38
  stage for the Charlotte show that we just played, but then he
• 2:02:42
  went out with not Lamb of God. I actually don't even know who,
• 2:02:46
  but he's he's out. He went out with somebody.
• 2:02:47
  I think I saw that. Yeah, so he was like, Oh no, I
• 2:02:50
  can't make it anymore. And I was like, ah, we'll get
• 2:02:52
  there one day. We'll have the one live
• 2:02:53
  performance because we play that song live, but he just comes out
• 2:02:55
  of the PA like a sample. He's on the side quests.
• 2:02:59
  He's on the side quests. It seems real fucking cool.
• 2:03:02
  Super nice. Have you met him in person or is
• 2:03:04
  it all just being? Yeah, I've met him a few times
• 2:03:06
  in. Person yeah, no, I've met all
• 2:03:08
  the boys from labor that's a funny story How I Met those boys
• 2:03:11
  actually, we were on tour in Europe.
• 2:03:13
  Maybe I'm trying to remember what.
• 2:03:15
  Yeah, I think it was might have been 2019.
• 2:03:19
  Yeah. We were touring Europe.
• 2:03:21
  We're doing like headliners festivals and we had like a
• 2:03:26
  intense Dr. and then we're driving into Resurrection Fest.
• 2:03:30
  That is a faint, intense drive. Fucking I, I do love that
• 2:03:35
  festival. It's great, yeah.
• 2:03:37
  But it was funny. We like pulled up.
• 2:03:39
  We were doing it real budget style.
• 2:03:41
  We had like a caravan and like surrounded by these towering 2
• 2:03:47
  story fucking blacked out tour buses and I was tired.
• 2:03:51
  I was a bit hungover. I like came open the door to my
• 2:03:55
  caravan and then it was like, OK, I guess I'll find my way
• 2:03:59
  into catering. Try and get a snack coffee, you
• 2:04:02
  know, stepped off the steps, checked my reflection in there.
• 2:04:09
  One of the, you know, one way mirrors of one of the tour
• 2:04:12
  buses. I've done that many times.
• 2:04:15
  Sweet, you know, walked into the catering area when he got my
• 2:04:19
  coffee was sitting like on the chair like right in the entrance
• 2:04:24
  corridor to the catering basically like sunglasses on
• 2:04:28
  drinking coffee. And then I see my favorite band
• 2:04:31
  of all time walking and I see Willie Adler, the guitarist
• 2:04:36
  coming in and he locks eyes with me and he's like, dude.
• 2:04:39
  And he points at me and he starts beelining it towards me
• 2:04:42
  and I'm like, dude, what the fuck?
• 2:04:44
  Like freaking out. And he's like.
• 2:04:46
  Dude, dude, I was brushing my teeth, bro.
• 2:04:49
  I was fucking brushing my teeth and you're checking yourself
• 2:04:52
  out. You're staring at me and you had
• 2:04:55
  no fucking idea bro. And I was like, oh, like just
• 2:05:01
  dying internally, but also like this great excuse to like
• 2:05:06
  connect on like a human to human level with like my favorite band
• 2:05:11
  of all time without being like. Paper I'm like a really big fan
• 2:05:16
  you. Know like I he came up to you
• 2:05:18
  and Randy came up to you. You guys got it.
• 2:05:20
  Fucking mates. Dude.
• 2:05:21
  And it was like, see, you know, I, I have met so many people
• 2:05:28
  that I completely look up to and like idolize, but I haven't got
• 2:05:32
  a single fucking photo with any of them.
• 2:05:34
  I'm just not that guy. I don't bother people for
• 2:05:37
  photos. I don't approach people that,
• 2:05:42
  you know, I look up to. I'm just like, I'm just like,
• 2:05:45
  Nah, like I don't. I just, I just have a mental
• 2:05:48
  block about it. And it was like this weird
• 2:05:50
  fucking thing in the universe where I was like, how the fuck
• 2:05:55
  did I step off and stare at my, you know, like someone that I've
• 2:06:01
  idolized my whole life? And that he found it funny
• 2:06:05
  enough that he came and started that conversation with me.
• 2:06:08
  And then we ended up hanging out with them.
• 2:06:11
  And like, we were like, I was in their green room later that
• 2:06:14
  night, like doing shots with the new drummer.
• 2:06:16
  And like Randy came and he was like, man, y'all, Y'all are
• 2:06:19
  getting crazy near me. I was like, dude, he's a real
• 2:06:24
  fucking moment for me. It's.
• 2:06:25
  Really cute the way that you talk about it because you do
• 2:06:28
  have to remember you are contemporaries now.
• 2:06:31
  Like, I mean, it is like obviously it's your favorite
• 2:06:33
  band of all time, but like you're at the festival playing
• 2:06:36
  shows too. You're a cool guy.
• 2:06:39
  But you know, it's, it's that kind of realization of like,
• 2:06:42
  holy fuck, I'm like, I'm in this environment where I can, you
• 2:06:49
  know, I'm not just at a meet and greet.
• 2:06:51
  I'm not like fighting for their attention.
• 2:06:57
  Like, you know, it's, it's, it's like we're looking at each other
• 2:07:01
  at at the same fucking level. And it was just, it was one of
• 2:07:05
  those experience. I was like, how the fuck did I
• 2:07:08
  get here? And I get that all the time, but
• 2:07:11
  it was probably like one of the most intense moments of my life.
• 2:07:14
  I was like, how the fuck did I get here?
• 2:07:17
  Like I used to. So or what if so and so came?
• 2:07:21
  Through the door and my parents would be like, yeah, you know,
• 2:07:24
  And now it's like so and so came through the door and fucking
• 2:07:27
  talk to me. Talk to.
• 2:07:28
  Me. It's something that they don't
• 2:07:30
  really like tell you about. Like if you get in fortunate
• 2:07:34
  enough to get into this position, like when you're
• 2:07:37
  playing things like festivals, you know, you're like, Oh my
• 2:07:40
  God, it's so and so blah, blah, blah.
• 2:07:42
  And then you play your show, and then you're sitting in your
• 2:07:44
  groom. And before you know it, yeah,
• 2:07:46
  Kerry King is knocking on your door going, oh, hey, boys.
• 2:07:48
  You know, we really like your show.
• 2:07:49
  We want to get you on the tour. Who's how is that how that
• 2:07:52
  happens? How?
• 2:07:52
  In my show, yeah, you look, you look at my show.
• 2:07:55
  He like coming in, yeah. He like, heard us on SiriusXM
• 2:07:58
  and he was like, yeah, I want those boys on the road with me.
• 2:08:00
  You know, we had a bill from Mastodon.
• 2:08:04
  Oh yeah, Portuguese festival. Like he rolls into the green
• 2:08:07
  room and we're like, and six. And you're like, thanks, you
• 2:08:12
  know. Like interesting thing that like
• 2:08:14
  yeah, when like you say yeah for us like they're there, but.
• 2:08:19
  You are. You are.
• 2:08:20
  Bill yeah. You know, contemporaries.
• 2:08:21
  Something they don't really think like Prepare.
• 2:08:23
  You for you'll do that to another band, right?
• 2:08:26
  You will do that to another band.
• 2:08:28
  They'll be like, Oh my God. You never fuck like I'm 38.
• 2:08:31
  You never fucking get used to it though.
• 2:08:32
  I'm. Always.
• 2:08:33
  I'm always at a festival when someone like fuck it happened to
• 2:08:36
  me at Grass Pot. Mike Portnoy from right Dream
• 2:08:40
  theatre. Right like DM me and was like,
• 2:08:43
  hey, I saw her on the same festival you want to hang out
• 2:08:45
  and I'm just like. Where am.
• 2:08:48
  I Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
• 2:08:49
  And he was. Like one of my kidneys.
• 2:08:51
  Came to the green room and hang out and I was like this is
• 2:08:53
  fucking crazy and then he's like you want to get photo and he
• 2:08:56
  posted on his story. I was like what universe is this
• 2:08:59
  is fucking flip. Yeah, it's really out of it.
• 2:09:01
  That's a pretty good fucking place to leave it.
• 2:09:03
  Yeah. Next year you got a tour with
• 2:09:05
  Anthrax. Yes.
• 2:09:07
  Yep, and the other half of the Avatar tour.
• 2:09:09
  Of our. Just Europe?
• 2:09:10
  Yeah, you've got 2, 2. Is that your tutors that you got
• 2:09:13
  booked? You got anything else?
• 2:09:14
  Yeah, currently they also announced us on.
• 2:09:19
  Alcatraz. Alcatraz, but it's not entirely
• 2:09:22
  short. Alcatraz What the Belgian fish.
• 2:09:24
  Belgian. Fish, I was going to say about
• 2:09:25
  on the fucking prison, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:09:27
  Yeah, we're going around that would.
• 2:09:28
  Be cool. It's about the tattoos.
• 2:09:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's August, September
• 2:09:36
  like it's way in the back end. So like our most immediate is
• 2:09:39
  Avatar round two throughout Europe and then Anthrax in
• 2:09:42
  Australia, which? Anthrax in Australia.
• 2:09:43
  Australia, which is directly after the Avatar run.
• 2:09:46
  Shortish flight as well for you? Yes.
• 2:09:49
  It breaks up that hectic New Zealand to Europe 36 hour ordeal
• 2:09:54
  which is. No good way to do it.
• 2:09:57
  No good way to do. If you go through America,
• 2:10:00
  you're going to get fucking have to leave the airport.
• 2:10:03
  So then do that. If you go through Dubai, in my
• 2:10:06
  case, get fucking anal cavity. So it's not a great time anyway.
• 2:10:13
  Check out Tara, check out alien weaponry.
• 2:10:17
  You've got any last thing you've got any like you mentioned
• 2:10:20
  Shepherd's Rain. Is there any other Maori bands
• 2:10:24
  you want to take this opportunity to put over?
• 2:10:27
  Are they like? Is there so?
• 2:10:28
  There's a great band as well back home called Pull Down the
• 2:10:30
  Sun, which is actually Speaking of the Maui story.
• 2:10:34
  Terra, that's their inspiration as well, was Pulling down the
• 2:10:37
  Sun. That's slowing it down.
• 2:10:38
  So Pull Down the Sun, a really awesome band back home as well.
• 2:10:40
  Fuck yeah. They're not a Maori band, but
• 2:10:42
  they're a really cool up and coming young band called Powder
• 2:10:45
  Shoots back home. They're awesome.
• 2:10:48
  Definitely checked. Them powder.
• 2:10:50
  Yeah, Powder Shoot. And they they dropped one of the
• 2:10:53
  best albums of the year, a bunch of kids in New Zealand fresh out
• 2:10:56
  of high school. Classic like you guys work, but
• 2:10:59
  thank you guys. Yeah, now you'll be fucking
• 2:11:02
  telling. About the next generation.
• 2:11:04
  Bumping into them at a festival and they'll be like Oh my God, I
• 2:11:07
  can't believe they said hello and I'll be in a fucking
• 2:11:09
  wheelchair by that point boys, thank you so much.
• 2:11:12
  After this. Hey, thank you so much man.
• 2:11:13
  Good luck with everything, this has been eye opening and I've
• 2:11:17
  had a lot of fun. Thank you.
• 2:11:18
  It's three in here banging. Thanks guys.