01 ISSUE V
MAY 2025
MAY 2025
A Blackened Sky, a Loaded Crown, and a World of Light
Politics, Culture, and Myth Collide in Māori Metal Band Alien Weaponry’s Third Studio Album, “Te Rā”
By Alex Rossen
Aotearoa (New Zealand) thrash metal trio Alien Weaponry’s third full-length studio album, “Te Rā,” is a maelstrom. The record, which was released on March 28, 2025, fits well with the spirit of metal—as each song churns violently with the push and pull of its rhythms, lyrics, and themes.
Thematically, the album is an ensemble of complex socio-political motifs and rich evocations of Māori culture and myth.
The members of Alien Weaponry (Lewis de Jong, Henry de Jong, and Turanga Edmonds) have, for nearly a decade, written within the socio-political context of decolonial activism and the protection of Māori cultural heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand. By branching out with this album, the trio is making an effort to move beyond the status quo. Through its lyrics, “Blackened Sky” has become one of the band’s first ventures that marked their interest in global political activism more broadly.
Leaders Lie
Children Die
Eye for an Eye
Blackened Sky
This antiwar musical manifesto decries humankind’s indifference to mass violence and directly names the Russian president’s war in Ukraine. Ambivalence, hate, and thoughtless adherence to a violent status quo form the basis for Alien Weaponry’s furious tirade against the world order.
“Crown,” which opens up the album, continues to harp on this chord with its polemics of anti-commercialism.
Culture for profit
And death to the sound
A loaded crown
Just to weigh us down
By naming culture for profit as an object of their admonition, Alien Weaponry refers back to one of their most passionate musical drives—preserving Māori cultural heritage both at home and abroad. “Mau Moko,” sung entirely in the Indigenous language of Te Reo Māori, was the first single to debut from the album. The title itself is a reference to a time-honored tattooing ritual. However, the composition as a whole is about much more than that. The music video that accompanied the release of the single opened up with its own call to action:
Toi Moko are the preserved heads of Māori.
During the 1800’s they were taken and traded as trophies.
Today, families are still fighting to have their ancestors returned to them, where they belong…
The music video follows the solitary quest of a woman who leaves a tribe to reclaim a preserved head of a fellow tribe member from British colonial merchants. The climax of the film features her incapacitating an English trader and stealing back the head to return to the people of the Māori tribe. It ends with an emotional reunion between the returned head and the rest of the tribe.
Alien Weaponry also has an established history of making references to the legendarium of Māori mythology in their music. Their second album, Tangaroa, was named for the Māori God of the sea, and it also included a song of the same name and another song dedicated to the myth of the Te Arawa tribe’s rangatira (chief) Hatupatu. This album continues that precedent with additional songs like Te Riri o Tāwhirimateā and Taniwha, named for the God of the winds and a folk monster that haunts the rivers, respectively.
The operatic chorus of Te Riri o Tāwhirimateā belies a roiling rage—that Alien Weaponry listeners have come to expect—that underscores its mythological overtones:
We hear your anger
All over the island
This is the anger
Of Tāwhirimateā
This anger continues to build out from a quiet intensity in Taniwha, the third and final single to precede the release of the album:
Claiming land, but you will never learn
That paper deeds will always burn
In the eye of the spiral
A balance will be reborn
By teeth of the Taniwha
Or strike of the taiaha
All that’s built on your theft and lies
Must fall and fade in turn
Te Ra, as a holistic body of work, is a nexus where myth, politics, and culture meet. A powerful motif of angry and unapologetic activist fervor links together the many themes that permeate each song. It showcases moving artistic and technical growth. The third installment of the band’s musical repertoire proves, once again, that Alien Weaponry is a band to watch.
ALEX ROSSEN holds an MA in International Affairs from The New School.