It is an insanely exciting time to be a member of Twelve Foot Ninja. Sophomore album Outlier is ready to drop on August 26, new single ‘Invincible’ is taking to airwaves worldwide, and there is a spate of shows scheduled across Australia and the USA through to November.
“It’s all happening” confirms Stevic Mackay, chief guitarchitect and producer of the band’s highly technical genre-mashing sound. After a lengthy writing and recording process, the band are looking forward to getting back into a routine. “I guess there is a lot behind the scenes that goes on in the lead up to release, so it feels like things are evening out more now that the mad rush is subsiding somewhat.”
Outlier comes almost four years after debut Silent Machine, a fact that Stevic finds it hard to come to terms with. “When you say four years, I feel sick” laughs Mackay. “I guess it’s about the detail, it’s what we’ve always been about and what our supporters appreciate. This stuff is not shit you can just pump out. And if there are people pumping it out, I’d have to kill them. It’d be too depressing!”
A hallmark of Twelve Foot Ninja’s music is the way it transcends genres and takes the listener on a journey with each individual track. In the past, the band have fused their rhythmic metal sound with a range of reggae and latin undertones to create some of the most unique and refreshing music in the heavy music world. With this in mind, fans are eagerly awaiting to see what has changed with Outlier.
“Genre-wise, I think we backed off from the reggae vibe a bit more on this album and added a bit more latin-inspired stuff and a bit more jazzy sort of stuff. In terms of technicality, somewhat paradoxically, Outlier is both simpler and more technical than Silent Machine” laughs Mackay.
“We really tried to focus on writing songs. I know that sounds kind of obvious, but when you’re playing music that has any level of technicality, it can become easy to fall into the trap of focussing on a crazy rhythmic part that might not actually be adding value to the song. We’ve made a distinction between good riffs and good songs.”
Stripping back the songs to their most basic form on acoustic guitar proved a helpful method of validation for the band.
“We wrote about 60 tracks between the end of Silent Machine and Outlier being completed. We killed a lot of them before they reached any level of maturity because we’d be playing this crazy shit, that when zoomed out and played on acoustic guitar was pretty shit music. We basically applied an acoustic guitar test – ‘does the song translate to an acoustic guitar, and is it good? Does it make sense melodically and harmonically and what are we talking about lyrically?’ All that kind of stuff.”
The musical logic that binds most bands to playing in a specific style doesn’t apply to Twelve Foot Ninja. But having such a broad stylistic palette to draw from doesn’t make the creative process any easier.
“It makes it more challenging to be honest. I kinda feel like we have a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and you just chuck it on the floor and have to put it back together. That’s what it feels like with a lot of the songs we write” says Mackay. “There have been times that I have regretted not just being in a ukulele band, it would have made life easier. I’m definitely envious of more straightforward genres where its just four chords and a fuckin’ tambourine.”
“There has rarely been a track that we’ve released that hasn’t had 15 versions of it. It’s not the sort of music that you can write by getting a bunch of people in a room jamming. It’s more like you’re an architect, building a house. “
“You reach ideas that you’ve got creatively, and then you hit roadblocks that you have to cognitively overcome. How do we get from this genre to that genre? Do we want a smooth transition or do we want to jolt people in a juxtaposed sort of way? All of these questions come up and we work through solutions, then might decide after everything that we want to turf the song anyway.”
A five-piece, Twelve Foot Ninja’s sound is influenced by the broad tastes of all its members. However, for a musical element to make it onto an album, it needs to get a unanimous vote.
“I produce all the music, so I often get the opportunity to add some pretty divergent stuff to what it might start out as. We definitely all have different tastes, but the general rule is it is not a democracy with Twelve Foot Ninja, it has to be unanimous. Everybody has to love it, or we just keep trying” explains Mackay.
The band have released the first two singles from the album, ‘One Hand Killing’ and ‘Invincible’. The band are really looking forward to supporters hearing the rest of the album, including a few of Stevic’s personal favourites.
“There’s a couple of tracks that I’m really looking forward to people hearing. There’s one that’s called ‘Collateral’ that I really like. It just came out really heavy. It’s a pretty ball-tearing track.”
“Another one, ‘Dig For Bones’, was one of the first songs written after Silent Machine that sort of morphed over time. It started with Russ, our drummer, just sort of singing this weird guitar riff on the tour bus, and I sort of figured it out on guitar and started building a song around it.”
“It actually features my dog on there. She’s got this weird thing where she’ll hear Kin singing and she’ll start howling. She either feels like she’s part of the pack or she just really hates his voice and it grates on her” laughs Mackay.
‘Invincible’ has been enjoying regular rotation on triple j since the station premiered it on July 19. In a recent interview, Luke Boerdam of Violent Soho credited triple j in opening up the playing field for alternative bands after vastly increasing support for heavier genres. After discussing this, Stevic weighed in on the argument;
“It would be hard to disagree with that. It’s pretty remarkable for us that they have put one of our tracks in rotation. You’ve got bands like The Amity Affliction and Hellions and other hardcore bands that hit home with a lot of younger fans, and then there’s bands like Northlane that have taken that vibe and added their own thing to it.
“It’s all becoming a lot more accepted on triple j, and I think that any kind of heavy music is a segue into other heavy music. There’s still obviously not heaps on there, but the station is definitely stepping in a positive direction for fans of heavy music”
Radio play also impacts the viability of larger scale touring. After a brief Australian touring stint this month, Twelve Foot Ninja will be gearing up for their fourth tour of the United States. Stevic asserts that the band have actually been enjoying more success stateside due to a combination of regular airplay and a larger market.
“We get put on high rotation on SiriusXM which has 23 million subscribers. It’s basically the population of Australia listening to one radio station. We get played on the metal and hard rock channels which is perfect. Because of the size of the US population, the niche market that we play in there is bigger than a mainstream market in Australia. It’s just a totally different metric.”
In Australia, triple j’s support could mean more love for regional fans. “I think it will make a difference to our ability to tour regionally” explains Mackay. “In general we tend to bypass a lot of regional touring because it just isn’t as feasible for us as opposed to cities. I think crowd sizes in the regions are quite heavily influenced by triple j play.”
In November, the band will return to Australia as national support for mammoth metal outfit Disturbed. This will be Twelve Foot Ninja’s first time playing arena shows, and the band aren’t short on excitement.
“Really looking forward to it. We’ve played some big festivals, I think around 15,000 was the largest crowd, but the arena thing is whole new ballgame. There’s a bit more production with the arena shows and it’s a great opportunity for us” says Mackay.
Whether alongside Disturbed or on their fast-approaching headline tour, there are ample opportunities coming up for Aussies to get their Twelve Foot Ninja fix as the band take Outlier to the stage.
Outlier is out August 26 on Volkanic Music. Preorders are available at the Twelve Foot Ninja website.
TWELVE FOOT NINJA NATIONAL TOUR DATES
Thursday, 25th August – Fowlers Live, Adelaide
Friday, 26th August – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Friday, 2nd September – Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle
Saturday, 3rd September – Bald Faced Stag, Sydney
