Melbourne fusion-metal band Twelve Foot Ninja strike back with their new album ‘Outlier’, a record that hits harder than a shuriken in the eye.
Expanding on the style and sound established on their 2012 debut ‘Silent Machine’, Twelve Foot Ninja have created a follow-up album that needs to be heard to be understood according to guitarist Steve ‘Stevic’ Mackay. “It’s a bit of a paradox to say, but it’s crazier yet simpler at the same time,” Steve says. “We’ve tried to focus more on writing songs with a cohesive message that you don’t need a thesaurus or have to Google something to figure out what’s going on.
“Musically, it’s more straightforward but it’s more technical as well, so that’s what I mean about it being a contradiction. There are moments of simplicity but they’re balanced by moments of complexity. I know rehearsing the stuff is definitely taking longer than any of the other tunes because there’s more going on.”
Steve says that with ‘Outlier’, the band wanted to break away from harmonic limitations they’ve found within the progressive and djent metal genres to incorporate their broader influences and create songs that can standalone without the distortion and effects pedals. “What we were trying to do is record it with the acoustic guitar test,” he explains.
“If you stripped all the complicated rhythm into just an acoustic guitar, would it hold up as an actual piece of music? That’s something that we wanted to achieve on every track and I think we’ve managed to do that.
“That’s where I think a lot of the progressive metal or djent stuff can fail because it’s just one note and is more like percussion than actual harmony, if that makes sense. It’s cool for what it is but we wanted to make a departure from that and incorporate the best parts of it, but reinvent them in a way that isn’t so exclusive. Time will tell if we’ve achieved that; we’ll know once the album is out and people can wrap their heads around it.”
As a teaser to the release, Twelve Foot Ninja unveiled three tracks from ‘Outlier’, including the song ‘One Hand Killing’ that Steve says exemplifies the band’s compositional approach to the album. Its searing guitar lines, thundering riffs and pounding drums are seamlessly punctuated by clean, jumped-up funk breaks and falsetto vocals, which would otherwise be out of place in a conventional metal track.
Yet somehow, combined with frontman Kin Etik’s powerful voice and lyricism, it’s a potent concoction. “There’s a lot of subtleties in that song,” Steve explains. “It’s a metal song but it’s got clapping, so there’s a lot of different textures which I guess could be thought of as juxtaposed, but we try to bring different things together to create something a little bit new.
“It’s almost impossible to invent something that no one has ever heard before, but you can combine existing elements to make new hybrids. That song is its own thing and there’s a bunch of songs that are completely different. There’s a track on the album with a massive horn section, guitar solos and all that stuff, so it’s a very varied thing.”
‘One Hand Killing’ is also accompanied by a video clip, which jokes about how the band has been “busier than a cat burying shit on concrete” and has racked up over 600,00 views on YouTube.
Steve says video clips are a chance for the band to inject some humour and personality into their music by subverting generic conventions of metal videos. “If you look at a film clip, the concept of it, it’s just fun to play with,” he says. “It’s a pretty superficial thing to do, so being on a cliff and looking like you’re playing but you’re really just miming on an unplugged electric guitar; we find that a bit absurd in a funny way, so it’s good to mess with it. I think people want to see a bit of personality in clips and because we’ve been working for so long on the album, the ‘been busy?’ thing just seemed appropriate.”
In reality, the ‘been busy?’ sentiment is an understatement as Twelve Foot Ninja sharpen their swords and gear-up for almost non-stop touring throughout the rest of the year. Starting with an album tour for ‘Outlier’, they ship off to the US for an extensive festival run before returning down under in November to support Disturbed on their national tour. “Audiences can expect to hear a bunch of new songs, which is probably the primary focus for a lot of our fans who have been following us for a while, and the same energy we always put in, like we’re about to kick the bucket and it’s our last show ever, that’s how we approach it.
“It was awesome to be picked up by a band like Disturbed. They’ve been around the block a few times and that track ‘The Sound Of Silence’ really has thrown them into the stratosphere again to a whole other audience. It’s always awesome when a high profile band gets into what you’re doing.”
Like the legendary mercenaries of Feudal Japan themselves, Twelve Foot Ninja are a band steeped in mythology. Asked about the origin of their name, Steve explains how it arose from a game of ‘Would You Rather’ after a trip to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum where he saw a wax figurine of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man at over 2.7 metres. “There was a write-up that said he was making a public appearance and a sailor tried to pull his leg off thinking it was a freak-show trick with a bloke on stilts, and Robert’s just swatted this guy away and sent him absolutely flying because of his sheer size. I thought ‘what if you could harness that ability, the dexterity and agility then go into the UFC and demolish everyone?’
“So I asked someone if they’d rather be a twelve foot ninja or the only person in the Middle Ages with a machine gun. I read somewhere that The Hulk is ten foot tall, so naturally it’d have to be bigger than The Hulk.”
Steve even had the opportunity to run his twelve-foot-ninja-smashes-The-Hulk scenario past a real life expert when he visited Marvel Studios in New York to produce the comic for ‘Silent Machine’. “I spoke to the writer of ‘The Hulk’ and told him the twelve foot ninja would smash The Hulk,” he laughs, “and he kind of went a bit funny; he didn’t really like it, but it’s true.”
'Outlier' is released 26 August.
Twelve Foot Ninja Tour Dates
Thu 25 Aug - Fowler's Live (Adelaide)Fri 26 Aug - The Corner Hotel (Melbourne)
Fri 2 Sep - Cambridge Hotel (Newcastle)
Sat 3 Sep - Bald Faced Stag (Sydney)
Disturbed Support Tour Dates
Wed 9 Nov - HBF Stadium (Perth)Sat 12 Nov - Margaret Court Arena (Melbourne)
Sun 13 Nov - Hordern Pavilion (Sydney)
Tue 15 Nov - Brisbane Entertainment Centre
