Maori Metal and the Sound of Indigenous Resistence

By Swapnarka Arnan

Picture Credit: Wendy Collings

Music has always been a place where stories survive. Across cultures, it carries memory, pride, and belonging, especially for communities whose voices are often pushed aside. Originating in industrial towns and developing into a worldwide genre for people who felt marginalized or unheard by society, Metal happens to be my favorite genre, and today I would like to talk about a band that is not only transforming the genre but has turned metal into a living archive of language, history, and resistance.

Alien Weaponry in Aotearoa (New Zealand) has taken that tradition and transformed it through a uniquely Māori perspective, transforming metal into a tool for resistance, revival, memory, and language preservation. The band consists of bassist Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds and brothers Lewis and Henry de Jong, is unique not only because of their weight but also because of the words and language they choose to use. Te Reo Māori, a language that was suppressed for decades under colonial education and assimilation policies, is used to write and perform a large portion of their music. That decision feels subtly defiant in an English-dominated global music industry.

Songs like Kai Tangata draws on stories of intertribal conflict and survival during the New Zealand Wars, while songs like Raupatu address the history of land confiscations imposed on Māori communities by the British Crown. These songs don't teach history in the traditional sense. They are cultural transmission acts. They put stories at the center of a modern soundscape that were previously silenced, sanitized, or reduced to footnotes. In the hands of Alien Weaponry, metal becomes amplified oral history.

This is very important for younger Māori audiences. When Indigenous languages are portrayed as ceremonial, academic, or unrelated to contemporary life, language revitalization initiatives frequently fail to connect with young people. That framing is changed by alien weaponry. Te Reo Māori is reframed as strong, current, and vibrant when it is screamed over distorted guitars. It conveys a message that I instinctively understand: Indigenous identity and culture lives on.

That message strikes a chord for someone from North-East India, where Indigenous cultures are also frequently viewed as backward, and many Indigenous languages have become endangered.

What I have always liked the most about Metal is the refusal to be courteous and assimilated, which is similar to the refusal of many Indigenous communities to give up their culture. The genre maintains room for memory, pride, and identity while allowing expression without apology.

The significance of Alien Weaponry is that it goes beyond simply incorporating Indigenous themes into an already-existing genre. They are changing the genre itself. The Māori language, history, and worldview are essential to the meaning of the music and are not merely stylistic elements. This is neither nostalgia nor export-oriented symbolism. It is the loud expression of cultural survival.

Alien Weaponry defies a society that frequently requests that Indigenous voices be softer, quieter, or more palatable. And that rejection feels like acknowledgment to those of us from other Indigenous margins who are listening from a distance.