Interview by Kris Peters
Polynesian music warriors Shepherd's Reign have crafted their own sub genre of music, combining traditional Samoan and Polynesian music and culture with hard rock and heavy metal to create something truly their own.
It is an aggressive, yet respectful pollination of styles and genres that is as infectious as it is brutally beautiful.
With their new album Ala Mai scheduled for release on August 25, HEAVY sat down with vocalist Filiva’a and guitarist Oliver to delve deeper into their tribal lure of music.
"We're very excited," Filiva’a beamed. "It's probably one of the biggest steps we've taken with this band. We've had an album come out before but this second one is more of a deeper meaning than the first one. On the first one we just wrote songs and tracked them and released them but with this one we thought about every single song and tried to tie them all into one subject - Ala Mai - which is awakening in English. It is meant to help us on this new journey we are about to take. Every single one of us."
We ask the boys to tell us more about the album musically.
"It was really... we made the songs together," Filiva’a continued. "One of us would come up with an idea and we would all come in and try to make it into a bigger idea. Every song was made with different members of the band with different emotions running through their head at the time, going through different stages of their life. So it was really a mixture. It wasn't one main musical idea we had to show the world, but I guess one of the most powerful things is we tried to do it as heavy as we can to show the Shepherd's Reign style. From the tone to the arrangement of our ideas."
In the full interview Filiva’a and Oliver talk more about what to expect from Ala Mai, the connection between their history and music, the singles released and how they represent the album, the beautiful traditional Samoan song that opens the album and its meaning, the album cover and what significance it has, getting the balance right in their music, what playing with Shepherd's Reign has taught them about their culture, their upcoming tour and more.