New Zealand sludge/psych metal heavy-weights BEASTWARS return to Australia this November for their first East Coast tour since February 2020, lining up for one off shows on the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
“Australia has always welcomed us with open arms. Since our first tour there with Unida in 2013 then in 2014 with Windhand, we’ve felt the love and the feeling is mutual. This will be our first East Coast run since the beginning of 2020 and we’re so excited to have a kick ass new album to share with Aussie fans and play a bunch of songs our back catalogue.” Nato, Beastwars drummer.
Like bearing witness to a world sliding headlong into the abyss, Beastwars are no strangers to soundtracking times of war, disaster, and collapse – when half-truths and hidden agendas lurk behind every act of the world’s eroding empires. From the very beginning, their music has embodied the apocalyptic feeling of these end times: primal, hypnotic, and relentlessly heavy.
The Southern hemisphere kings of apocalyptic metal rise again for their soon-to-be-released sixth studio album The Ship // The Sea, launching some fourteen years after their 2011 debut. The world has only grown harsher and Beastwars’ upcoming full lenth distils that same darkness into one of the most intense and cathartic albums of their career.
To capture this vision, Beastwars decided that they needed to record by the ocean. They decamped to Studio 11b near the beach in Mount Maunganui and once again worked alongside longtime collaborator James Goldsmith. Having CO-produced the band’s last three albums and engineered their live shows, Goldsmith was the ideal partner to harness their ferocity with heightened intensity.
Water runs as the central motif throughout the record, the ship representing the body and the sea symbolising life. Lyrically, the songs traverse survival, purification, wisdom, and healing, always with an undercurrent of danger and the fight to endure.
Mute the endless stream of calamities on your screen and you’ll find Beastwars’ heavy howls creating an eerily apocalyptic soundtrack for the present day.
“Life has become a marathon for most people,” says frontman Matthew Hyde. “How can we not all see the injustice, the cruelty of the world? This album is like Picasso’s Guernica, a reflection of war and horror, of endings and upheavals. It is the sound of a ship adrift on a cruel sea.”
Beastwars have performed at The Big Day Out, Dead of Winter Festival and CherryRock and have shared stages with the likes of Mastodon, Kyuss Lives, Red Fang, High on Fire, The Melvins, Fu Manchu, Unida, Truckfighters and many more over a truly stellar career.
“To describe Beastwars live show in any certain terms would be doing them an injustice, as it is an experience that needs to be lived out to fully appreciate it.” TONE DEAF
Beastwars’ The Ship // The Sea full length is released Nov 07 2025 via Destroy Records with lead single Levitate dropping Aug 29 Worldwide.
Beats Cartel Presents
BEASTWARS “The Ship / The Sea” Australian Tour
Thu 12 Nov GOLD COAST Mo’s Desert Clubhouse
7pm doors / $30+BF and $40 door
Tickets HERE
Thu 13 Nov BRISBANE The Brightside
7pm doors / $40+BF and $50 door
Tickets HERE
Fri 14 Nov SYDNEY The Lansdowne
8pm doors / $40+BF and $50 door
Tickets HERE
Sat 15 Nov MELBOURNE The Evelyn
8pm doors / $40+BF and $50 door
Tickets HERE
