Roidz Unleash New Album 'Fight Night'

Auckland's Roidz have made their triumphant return with Fight Night, the band's first album since 2016's S-E​-​L​-​F​-​E​-​S​-​T​-​E​-​E​-​M – first teased earlier this month with a Rocky-esque, three-song, edge-of-your-seat audio-visual epic of the same name directed by David Becham. Produced by Reuben Winter (of milk and Totems, who also plays on selected tracks) Fight Night features eleven tunes crammed full of emotionally fraught, demon-exorcising vocals, needling hooks and trash can drums. Special guests on the record include fellow punk-pop traveller Joe Locke, Rachael Charlie (Greenfog, milk) and Lawrence Fergus Goodwin (Pleasure Majenta), as well as sadly departed multi-instrumentalist Adison David Whitley (David Adison, NIISA) who contributed guitar to 'It's So Easy'. While the album can at times sound like a tonne of fun it also packs a serious punch, with songs addressing violence and emotional repression in New Zealand male youth culture. Roidz singer / guitarist Daniel Smith explains...

“New Zealand is an incredible place to grow up, but it definitely has its issues... there is a male culture existent that is insidious and poisonous. Boys being boys largely means, getting wasted, getting violent, and shutting the fuck up when it comes to talking about anything with more emotion than a rugby loss. I wanted ROIDZ to turn to this side of male culture, and to talk about both the emotion and the violence of being a young man in New Zealand.”

Fight Night is out now on limited edition cassette via Prison Tapes.