Music News

Weekly Roundup: Friday 7th February

C.C. / Photo credit: Johnsson / Friday 7th February, 2020 4:20PM

It was a lop-sided news week cropped short by our annual Waitangi Day celebrations, on which I caught the very excellent Noa Records-curated free Pacific Mystery event at Aotea Square. Upcoming show announcements dominated the headlines – Mike Patton and the Faith No More gang return to Aotearoa in May for their first local standalone headline events in a decade, Brooklyn guitar-fuzz crew DIIV are teaming up our very own Cut Off Your Hands for a star-studded pair of Strange Universe North Island events in April, the Jordan Luck Band will play all the classics by The Exponents and more on their mammoth national tour this coming autumn and winter, Finn Andrews of The Veils revealed a string of autumn shows happening across NZ, certified dance floor fillers Cave Circles and Native Bush are taking over Wellington Museum's The Attic on Valentine's Day, and Japanese sonic travellers Mono revealed they'll be supported by Pōneke post-rockers Hiboux at both of their North Island headline events in March.

We had the privilege of sharing a conversation between Helmet prime mover Page Hamilton and Nich Cunningham of Tāmaki Makaurau wine-punks TOOMS – dive into their career-spanning chat here and catch Helmet's crushingly heavy live experience at 30th anniversary events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch this coming May. We also caught up with hyper-energetic singer / guitarist Pat Beers of San Diego garage / soul dynamos The Schizophonics, open your ears to his top five favourite MC5 songs here and don't miss the band tearing it up across Aotearoa in February and March.

Our Caught Live video for the week features veteran Danish thrashers Artillery, bringing their metal mayhem to Aotearoa for a crucial pair of headline events next week, at Wellington's heavy music stronghold Valhalla and Auckland's subterranean music hub Whammy Bar. Formed all the way back in 1982, experience awesomely raw 1986 television footage of Artillery busting out 'Terror Squad' on Metalfabrikken (The Metal Factory)...