Beastwars Announce 'The Ship // The Sea' Album Release Tour + Unveil Single 'Levitate'

Incontestably one of Aotearoa's most beloved heavy music groups, the titanic force known to fans worldwide as Beastwars has reemerged. For the first time in nine years, the Te Whanganui-a-Tara metal collective have announced a new studio album of all-original compositions entitled The Ship // The Sea launching on 7th November via Destroy Records, the fiendishly awaited follow up to 2023's covers collection Tyranny Of Distance.

Consistently finalists for the Taite Music Prize (in 2012, 2014 and 2020), Beastwars looked to oceanic depths for inspiration in times of struggle and oppressive cruelty, constantly being beamed onto our digital screens. Recorded with regular studio mate James Goldsmith at Studio 11b near Mount Maunganui's famously surf-friendly coastline, the theme of water runs through the entirety of their sixth studio long player, as explained by vocalist Matthew Hyde below, sporting unfathomably sublime painted cover artwork by Nick Keller.

Sonic powerhouses on stage as well as in studio, it would be a crime if there was not also a release tour on the cards. The team of Hyde, Christian Pearce, James Woods and Nathan Hickey have not disappointed, announcing today an Australasia tour taking them through the bulk of November, including five headline shows in Aotearoa. Lead single 'Levitate' hits our ears with elemental, tsunami-like intensity, featuring contributions from founding guitarist Clayton Anderson . Preorder the vinyl LP edition of The Ship // The Sea HERE and baton down the hatches for the return of Beastwars...

"Life has become a marathon for most people. 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." - Matthew Hyde

Beastwars - The Ship // The Sea - Album Release Tour

Wednesday 12th November - Mo's Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast, Aus
Thursday 13th November - The Brightside Brisbane, Aus
Friday 14th November - The Landsdowne, Sydney, Aus
Saturday 15th November - The Evelyn, Melbourne, Aus
Sunday 16th November - River Rocks Rehab, Geelong, Aus
Thursday 20th November - Last Place, Hamilton*
Friday 21st November - Double Whammy, Auckland*
Saturday 22nd November - Meow Nui, Wellington
Friday 28th November - Dropkicks, Dunedin
Saturday 29th November - Churchill's, Christchurch*

*Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
More info and tickets via beastwarsband.com

'Levitate' is out today on major streaming platforms.

Press release:

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. Their 2011 self-titled debut declared as much, and tragically, feels more relevant today than ever. Fourteen years later, the world has only grown harsher and Beastwars’ sixth record, The Ship // The Sea, distils that darkness into one of the most intense and cathartic albums of their career.

In 2021 and 2023, the band toured their first two albums in full. Revisiting that early material reignited the raw energy at their core, inspiring them to strip back the progressive flourishes of recent years and reconnect with the heaviness of their origins. The Ship // The Sea channels that spirit into towering riffs and unflinching emotion, unfolding like a sequence of hellish headlines. 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.

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.

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 then completed the album back in their hometown of Wellington, once again working 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.

As ever, the music is paired with artwork by Nick Keller (Weta Workshop: Narnia, Avatar, The Hobbit). His vast oil painting for The Ship // The Sea is both terrifying and transcendent, an otherworldly vision that mirrors the sound within.

The Ship // The Sea will be released Friday, 7 November 2025 via Destroy Records on LP and digital formats, with pre-orders available now at www.beastwars.bigcartel.com.