TWELVE FOOT NINJA - Rohan Hayes
Endless Possibilities
Written by: Rod Whitfield - Independent | Thursday 14 November 2021
TWELVE FOOT NINJA are a Melbourne-based band who are nationally and internationally renowned for more than just their scintillating ‘heavy fusion’ music, and on the cusp of the release of their third full-length album Vengeance, that concept is about to expand yet further. But more on that, just a little further downstream…
Musically, one of the features they are best known for is the monumental amount of ground they cover, stylistically. Often within a single song. Their songs can lurch wildly but seamlessly from metal to funk to jazz to pop and back again in a neck-snapping few moments. It’s an approach that delights many, and also leaves a few quite befuddled, reactions the band members love and play up to constantly.
The range of sounds and styles at their fingertips is also ever-expanding, something they are about to prove once again on Vengeance. Almost impossibly, the album explores yet more new ground musically, and the questions we posed to relative ‘newcomer’ in the band, rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Rohan ‘Ro’ Hayes (who joined the band in 2012, four years after the band’s inception), is how can they top this album again? How many more new musical doors can they open on their eclectic journey into sound? How much further can you take this?
Pictured: Russ, Kin, Ro + Stevic - TWELVE FOOT NINJA
Photo by: Kane Hibberd
When you know this band, their music and their philosophy well, Hayes’s response is devastatingly unsurprising. “The easy answer to that is, how many more musical ideas are there out there, when do you start running out of ideas?” He says.
Never. “Yeah, it’ll never end. I guess I view it like, Ninja, the production and the theatrical elements, the flamenco elements (that we’ve brought in on this album), their stylistic treatment on top of what is like a naked, raw thing, it’s kind of like an Instagram filter. You’ve got your naked music, and then you can dress that up however you want. So the way I see it, there are endless possibilities, like a raw photo with a different filter on it.”
“That flamenco stuff, that mariachi band, is a place we’ve wanted to take it for so long, and we got to sneak it in there on Culture War. Plus the big band stuff, that 20-piece orchestra, that we’ve snuck in there as well, in Over and Out and Long Way Home, and Tangled as well. These are things that we’ve always been curious about, and there’s a lot more to explore with that as well. We try to cram in as much as possible in favour of the song.”
“So the short answer to that question is, there are so many different roads to take, it’s just about which one we choose.”
“We’re going to throw everything including the kitchen sink at this song’ and ‘we’re going to stick a mariachi band in the middle of a thrash metal song’ might be easy sentences to say, and while this band is many, many different things, all these different styles and genres still need to be slotted in to the musical entity and identity that is TWELVE FOOT NINJA. Achieving this in the simplest and most listenable way is one of the main challenges confronting the band when they come to create and new record.”
“The challenge is simplicity,” Hayes states. “The hardest part is how to make this poke out to a listener where it’s immediately felt and understood, that is the detail that takes time. It’s quite simple to accept all of your ideas and cram them all into one song. It’s a bit harder choosing the most appealing riffs and the ones that support what you’re trying to say.”
How challenging is it from a technical and instrumental standpoint to keep on top of so many styles, and to be able to play them all with authenticity and conviction? “I don’t necessarily just put on mariachi music!” He laughs. “There was an opportunity, I just heard it in my head. This is a great tempo and a great key for the mariachi feel. I could just hear it in my head. But teaching really helps. When you teach, you’re forced to put these concepts into terminology quite frequently, in different ways, and verbalise it. It forces you to create models around how these things work.”
“That mariachi thing in the middle of Culture War is a good example. That was pre-conceived. It was like, this would be a perfect opportunity to just radio-flip into a mariachi feel right before going into something more brutal. Staying on top of styles isn’t actually that much of an issue, we’re really not that technical, the parts aren’t that technically challenging, so you’ve got the opportunity to analyse the style that you want to explore and use it in a way that complements the song.”
In TWELVE FOOT NINJA’s universe, such things don’t come together the same way every time. Sometimes there might be a lightbulb moment when someone says (hypothetically) ‘we’re going to stick a mariachi band in the middle of a heavy track’, whereas other times the left of centre ideas develop a little more slowly.
“Yeah sometimes it happens that way (a lightbulb moment),” he explains, “it’s never a straight way, where it happens the same way every time. I’ve seen (guitarist and founding member) Steve, with NEW DAWN (the band’s debut EP from 2008), he kind of created the template for what TWELVE FOOT NINJA is, musically, not necessarily the band concept, the story, that was there before all of the music. It opened up visually, what this thing might sound like as a band, and he’s been epic to learn from. He normally works as someone who edits things into place. It’s a fascinating process.
“It’s like a ‘Mr Squiggle’ concept, people drawing pictures. He’s quite creative when there’s something to mould. He’ll take the concept that you underarm to him, he’ll take it and turn it into something completely different, you could not have conceptualised it, it’s like, how did you get there? He’ll sculpt it into shape. Sometimes we’ll go ‘wow!’, a lightbulb goes off like that mariachi bit, or in Shock, the tango section, sometimes you can hear it straight away.”
An internet phenomenon that has sprung up in the last several years is the concept of the ‘reaction video’, where users of YouTube and other video sites film themselves reacting to their first experience of songs, movies and so on. They can be fascinating, and quite a few have been made of people listening to TWELVE FOOT NINJA for the first time. Some of the reactions are priceless, many are extremely positive of course, while many reacters display complete bafflement while listening to the band’s music.
Hayes admits to viewing, and very much getting a kick out of several of these. At the same time, valuable learning can be taken from them. “I love them, man, I love them!” He enthuses. “I relate to it to though, my own introduction to the band was confusing too.
“But watching those reactions, I relate, and I enjoy it so much. I’m equally curious to know, equally, the things they like and the things they don’t like. I’m curious to know, what’s throwing people off, right from the door. The name, I know the name TWELVE FOOT NINJA can be hard for people from the get-go. But for every step into the house, what do they like and what don’t they like? I think it’s uncertainty. They’re not sure what to expect. We do try to treat it a little bit like a pop group in the way that we write to create stability in delivering on some expectations. Otherwise it’s just too much.”
Yet another new element the band brought to the table this time is the addition of female lead vocals, performed by none other than the incredible Tatiana Shmayluk from world-conquering Ukrainian metal act JINJER. Hayes tells us that the song she features on, titled Over and Out, was a long and iterative process to take from humble beginnings to the blistering and melodic slice of heavy rock we hear on Vengeance.
“Over and Out, that song was an absolute evolution,” he says, “it evolved from this acoustic thing, and went through so many different shapes and forms. We did some shows with JINJER, and we kind of connected in the Ukraine. I’ll never forget that gig. We connected with them, they expressed their admiration for what we’re doing and likewise. We were fascinated and in awe while they were playing.
“It was always in the back of our heads (to get Tatiana on board for a guest spot). Over and Out was already written, and (TFN frontman) Nik is brilliant at coming up with the best harmonies to suit the song. He did such a stellar job at creating the higher harmony that Tatiana would occupy. So Tati was really after the fact. It was a song that was in place. Her melody just makes that second verse, and makes those choruses, makes the melodies stand out so much more without her, in comparison.
“Tati was the icing on the cake with that one.”
The album is out this week, and accompanying it is a sweeping range of other content, output and mechandise, including an epic adventure novel, a video game, a comic book and a graphic novel. All worth checking out. This very enterprising band is setting themselves up as an entire entertainment medium, rather than ‘just’ a band (with, of course, the music being the central element around which all else revolves), and it will be fascinating to watch where it will go next.
Vengeance comes out tomorrow 15 October 2021 via Volkanik Music
More from TWELVE FOOT NINJA…
Pictured: Russ, Kin, Stevic + Ro - TWELVE FOOT NINJA
Photo by: Kane Hibberd
