Album Rating: 4.5

Great to hear that. I look forward to this stuff.



It's very difficult to tag your style with one single genre and you wrote on your facebook page that you're a heavy fusion act. How would you exactly define your style?

To be honest, identifying a style has been a challenge from the get go. Jake from Periphery believes we are a progressive act. Progressive definitely works, but it is quite broad and probably wouldn't provide much of a mental image prior to actually hearing something. We discussed it internally for quite a while until we came up with "heavy fusion". I measured the amount of "heaviness" by timing the heavy sections appearing on Silent Machine and it is around 60% of the overall album. Within that heaviness, it is a sliding scale from hard rock to quite syncopated metal so "metal" doesn't seem accurate enough . . . We are collectively influenced by a lot of heavy genres with a groove focus so "heavy" just seemed to cover this spectrum. The fusion part explains the melding of genres . . . 40% of the album goes off into different genres so it is hard to find a word that depicts this accurately - we also didn't want to limit what genres we might approach down the track. On the downside; fusion also conjures images of Frank Gambale wearing over sized garfield t-shirts playing pinball sweeping the shit out of his fluro yellow Ibanez hitched up to his neck - so damned if you do, damned if you don't! (much respect to Gambale - he is a monster guitar player). We've asked punters to let us know what genre they would use to describe us and most of them just make up words like "GRIFF" that doesn't really mean anything . . .

We resolved with Heavy Fusion as it combines the two constants Twelve Foot Ninja is about.

"Jake from Periphery believes we are a progressive act."

chances are, you aren't progressive

kudos for making an account on sput though

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

12ft ninja:





do you like mr. bungle?

Album Rating: 4.5

Yes. Of course they like Mr. Bungle (read the post above). Heavy fusion seems to be a neat genre tag for you guys. I'd also imply that you're quite close to such genres as avant-garde metal, progressive metal and experimental rock. You're ranked as alt rock here on Sputnik, which is also broad and misleading (but we have a flawed tagging system here), while GRIT sounds like a new DJENT.



I'm also really interested in your influences. Do you exactly listen to every single genre your style encompasses?

Ha ha ha yeah I've heard Frederick regrets coining 'Djent', but some rad bands wave that flag so who cares I suppose. Genres will always be a bit wonky unless you strictly adhere to them - I understand their importance as they enable those who haven't heard your material to conjure some sort of vague notion of what kind of music it is, so any of those work for me as well.

I genuinely do appreciate a wide range of styles and genres and Twelve Foot Ninja is a mutation of that. The other dudes in the band are the same.

@chambered49 - Absolutely. Fantastic band. I like how they interpreted artists like John Zorn, King Crimson, Frank Zappa and made it their own. I like how they were unpredictable and unrestrained - like watching a cartoon in music form. I've never written a song modelled on a Mr.Bungle song though, I just employ the song writing principle of not being restricted by genre. I think that might be where quite a few bands go wrong . . . When you listen to a song you can connect it to THAT RIFF in Sleepy Time Guerrilla Museum or Meshuggah or Periphery or more locally; Karnivool. I try and keep my distance from specifics and utilise the principles.

Album Rating: 4.5

Great review, Greg. Is a shit tonne better than mine



This is still getting played heaps by me.

Album Rating: 4.0

@Pwalcher - I wasn't aware of the correlation between Aussie bands and the lyric "I've become my enemy". For what it is worth, all of Twelve Foot Ninja's lyrics (written by the vocalist) are based on the Twelve Foot Ninja story (some of which is depicted in the 12 comic books we have just released) the whole thing is an allegory for life . . . I suppose it is fairly intrinsic in human nature to at certain times; sabotage yourself. In summary: we are not self haters. Although at times I could grate my own face off with this fucking hay fever going around.



Lol no worries, was just referencing the song "My Enemy" by Cog (another great Aussie band). Make no mistake, there's been a huge rock/metal movement out of there. If I hadn't bothered to stray outside North American music, I'd probably have tired of rock by now. Other than Fair to Midland, there are very few actually doing something exciting here. Been finding a lot out of Australia over the past few years though.

Album Rating: 4.5

Yeah, it's been really cool to watch the whole Aussie Rock thing explode over the past 5 or 6 years. Cog were pretty much the ones to start it all, then Karnivool and TBE. It's just kinda gotten ridiculous from there.

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

bsolutely. Fantastic band. I like how they interpreted artists like John Zorn, King Crimson, Frank Zappa and made it their own. I like how they were unpredictable and unrestrained - like watching a cartoon in music form. I've never written a song modelled on a Mr.Bungle song though, I just employ the song writing principle of not being restricted by genre. I think that might be where quite a few bands go wrong . . . When you listen to a song you can connect it to THAT RIFF in Sleepy Time Guerrilla Museum or Meshuggah or Periphery or more locally; Karnivool. I try and keep my distance from specifics and utilise the principles.











well that's cool man

@Vooligan awesome dude hopefully you're not over it by the time we hit the Corner! =P

I think it is great to read/hear people from the U.S are seeing Australian bands as a 'scene'.

@TwelveFootNinja What persuaded you to make that wobble bass, dubstep-esque, breakdown in the song
"Shuriken"? I can't get that song out of my head.

For the last section of that song (2.44) we collaborated with one of our mates from France named Tenken - we wanted
him to join Twelve Foot Ninja as second guitarist very early on in the piece but he couldn't relocate from France . . .
Anyway when we were sharing ideas, he came up with that and as I love experimenting with noises in the production
stage, I was into it immediately. It really translates better live though through a massive P.A . . . Your teeth feel like they
are going to fall out or some shit! ha ha

"I think it is great to read/hear people from the U.S are seeing Australian bands as a 'scene'."
When I talk about bands like yours, DLC, Karnivool, Cabins or anything of the like I always 'OZ rock scene'. Granted, I'm a fan of most things Ezekiel Ox is involved in and you have some nice and innovative bands down yonder. (and I mean those bands aren't exaclty unpopular, John Butler is also quite popular last time I checked and his earlier stuff was really good)

Shame it's hard for you guys to have tours in Europe for example, at least from what I gathered.

Album Rating: 4.5

@Vooligan:

Thanks mate. Much appreciated. I tried not to repeat anything from your review.



@TFJ

There are plenty of great Aussie bands these days... and there's definitely a thriving scene we can talk about. We're not all from the US. There are many users from Australia and Europe. I'm from Poland for instance.

Album Rating: 4.0

Nice seeing the band on here, album is great guys. Come to the UK and tour !

Album Rating: 4.0

Et au Canada

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

@Vooligan You forgot DLC!

Album Rating: 4.5

Just got hold of this through reading about it on this website, must say all the hype you read about it on here is true. It's fantastic. Like a modern day Faith no more meets Electric six with djent type riffs in some parts (But not over done like djent often is).

Album Rating: 4.0

this has a lil bit of everything, really grows on you (you can't really know the album right away because you'll notice something new the next listen).



I'm actually Canadian as well. Visited Australia once, was beautiful (despite us staying in places like Cairns during monsoon season lol). Uluru was the definite highlight