Emerging underground heavy-psych weirdos Triumphs has recently released its debut album, an instrumental concept LP through revived Dunedin vinyl-only label Monkey Killer Records, and tonight celebrates with a show at Taste Merchants.
The powerful pair of John Bollen (guitar) and Mat Anderson (drums) first started playing music together in high school, sharing a Metallica heritage and a love for loud guitar music.
Finding his feet with a fast frantic high school band and listening to Mastodon, Bollen started to unsubscribe from some of the aesthetics of heavy metal while living overseas.
''I just got sick of trying to be technical for the sake of being technical, and feeling afraid to be really minimalist about stuff,'' the bearded guitarist said.
''I went and lived in Germany for a bit, and saw a couple of huge-sounding heavy bands that I liked at festivals. [They] understood that volume and simplicity is a really good way to get a really good point across in the live scenario, and I brought that back.
''I managed to see Sunn o))) who kind of just sounded like a really loud fridge for two hours, but it was still really good,'' he said, laughing.
''No one else was in the same headspace as me 'cause they hadn't been in Europe for all this time, so we kept playing fast stuff, but then it became slow and loud.
''It's that in-between state where you're using volume and distortion, but you're not subscribing to the whole aesthetic of heavy metal.''
With the other members of the pair's then project Triumphant Skull leaving town, Bollen and Anderson started jamming as a two-piece in their Dungeon practice space, evoking the heavier end of the experimental noise spectrum, working through contemplative moments of grace and beauty, symphonic peaks and muscular riff climaxes.
This mixing of metal with melancholy caught the attention of David Ager of boutique label Monkey Killer Records, which has a history of releasing singular and sonic work from artists such as Mountaineater, Operation Rolling Thunder and Idiot Prayer.
Which brings us to the present, and the fantastic Beekeeper/Bastardknocker, the group's concept album paying tribute to ''New Zealand's forgotten history of psychedelic mountaineering, tracing Sir Edmund Hillary's transformation from humble beekeeper to world-striding bastardknocker''.
''I had to put up the posters for the Sir Ed doco, the New Zealand-made one, Bollen tells me of the concepts origin.
''It's a Saturday morning and I'm putting these posters up at Pak 'n Save listening to whatever, and was thinking it'd be really funny to do an album about this. It is a cool concept; I mean he did climb the world's tallest mountain.''
It's heralded some great titles and artwork, opening track Everest Was the Pyramid and the album's gorgeous Sam Ovens print giving off something of an Illuminati vibe.
''As soon as you see laser beams firing out of things' eyes, you should be like `Sweet, not serious','' Bollen assures me.
Triumphs play at Taste Merchants, along with the newly renamed Hermann Doose (formerly Beach Wolf) and Idiot Prayer, tonight.
The gig
Triumphs' Dunedin Beekeeper/Bastardknocker album release show with support from Idiot Prayer and Hermann Doose, tonight at Taste Merchants, Lower Stuart St. $5 on the door from 8.30pm.
