“Slow-burning, atmospheric and elemental to its core.” Decibel Magazine

“Growing more primal, dark, and heavy as the world does, Beastwars provide us with another hypnotic and relentlessly intense look at a world sliding headlong into the abyss.” Roling Stone Australia

“New Zealand sludge metallers Beastwars have always had a talent for riffs that sound like tectonic plates getting into a mosh-pit.” Metal Hammer

“There is no denying that Beastwars have come up with another winner…” HEAVY Magazine

“The Ship // The Sea packs the raw, burly punch and requisite emotional power to simultaneously wrench hearts and bang heads.” Angry Metal Guy

“Their most powerful weapon is Hyde, whose voice is somewhere between a post-apocalyptic warlord addressing his troops and a grizzly bear warning you to fuck off.” Burning Ambulance

“Most immediately, it will get your pulse-rate jumping like a well-fuelled piston and your muscles moving.” No Clean Singing

“Beastwars never disappoint with The Ship // The Sea being a perfect example of. They go from strength to strength with each new release making them a band that stands above the rest.” Outlaws of the Sun  

“New Zealand’s Beastwars have been through ringers in life and music alike, but their sound on their sixth full-length, they’ve never sounded quite so refined.” The Obelisk

“‘Levitate’ locks into their trademark hypnotic heaviness while leaning on water imagery – the ship as body, the sea as life.” IDIOTEQ

“Incontestably one of Aotearoa’s most beloved heavy music groups, the titanic force known to fans worldwide as Beastwars has reemerged.” Under the Radar NZ

“This is a record that’s the culmination of years of domination in a scene that has always been in need of more talent, and it’s only fitting that Beastwars would be the ones to answer the call once again.” Head-Banger Reviews

“The Ship // The Sea is a masterpiece album, a collection of stoner/doom/sludge anthems … spawned by a band … enamoured with passion, displaying revelry in adversity and a thorny insight, that only rugged experience brings.” The 13th Floor

“Beastwars have long been underrated, but with each new quality album like The Ship // The Sea, more fans will discover them.” Heavy Music HQ

“There is a lot of good stuff going on, and if you listen closely, you will hear way more than just a straight up sludge record or Mastodon worship. A grower, but once you are on the boat, it is full speed ahead. 8/10 Musipedia of Metal

“Their thunderous yet fragile vocal attack … is the band’s unequivocal ‘it factor’, and it does not disappoint.” Heavy Blog Is Heavy

“From the opening roar … this ten track behemoth reaffirms the band’s singular credo — OBEY THE RIFF.” Metal Roos

“The Ship // The Sea is an album made by a band who know themselves well… it shows them at a point of strength, aware of their sound and purpose.” Muzic NZ

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PRESS INFO:

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. Beastwars’ heavy howls create an eerily apocalyptic soundtrack for the present day.

“Life has become a marathon for most people,” says Hyde. “How can we not all see the injustice, the cruelty of the world? Our new 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.”

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 is out now on Destroy Records on LP and digital formats can be pre-ordered at www.beastwarsband.com.

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This album was created with the generous support of NZ On Air