In 2008 I had a regular spot in a now defunct print publication, and none of that content ever went online. So here’s one from the archive as Shihad get ready to play the UK for the first time in more than 10 years…
Having the opportunity to introduce you to a band like Shihad is – grab your sick bag – part of the reason I got into music journalism. The other part was obviously the fabulous pay.
A few summers ago, Big Brother UK aired – as usual. Being in London at the time, and being a ridiculous teenager, the prospect of visiting the house on eviction night was an exciting one. So when the offer of a gig was presented by a PR – a band I’d never heard of, in a venue near the Big Brother house – it was this prospect that clinched the deal. “We’ll just go for a couple of songs, then we’ll go to the eviction”, I told my equally ridiculous friend.
The venue was Hackney Ocean, and that band was Shihad. They were tight, immediate and awesome. There was no Big Brother for us that night. There were fireworks.
It was the start of a cruel unrequited love that would see us separated for years at a time on opposite sides of the globe. Why oh why did I have to fall in love with a band from New Zealand?
Summer 2008, and they’re back in London for one night only. Even if I’d known beforehand that coming to see them would have meant missing a bus and sleeping in Victoria coach station, I would still have come.
But, for a superfan – aside from the albums and videos I have – my knowledge of anything other than their music is scant. Determined to find out more (at the very least their names) before this interview, I go on a Google stroll, and accidentally find out that 2008 will be Shihad’s 20th year together. I’ll say that again in case you missed it – Shihad have been together, making music, for 20 years.
Therefore, imagining that frontman Jon Toogood will, in reality, be a crinkly, Saxon-esque comedy figure in Jeremy Clarkson jeans, it’s very confusing to instead meet a younger Kiwi version of John Cusack in properly-fitting trousers who is only funny sometimes and on purpose.
Where is your time machine?
“We started in high school,” says Jon, which explains that one. “We were basically a speed metal covers band, and then we started writing our own music.” This process, it seems, didn’t take long, and by the time they were 18 they were signed and had released their first album, ‘Churn’. “Jaz Coleman, from Killing Joke, who we loved, produced that and it was a postpunk industrial sounding record which, for our age, I think stands up pretty well.” I’ll say so, especially compared with the terrible A-level results I and most of my mates were producing at that age.
So have you ever had a proper job? “No never, this is what we do. I feel very lucky.”
Lucky, maybe, but it’s worth noting that Rolling Stone Australia voted Shihad their ‘Hardest-Working Band’ alongside ‘Best Rock Act’. Seven albums later, with Europe, Australasia and America given a good going over, and with all members still present and raring to go, it’s easy to see why.
The material, rooted in metal, has escaped sounding dated. “We write a record every one and a half to two years and your head changes so much, you listen to so much different music, especially if you’re a music lover. You have to change to stay in a band for 20 years. I’m constantly looking for new stuff, feeding that addiction to music, and you meet different people along the way.”
The way has been exotic and lined with brilliant faces. Second album ‘Killjoy’, widely proclaimed Shihad’s best album to date, incorporated more indie, and led to Shihad being signed to a German label and moving to Berlin for six months. They toured with Ash, Silverchair and Faith No More.
Then there was a spell in LA during which too much pot was admittedly smoked, leading to a more flat-sounding album three, ‘Shihad’, than the band would have liked – the first and last time ‘rock n roll’ was allowed to interfere with rock n roll.
Then it was back to a shared house in Australia, surely cracks must have appeared? “Rather than get on each others nerves, we just made music”.
Bo-ring. Except that this particular music was album four, ‘General Electric’, produced by Garth Richardson – knob-twiddler of Rage Against The Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers – and recorded in Vancouver. Ever the fan, Jon enthuses: “It was a buzz for us because it was where Motley Cru and Aerosmith recorded, and I got to meet ACDC – for me, that was like a Catholic meeting the Pope.”
Then came Europe, including that fateful stop in Hackney, and later America, where the band released ‘Pacifier’, to which they briefly changed their name, fearing negative US press for sounding too much like ‘jihad’ at invasion time.
Back to album six: “‘Love Is The New Hate’ was written on a farm in the north of New Zealand, completely desolate with all these mountains around. You don’t get a song like ‘The Saddest Song In The World’ without having that around you. It’s humbling but it’s also invigorating and inspiring.”
Album seven, ‘Beautiful Machine’, is the latest effort, and while there are emotional ties between past albums and places, Jon describes this one as “more worldly”.
What is it about Down Under, I want to know, that can produce a band as explosive as Shihad and support them for so long, gaining new and younger fans all the time? Jon puts it down to a lack of pressure on bands and audiences.
“The scene is so small people do it for love rather than a job option. They don’t think ‘what would the radio like’ or ‘what would the audience like’, it’s more like ‘what do I fucking like?’.”
Live footage from the 2008 tour