It’s been a steady rise for eclectic and electric Melbourne based alternative rock act, TWELVE FOOT NINJA. A couple of extremely well received EPs kicked things off for them, and then late 2012 saw the release of their debut album. Since that release, they have taken all before them, selling out venues across the nation, attaining literally hundreds of thousands of hits on their very clever videos, supporting the likes of Fear Factory and Periphery/TesseracT and generally impressing people the world over. Including the guys in Periphery themselves, former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang and many more.
The second half of 2013 is set to be just as exciting, if not more so for the band. They are set to release another single and video from the album, the song ‘Shuriken’, and head on another triumphant Aussie tour. They then head off overseas to tour for the very first time, playing Europe in early to mid October. When guitarist and founding member STEVE ‘STEVIC’ MACKAY spoke with ROD WHITFIELD, it is clear that he is excited about these developments.
“Absolutely, we’re always looking forward to seeing different parts of Australia,” he begins, “and following up on previous gigs. You start to get to know people after a while, so it’s really good.
“The whole band, I think I can speak on behalf of them, we’re all pumped for that,” he says, regarding the band’s first international foray. “It’s been what we’ve been working towards, to get to a situation where we can actually go overseas and start building something up, similar to what we’ve done around Australia. We have to start again (over there), but it’s kind of an exciting concept, the markets over there are just so much bigger. So the potential to turn what essentially has to be subsidised by something else over here, to turn that into the main game becomes more of a reality. Which is ultimately what most bands are working towards.”
The European tour is actually comprised of a major European summer rock festival (Euroblast), and several dates with incredible Indian progressive/djent metal act Skyharbor (who feature former TesseracT vocalist Daniel Tompkins), so it promises to be a very memorable first up European jaunt for these Melbourne boys. “Yeah, some great bands,” he enthuses. “We actually got a message from Dan Tompkins, we made a bit of a connection when we played the show with them and Periphery and it’ll be good to catch up with him.
“So yeah, there’s some really good stuff there,” he continues, “and the German festival Euroblast is going to be really cool. There’s a lot of people that we’ve been in contact with on the internet that we’re going to be hooking up with, different product companies, that we use the products of, we’re going to meet them in person, and all this stuff. It’s really going to be a kind of a ‘long lost buddies’ connecting at last! [laughs]”
It’s fantastic to see that the band’s first tour of Europe is a high quality one with quality bands in good venues, rather than a tour of dive clubs with nobody bands. And Steve agrees whole heartedly. “Yeah man,” he says, “our motto is ‘we’re not here to fuck spiders’, so we may as well just get in there and go for it!”
It was apparently a case of excellent networking via the internet, and in person, a chance meeting and a little luck that has seen the band wind up on such excellent dates in Europe, and on the radar of so many musical luminaries around the world. Of course, it has to be said that a band must have the goods to back it up, which these guys have in droves.
“I think it was a combination of things,” he explains. “A friend of ours, Ben Davies, who films a lot of our behind the scenes stuff, he’s working with Dead Letter Circus at the moment, he entered this weird Youtube competition where some dude was trying to put a band together through Kickstarter or something. He ended up meeting this Romanian guitarist, and he came out to Melbourne when we were shooting the first part of the crowd funding clip with Periphery. He hung out for a few days. He was mates with someone from Euroblast, and he mentioned to us that they liked our band and wanted to get us over there. So our manager Dave got in contact with them and that was it!
“It’s amazing how small the world is sometimes,” he goes on. “There’s so many things that cross over, people talk to other people, you’re talking to some guys here, and they know those dudes over there…like with Dino and the Fear Factory thing, that happened through Jose Mangin playing us on the satellite radio. Dino heard us on that, and played us to Billy Gould from Faith No More, and somehow through that, Wolfgang Van Halen got onto, it’s all these dudes. They know each other, and talk, it’s a whole different world.”
And it’s also a world that this hard working and highly creative Aussie band are about to take one giant leap into.
Thursday, 30th August
– Ferntree Gully Hotel, Ferntree Gully
Wednesday, 5th September –
Coffs Hotel, Coffs Harbour
Thursday, 6th September
– Tempo Hotel, Brisbane
Friday, 7th September
– Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast
Wednesday, 12th September –
Zierholz UC, Canberra
Thursday, 13th September – Waves, Wollongong
Friday, September 14
– Manning Bar, Sydney
Wednesday, 19th September –
Small Ballroom, Newcastle
Thursday, 20th September
– Entrance Leagues, The Entrance
Friday 21st September
– Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale
Wednesday, 26th September –
Prince of Wales, Bunbury
Thursday, 27th September
– Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Thursday, 4th October
– Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Friday, 5th October
– Fowlers Live, Adelaide