Boasting a "veritable shit-tone of content", Australian rock-fusion group Twelve Foot Ninja claim that, with their new record, they have done something that no other musical act in history has ever done with a concept piece that spans not only an album, but also a video game, comic book, and fantasy novel.
Refusing to confine themselves to one genre (as clichéd as that may sound), the band dub themselves as “pinball meets post-truth” (make of that as you will), though they have managed to rack up an impressive number of accolades and followers since their debut in 2014.
‘Start the Fire’ kicks off the album with an ominously sinister synth track played over a tribal Indian-inspired tabla beat, before a crescendo into a chorus that is part-metalcore and part-electronic dance music, with choral sounds in the background adding to the ambience. It’s a fusion that has been done before; yet there’s something about the use of unusual time signatures and a calm, collected, vocal delivery that manages to make it sound fresh. This continues throughout the intro to sophomore track ‘Long Way Home’, with heavy sections giving ways to lighter polyrhythmic melodies with an almost circus-like joviality and an apparent ease seen all too rarely in rock bands. It seems abundantly clear just a few tracks into Vengeance that when Twelve Foot Ninja call themselves a “genre-bending” band, they mean it.
‘Shock to the System’ is a bizarre departure from this style mid-album, beginning as a relatively mundane rock anthem before launching midway into some kind of steampunk spoken word performance. Stylistically, it’s ambitious, but without any context as to what this story is that the band are trying to tell, it doesn’t seem to work as well as earlier experimental pieces due to its inconsistencies with the previous material. Fortunately, this is rectified by the time of ‘Culture War’, a track the band themselves dub as the heaviest thing they have ever put out. From the start, it’s a moshpit-inducing frenzy; stylistically also different from the rest of the album, which still clashes a little with what the audience has heard earlier in this era of listening to music by mood; yet generally by the time of an interesting experiment with mariachi midway through the song, it’s clear that the album is back on track after a slightly weaker middle section.
‘Over and Out’ is another highlight at the end of the album, featuring a surprising guest appearance from Jinjer’s Tatiana Shmayluk in an anthemic duet, before “Tangled” quietly brings the album to a finish with a gentle acoustic ballad – again a surprising addition after the eclectic feel of the rest of the album. ‘Vengeance’ is certainly an experimental piece, with some experiments working better than others. Despite a few weaker moments, however, and some stylistic choices that perhaps would have been better saved for a future album instead of seemingly hastily rammed onto this one, as a whole Twelve Foot Ninja have pulled off something impressive with their latest release, as some of their most interesting work yet.