New Zealand Music Month: Mountaineater and Lord of Tigers

**It’s New Zealand Music Month this May. **New Zealand’s **annual celebration of homegrown music. Generally, that involves a lot of mainstream media highlighting a lot of mainstream acts. So I’m here to try and redress the balance a bit.  **I’ll be posting a link to some rowdy New Zealand music for you to check out every day over the next month. Some bands will no doubt be familiar; others I hope will be fresh to your ears.

Here’s a couple more New Zealand bands, from the heavier end of the music spectrum. Both of the bands below released fantastic debut albums. Both were born from the ashes of already respected bands. And both are great examples of just how much powerful music a trio of musicians perfectly in tune with each other can produce.

Mountaineater

Formed from the remnants of revered post-rock trio HDU, Mountaineater concentrate on ploughing through mind-melting songs that push tone and texture to the foreground. Mountaineater’s moniker perfectly encapsulates those gargantuan soundscapes, and the band’s self-titled debut was an aptly towering release. Mountaineater explore density and space via noise-rock, overdriven psychedelia, sludge, post-rock, and scorching stoner rock.* *So if you’re seeking thundering tunes that climb the highest musical summits, then this is where you need to look.

**Lord of Tigers **

Lord of Tigers features a couple of musicians who also played in Cobra Khan and Sommerset (both respected bands in the history of heavy New Zealand music). Lord of Tigers was born from three friends having a blast with some high-powered jam sessions, and the band’s eponymous debut was also recorded in two brisk sessions in order to capture a live and instinctual feel. Lord of Tigers is duly bursting with energetic riffing, and features sludge, swaggering blues, and a little of hardcore’s sneer battling it out on urgent, electrifying tracks.