by Rob Lyon

If there was a band that Australia would love to adopt as our own, without a shadow of doubt it would have to be New Zealand rockers Shihad. This year marks the 20th anniversary for a band who have experienced the highs, the lows and the in-betweens in what could be considered as a tough caper to crack. Shihad are definitely on a high as they celebrate the release of album number seven, Beautiful Machine - and frontman Jon Toogood can’t hide how happy he is about it.

Beautiful Machine has to rate up there as one of Shihad’s finest albums.

“Cheers bro,” Jon opens. “We’re really happy with it and it’s one of those. This is our seventh record; when you’re in the studio looking at each other nodding and subconsciously knowing this is good. Right from the start we’d done all our purging, heavy record with Love Is The New Hate, gobbled that up and got the poison out of our system with all the pissed-offness with the name change, living in America where we went mental and now it was time to have fun with the music even after 20 years being with this band.”

What is the secret keeping the magic going for 20 years and exceeding expectations with each new release?

“That’s what I consider as success for me. After listening back to all the mixes with four guys who have known each other since they were 17, we’re just as excited now as we were when we first walked in to a studio 20 years ago. That’s success for me when you’ve got that feeling, like, ‘Fuck! that was something special’ and, ‘I didn’t know we could go in that direction’. I think that was quite surprising to ourselves.”

Do you wish you could bottle that ‘something special’ and give it to other bands?

“What I say to most bands is that you’ve got to get lucky and find three or four like-minded people right from the word go that are all driven and prepared to sacrifice a normal life to propel some sort of dream with music. It has to be really honest and you have to be honest with each other. We were lucky enough to meet each other as kids into speed metal and wanting to be in a metal band, then being lucky enough to see some good bands as we were just starting opened our minds. This made us realise that there is a world outside the little gang we were in and then everyone decided that we wanted to try different things as well. I really do think as well that we have managed to reinvent ourselves with every record and maintain that sense of longevity because if we didn’t, I think we’d be bored shitless.”

Are there any plans to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of the band?

“There are lots of things flying around. One idea we had was to book seven nights out and play each record in its entirety from start to finish. I think that would be a really interesting exercise to see which record would be the most popular. We did think about a 20th anniversary tour or re-releasing the records but we’re so in love with this record that we want to concentrate on playing these new songs live and as well as possible to get people into this record. I was really surprised last year when someone told me that it was 20 years for Shihad. We don’t spend any time looking back as we just focus on how we’re going to make the next record better or make the next show better than the last one. There’s no time for looking back!”

Did the creative process for Beautiful Machine start straight after touring the last record or did the band take a short break?

“That’s what we usually do, because we tour so hard we take a break before getting back together. This time around we were writing as we were touring in hotel rooms and all sorts. By the end of touring Love Is The New Hate we were a really tight machine and we didn’t want to lose that so we continued writing, which was a really refreshing way to do it for us. Usually this takes three months after touring to stoke up the fire again, but this time we hit the creative part with all guns blazing.”

Most bands struggle writing new material on the road, so what was the quality of what the band was coming up with like?

“Just through the nature of touring we wrote most of the songs on laptops and playing it back through headphones. We were lucky enough to be given some really great software to play with. Even though a lot of the ideas ended up as guitar ideas [they] just started out as keyboard lines with the focus on getting melodies down. That gave the thing a different flavour because we were starting from an electronic perspective.”

Were the songs on the bonus disc edition of Beautiful Machine unlucky not to make the album?

“Pretty much. There are another 12 songs on top of those that I’m in love with but most often there would be other songs that would fit better with the album or it would take too much of a divergence to where the record was going. So, those songs had to get lost whether we loved them or not. I’d hope we’d be able to get everything out that we’d worked on before touring for this record has finished ”

With killer artwork on the digi-pak, are there plans for a vinyl release?

“Ha,” Jon laughs. “We’re amping for it but I just don’t know. I’d like to say yes but it’s a little up in the air at the moment. I love vinyl and I still listen to records and this artwork, which I’m really stoked with, is just perfect for a record.”

Shihad, Young & Restless and Calling All Cars play Live On Light Square on Sat Jun 21. Beautiful Machine is out now through Warner.