New Zealand sludge metal band Beastwars released new studio album »The Ship // The Sea«; out now via Destroy Records!
Wellington, New Zealand based sludge metal band Beastwars presents their sixth studio album »The Ship // The Sea«, which was just released on November 7th, 2025 via Destroy Records.
Watch a music video for the album’s first single »Levitate« below!
Tracklist:
01. We Don’t Say Fear
02. Guardian Of Fire
03. Levitate
04. The Storm
05. Rust
06. Blood Will Flow
07. The Howling
08. You Know They’re Burning The Land
09. The Devil
10. Light Leads The Way
Courtesy of Sheltered Life PR:
“Beastwars have long been regarded as one of metal’s best kept secrets.” — Metal Hammer
“Beastwars’ live prowess is downright legendary south of the equator.” — Noisey
Like bearing witness to a world sliding headlong into the abyss, Beastwars are no strangers to soundtracking times of war, disaster, and collapse – when half-truths and hidden agendas lurk behind every act of the world’s eroding empires.
From the very beginning, their music has embodied the apocalyptic feeling of these end times: primal, hypnotic, and relentlessly heavy. Their 2011 self-titled debut declared as much, and tragically, feels more relevant today than ever. Fourteen years later, the world has only grown harsher and Beastwars’ sixth record, »The Ship // The Sea«, distils that darkness into one of the most intense and cathartic albums of their career.
In 2021 and 2023, the band toured their first two albums in full. Revisiting that early material reignited the raw energy at their core, inspiring them to strip back the progressive flourishes of recent years and reconnect with the heaviness of their origins. »The Ship // The Sea« channels that spirit into towering riffs and unflinching emotion, unfolding like a sequence of hellish headlines. Mute the endless stream of calamities on your screen. Beastwars’ heavy howls create an eerily apocalyptic soundtrack for the present day.
Photo by David James
“Life has become a marathon for most people,” says Hyde. “How can we not all see the injustice, the cruelty of the world? Our new album is like Picasso’s Guernica – a reflection of war and horror, of endings and upheavals. It is the sound of a ship adrift on a cruel sea.”
Water runs as the central motif throughout the record, the ship representing the body and the sea symbolising life. Lyrically, the songs traverse survival, purification, wisdom, and healing, always with an undercurrent of danger and the fight to endure.
To capture this vision, Beastwars decided that they needed to record by the ocean. They decamped to Studio 11b near the beach in Mount Maunganui then completed the album back in their hometown of Wellington, once again working alongside longtime collaborator James Goldsmith.
Having co-produced the band’s last three albums and engineered their live shows, Goldsmith was the ideal partner to harness their ferocity with heightened intensity.
As ever, the music is paired with artwork by Nick Keller (Weta Workshop: Narnia, Avatar, The Hobbit). His vast oil painting for »The Ship // The Sea« is both terrifying and transcendent, an otherworldly vision that mirrors the sound within.
»The Ship // The Sea« is released Friday 7th November 2025 via Destroy Records on LP and digital formats. Order your copy HERE.
The band will also tour Australia and New Zealand this November in support of the release.
Australia & New Zealand Tour Dates:
11/12 Mo’s Desert Clubhouse – Gold Coast, Australia
11/13 The Brightside – Brisbane, Australia
11/14 The Landsdowne – Sydney, Australia
11/15 The Evelyn – Melbourne, Australia
11/16 River Rocks Rehab – Geelong, Australia
11/20 Last Place – Hamilton, New Zealand
11/21 Double Whammy – Auckland, New Zealand
11/22 Meow Nui – Wellington, New Zealand
11/28 Dropkicks – Dunedin, New Zealand
11/29 Churchill’s – Christchurch, New Zealand
Produced by James Goldsmith and Nathan Hickey.
Recorded and mixed by James Goldsmith.
Mastered by Will Borza.
Oil painting by Nick Keller.
Beastwars is:
Matthew Hyde – Vocals
Christian Pearce – Guitar
James Woods – Bass
Nathan Hickey – Drums
This album was created with the generous support of NZ On Air.
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well