Shepherd’s Reign, hail from South Auckland and describe themselves as a five-piece Polynesian metal band that fuses the Samoan language and culture with metal.”The more elements you can draw from, the better,” guitarist Oliver Leupolu told Nesia Daily. “Fili [lead singer Filiva’a James] likes bringing in his Backstreet Boys chops… it’s not obvious, but those little things are in there.” “It’s all my harmonies,” James laughed. Band members also include Shaymen Rameka on drums, Gideon Voon on guitar and Joseph Oti-George on bass.
James and Leupolu started in classical music before turning their attention to creating their own music with “a lot of rock metal influences”. “Some common ones we’re into… like Gojira, they’re a French metal band, in earlier days we listened to a lot of Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb of God, Slipknot,” Leupolu said. “But we’re also influenced by other types of music… like me and Fili have a classical music background too. So we’re into classical composers like Bach and Chopin.”Our guitarist Gideon, he’s into pop music, so brings elements of pop music into his writing. “And then we bring our cultural elements too, which is Samoan music. It’s not obvious when you listen to our music, but we do draw musical elements from it, like the rhythm, the lyric content, the pātē drums, it’s a whole lot of musical influences.”
The South Auckland heavy metallers formed in 2013. Today they’re known for their metal songs sung in Samoan, but it didn’t start that way. “Because we started playing metal when we were young… I sang in English,” James said. “But there was no real reason why. I could speak fluent Samoan when I was younger, so there wasn’t really a reason.” Initially, James said the transition to Samoan felt like a risk. “I guess it was too new. And I wasn’t really prepared to think outside of the box or didn’t really see the potential in [singing in Samoan]. But I always wanted to,” he said. “A few years back, I thought, ‘Nah I’m just gonna do it… I’m sure people would love to hear Samoan sung in this genre of metal.’
Their voice is their mighty, fearsome music and their vocation is to share with the world every aspect of lives and cultures deserve the international ear. Whether unleashing the raw, guttural tribal roar of “Aiga” or the biker-rough riffery which is “Ua Masa’a”, there is a special passion and power in every single note Shepherds reign share with the world, a rare presence which demands the world stage.
