Vim Fuego From a distance, West Auckland's 8 Foot Sativa originally looked like just another two chord, downtuned clown-trousered nu-metal band. Ho hum, the great nu hope for Kiwi metal.

But if you get past any pre-conceptions and actually listen to the noisy buggers, you're in for a skull-crushing treat. Instead of the nu-metal stodge expected when you slip this disc into your player, you get a sonic boom of Judas Priest meets Dismember on steroids heavy metal! It's brutal. It's got riffs. It's got double kickdrums. It's got death/hardcore style vocals. It's just what New Zealand’s metal scene had needed for years.

There are just so many facets to this band, and they're all metal. The band is obviously influenced by many different shades of metal. One moment, they're old school metal. Witness some of the catchiest guitar noodling heard this side of Iron Maiden on "Fuel Set". The next, its nu-metal (of the early Machine Head variety) and funk on "Cocktease". Then it's off to Entombed's death ‘n’ roll theme park with "Believer". The opening riff of "Kick It All Away" brings to mind the long lost sound of Ripping Corpse. Then there's the hardcore/thrash stylings of single "8 Foot Sativa". Then to finish it all off, there's a quick pirouette through a JS Bach composition. Yep, there isn't much this band can't do.

Much of the lyrical content deals with the lifestyle of those who partake in the odd puff of electric stickyweed. The music doesn't ever get an attack of the munchies and end up light-headed in a hazy cloud, pointlessly searching for a non-existent Mars bar between the sofa cushions, as many THC fuelled bands have a tendency to do.

This is the album Pantera should have recorded instead of breaking up, Entombed could have recorded, and Slipknot was incapable of recording. 8 Foot Sativa became a leading light of the New Zealand metal scene, and deservedly so.

Kev Rowland The other week I made my way to a record store in Auckland where 8 Foot Sativa were performing a few songs as a launch for their mighty comeback album ‘The Shadow Masters’. After performing some songs from the new set they closed with the mighty “8 Foot Sativa”, and even though it was somewhat strange to see them pounding this out in daylight, it again made me realise what a huge anthem this is, which then led to me thinking that maybe I really ought to buy the debut album that started it all back in 2002. Now, I have probably said this before, but the music scene here in New Zealand is small, which is due to the fact that the country itself is sparsely populated. The two main islands have a land mass a little larger than the UK, but we have a total population of just 4.5 million people (but way more sheep). Luckily these guys are from Auckland, which is the largest city in the country, but even now the current population is less than 1.5 million and it was less than that 15 years ago when they started.

There have been some wonderful kiwi outfits, but few have managed to break it big internationally, and probably Shihad is the only heavy band to really make an impression before 8FS, so when these guys hit the scene they just laid waste. ‘Hate Made Me’ was their debut album, and has now been certified platinum in NZ, while their eponymous single was top of the M2 charts for 12 weeks and stayed in the listing for more than six months. Not bad considering that this is uncompromising metal at its’ most raw.

The fact that it has stood the passage of time is quite a statement, and Jackhammer drives the band from the front with a vocal attack that is uncompromising in its’ assault as they mix hardcore with death and thrash to create something that is in your face. The production may not be all that it could be, but isn’t nearly as bad as some reviews seem to make out and it is not possible to overstate just how important this album was to the kiwi scene when it was first released. In many ways they are now more polished and even more dominant than they were when this was released, and if you are new to 8FS then I would probably point to the new album as being the first one to go. But, myself and all kiwi metalheads know that we are the lucky ones that we can go to their gigs and join in the mosh with everyone chanting “Step up, step up, step up for Sativa, step up, step up, step up for 8 Foot Sativa”. Metal doesn’t get much better than this. www.8footsativa.co.nz