Drawing from a numerous musical palettes, Spüken, the newest effort from Vancouver’s experimentalists NINJASPY has been a couple years in the making, but it was definitely worth the wait. The record is a fresh injection of technical brilliance and beauty to a multi-genre segment of bands that thrive on balancing on the borderline of styles. NINJASPY blend everything that’s about adventurous inventiveness within ska tinged rock metal and we’re thrilled to premiere one of the most entertaining tricky metal albums we’ve heard in a long time. Join us fot his first listen and have fun with NINJASPY’s creativity below.
NINJASPY have been around for 10 years now and Spüken marks their second full length. The band have been playing shows with variety of bands including DEATH BY STEREO, 3 INCHES OF BLOOD, PROTEST THE HERO, COMEBACK KID, and POWERMAN 5000, which basically shows off their complex approach to stylistics and makes for smooth transitions in their adventurous tracks.
NINJASPY will be performing their explosive and powerfully unhinged live show across Canada in support of their next full length ‘Spüken’ due out April 14, 2017. Their album is once again produced by GGGarth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mudvayne, Gallows) and Ben Kaplan (Biffy Clyro, Atreyu, Haste the Day) to follow NINJASPY‘s 2013 EP / graphic novel ‘No Kata’ and their 2007 debut ‘Pi Nature’.
Comments vocalist / guitarist Joel Parent:
“Spüken is the musical equivalent of a magician removing his own entrails. The guts just keep coming, like handkerchiefs from a sleeve, and its painful, colourful and cathartic all at once, in the same way that vomiting after hours of nausea is such a relief. The musical ideas that came together in this project span many years come from many influences. Hearing them all together is a trip. There were a lot of hard times in the years while this record was being written and most if not all of these songs are tied together by the search for something greater than oneself. Empowerment by going through ones pain, all this is woven into an album that is another spastic stylistic rollercoaster not unlike our previous albums, but with smoother blending. From song to song there is a lot of variance, but within songs we have managed to take contrasting genres and combine them in more nuanced ways, with less hard cuts. This album is colourful, and the palette is dark.”
NINJASPY Canadian tour dates:
April 21 – Nanaimo, BC @ Studio 420
April 22 – Victoria, BC @ V-Lounge
April 28 – Maple Ridge, BC @ The Wolf Bar
April 29 – Kamloops, BC @ Dirty Jersey
April 30 – Vernon, BC @ The Green (All Ages)
May 10 – Drumheller, AB @ Neighbours Corner Pub
May 11 – Calgary, AB @ Dickens
May 12 – Regina, SK @ The Exchange
May 13 – Winnipeg, MB @ Pyramid
May 14 – Thunder Bay, ON @ Black Pirates Pub
May 16 – Ottawa, ON @ House of Targ – NEW!
May 17 – Ajax, ON @ Rotilicious
May 18 – St. Catherines, ON – Warehouse
May 19 – Guelph, ON @ DSTRCT
May 20 – Orillia, ON @ The Geneva
May 21 – Montreal, QC @ Piranha Bar
May 22 – Toronto, ON @ Sneeky Dees
May 24 – Sudbury, ON @ The Asylum
May 26 – Saskatoon, SK @ Vangellis
May 27 – Edmonton, AB @ The Forge
May 28 – Kelowna, BC @ Fernandos
June 24 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theater
July 15 – Armstrong, BC @ Armstrong Metal Fest w/ Revocation, Aggression, Golers and more
Band photo by Visions in Pixels by Derek Carr
“”Spüken is one of the highly anticipated albums in 2017.” – Shockwave Mag
“The blend of the raw and heavy power needed in a metal band with the low end grooves of a jazz band is intense to say the least. Funky transitions into nu-metal screams, then back to the reggae beats. It throws you to the edge of your seat.” – Shockwave Mag
“I am so scared of this…but that’s good.” – Bob Ezrin (Producer: KISS, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Kansas, PHISH, Deftones, Peter Gabriel, Deep Purple + Co-Founder of Nimbus School of Recording and Media in Vancouver)
“Pay attention Canadian recording industry, Ninjaspy is on the rise and the people’s salvation is at hand.” – Absolute Underground Magazine
“Ninjaspy has a unique sound mixing rock, hardcore and ska together.” – Pure Grain Audio
“They harmoniously blend metal, ska, grunge, hardcore, reggae, funk, surf and jazz for a unique mashup sound” – Monday Magazine (Vancouver)
“The group’s reggae-tinged hardcore is anything but generic, and the group’s unique swagger had fans creating a skank-mosh hybrid that quickly turned into a circle pit.” – Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
“Think a 3 piece Mr. Bungle with Patton’s vocals taking a turn for the better, add some laser beams and dreads, turn it all up to eleven, stand the fuck back and enjoy.” – Ground Report , NYC
“Bloody well are entertaining. All dreadlocks and fricking samurai swords, giant pants and flying limbs. Not a speck of the stage was left untouched by this band’s chaotic feet.” – Cord Magazine (Vancouver)
“I still want to hate Ninjaspy, I want them to not be as ear-bleedingly, mind-blowingly, tear-up-my-insides awesome as they were. It doesn’t make a LICK of sense: Reggae? Metal? Rock? Sure, they’re all guitar driven but, realistically, these three things should not fit together. And yet the Parent boys out of Port Coquitlam, BC are easily one of the coolest bands I’ve ever seen live. I’ve never, ever seen three guys set fire to a small show like these guys did; each member of this band is prodigiously talented, incredibly energetic, and, let’s just say it, straight up awesome.” – Noisography (Live Review Halifax 2011)
“Any band who lists ska as an influence is likely to attract plenty of venom spit their way before said venom spitters even hear a note of their music. The Vancouver-based trio Ninjaspy have made a name for themselves over the past few years, though, and it’s easy to see why: they’re really good. You’re not going to want to break out your zoot suit and saddle shoes and suddenly start skanking when you hear their new song “SKAINGKH,” which is sufficiently heavy, but you can hear the ska influence in the way the groove manifests itself in the rhythm section. A band like this could easily come off as kitschy or gimmicky, but Ninjaspy thankfully do not. Listen:” – Metal Sucks (review of Skaingkh single – 2011)
“Ninjaspy’s new single off ‘No Kata’, ‘Skaingkh (The Skank)’, glorifies these strengths and steers away from the screeching of hardcore. The tone of the song is brutal at the beginning and leads into steady, clean ska vocals by Joel Parent. Between 1:58 and 2:17 minutes, the track hits hard and is the best neckbreaking section in this song. The magical instrumental sound of this key section will adjoin the Metalhead brotherhood and sway new listeners to download this track.” – Metal Talk (review of Skaingkh single – 2011)
“Soaring vocal harmonies are there one minute and replaced with a throaty growl the next. “Pure Sketch” is a sure-fire modern rock radio hit, as the post-grunge frame work gets stirred up into a tasty seventies inspired soul/funk soup”. – Metal-Rules.com (Review Pi Nature 2007)
“The album itself is a blend of Hardcore, Punk, Ska, Rock & Metal, a recipe for brilliance. I urge everyone to check out this band, you may just re-evaluate your existence” – Infinitybasement (Review Pi Nature 2007)
“Given the sheer talent of these guys, it’s no surprise how well they manage to keep the balance and diversity of musical spices in check. Dabbling in everything from big band to metalcore, mainstream rock to ska, djent to punk; Ninjaspy have crafted something not only entertaining from start to finish, but a seriously quality album for even the douchiest of music buff’s to enjoy.” – Sputnik Music (Review Pi Nature 2007)
