After 37 years of making music together, legendary New Zealand band Shihad is calling it quits. The band will be performing a series of farewell shows around Australia and New Zealand in February and March. Shihad, known for their relentless energy and powerful sound, have achieved significant success with 18 Aotearoa Music Awards and four ARIA nominations. Despite their success, the members have reached a point where they can no longer maintain the level of commitment required to keep the band going.
Ask Shihad frontman Jon Toogood to describe the feeling onstage when the New“It’s like riding a f---ing dragon,” starts the 53-year-old, his long hair swaying enthusiastically around his face.“It’s like jumping out of an aeroplane. It’s like tightrope walking between two buildings, and you know you’re not going to fall, but you’re getting the thrill at the same time.”
In short, it sounds like a feeling that would be hard to walk away from. And yet, that is the decision legendary band, Shihad, have made, ending their 37-year career with a series of farewell shows around Australia and New Zealand in February and March.They’re also one of the most successful, with 18 Aotearoa Music Awards and four ARIA nominations to their name, while nine of their 10 albums were Top 10 hits in their homeland.
That they’ve reached a stage where they can no longer maintain that focus means Shihad must come to an end.“We wanted to draw a line underneath it and put it to rest in a way that maintained its integrity, and leave it in the same kind of place we always imagined it,” says Larkin, 53. “Not just something that frittered away and slowly deteriorated and crumbled.
As for highlights, Toogood recounts bonding with Black Sabbath guitarist, Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler, when Shihad supported the Birmingham metal artists in 2013, and hanging out with former The Clash frontman, Joe Strummer, on the 2000 Big Day Out. Larkin recalls mixing“I go back to that idea that you travel with a group of people for 37 years, and you live out of each other’s pockets, and you are brothers, and it’s an amazing way to see the world,” he adds.
“That was the bit that hurt me the most – that I went, someone knows more about what I intend with my art than I do. That hurt me the most out of my whole career.”shows, the singer expects to feel the weight of the moment when they walk offstage“That’ll be tough, the people that are there, but the people who aren’t that were there at the start,” he says. “A lot of our parents are gone now; they used to come to every show. I think that’s going to be tough.
MUSIC BAND FAREWELL SHIHAD NEW ZEALAND
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