Announcing their split and swansong tour today, all four band members of Shihad tell the Herald’s Karl Puschmann why the iconic Kiwi band are calling it quits.
If you’re reeling from today’s news that Shihad are breaking up, you’re not alone. So are the group. The break-up announcement might be the heaviest thing Shihad have ever released.
That Shihad would ever break up seemed unfathomable. But at various times over the past week, I spoke to all four band members, drummer Tom Larkin, lead guitarist Phil Knight, bassist Karl Kippenberger and vocalist/guitarist Jon Toogood, who explained why Shihad were indeed breaking up and their reasons why.
If there had been an agreed upon company line for them each to recite, it was abandoned. Emotions were raw and the interviews were unfiltered.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Kippenberger said. “It’s been a long process for us. I’m relieved for the announcement.”
It was this moment, less than two minutes into my first interview, that I began to think that perhaps some of Shihad may have agreed more than others to break up the band. I ditched my prepared questions and instead simply asked how he was feeling.
“It’s a range of emotions,” he replied. “Deep down, I never want this to end.”
The words hung in the silence and then he quietly said: “Grief. It’s been quite a time of grief.”
A short while later Knight joined our call. He described the situation as “pretty weird”.
“I’m always the last guy that comes around to anything in this band – and in life in general,” he said. “Always late maturing with anything. Very, very emotionally immature.”
“Not always,” Kippenberger interjected.
Knight smiled warmly at that. Then he said, “I think it’s all going to hit me on the announce date.”
Before today’s official announcement, a small teaser for their final tour was posted on Shihad’s social media. Keen-eyed fans noticed that under the giant Loud Forever banner was a subheadline that read “1988-2025″ and were speculating it was an ominous portent.
“There’s been comments online and I read a few of them and it just tore up my soul,” Knight confessed. “We all see those bands out there that flog a dead horse until it’s really dead. As far as this band goes, to the public this horse is not sick. The horse is not sick at all! It’s winning races.”
He’s not wrong. Shihad’s last record, 2021′s Old Gods, powered straight to number one. It was their sixth album to do so, making Shihad the only Aotearoa act to accomplish that mighty feat. Their tours sell out and they play main slots at festivals like Rhythm and Alps and Homegrown. Shihad had not slipped.
In a career that’s spanned almost four decades, the band powered their way to the top on the back of their blisteringly powerful live show and songs that, at their best, blended the band’s sheer power with memorable earworm hooks.
It’s no exaggeration to call them one of our most influential and iconic bands. Six of their 10 albums hit number one, they won 18 Aotearoa Music Awards, were inducted into the New Zealand Hall of Fame in 2010 and released hits You Again, My Mind’s Sedate, Wait and See, Pacifier and, of course, their signature anthem Home Again.
Having conquered Aotearoa, Australia quickly followed. But their attempt to take over America was thwarted by global events when the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York forced them to rebrand as Pacifier. It instantly ended their momentum and ushered in a dark period for the band. They battled on, before coming home and reverting to Shihad. It made them an even more potent force as they now had something to prove.
While gaps between shows and albums increased, whenever Shihad resurfaced they were never anything less than a force. They continued to destroy audiences and their albums kept hitting number one.
“And what better way to go out?” Toogood enthused when I connected with him that afternoon. “I’d rather go out on a f***ing bang than be a sad parody. I don’t want to do that. I don’t think anyone wants to do that. It was just like if we’re not going to do this 100%, then we shouldn’t do it. That was the decision.”
The next day I spoke with Larkin. Of the four he appeared the most focused. Kippenberger and Knight seemed wearily resigned and Toogood was his usual whirr of energy but an air of determined calm surrounded Larkin.
“I’m concentrating on what needs to be done,” he stated matter-of-factly. “One foot in front of the other, so that really takes away a little of the emotional focus. Right now, it’s about getting it done and getting it done well.”
That could almost have been the Shihad philosophy. They were the band that wanted to be the best not just in Aotearoa, but in the world. They were prepared to put in the work to make that happen. They got closer than most.
“Yeah, Shihad always had both a commitment and a work ethic,” Larkin agreed, before adding, “As well as the sum of the parts equalling something that cannot be reproduced individually.”
It was hard not to read between the lines of that last statement in light of Toogood’s recent foray as a solo artist. But perhaps I was reading too much into things. So I asked him why the band decided to end Shihad.
“It’s a conclusion more than a decision,” he clarified. “With decisions, you all see exactly the same thing and agree on it. With this, it’s more like that which cannot be sustained, will not go on forever.
“Shihad’s always been the sum of its parts. But it’s also about a shared commitment. And a shared energy,” he continued. “Within that, there’s a priority that it has to take. That doesn’t mean it’s a priority all the time. It just means that when it’s the time for Shihad, that Shihad is the priority. I would say that that became an asymmetrical commitment.”
It’d be easy to point fingers. None in the band did. And even if the gap between the lines felt big enough to walk through at times, that really could just be a matter of timing.
Individually, all four said the conclusion was a long time coming. Larkin and Toogood formed the band in 1988 as students at Wellington High School, with Knight joining shortly afterwards and Kippenberger being recruited in 1991. That’s a long time to live in each other’s pockets and to be both personally and professionally chained to your college mates.
Over the decades the four have gone through a lot together. They each referred to their bandmates as “family” and “brothers” – although Kippenberger joked at one point that, “it’s actually probably more like a marriage”.
Knight credited his bandmates with saving him from the depths of alcoholism, Toogood admitted to being an “annoying shitbag” and “totally absorbed at times”, Kippenberger referred to the band as “a dysfunctional bunch” and Larkin wearily said that “what makes this tiresome at times is that people revert to the way of dealing with things that made sense in 1988”.
If anything, Shihad have always been brutally honest.
Despite the sombre news, all four are excited to play together again for one last time. And all are determined to rock the hell out of their final shows. Coming from them, it can be taken as a warning.
“I’m really looking forward to playing with the guys,” Toogood said. “The last show we did was thrilling. It’s still like riding a dragon. The combination of four people making something bigger than what you could do by yourself is a magical feeling. It’s like flying. It’s like, ‘F**k! I’m defying the laws of gravity.”
“It’s going to be hard not to cry,” Kippenberger replied when asked about the final shows. “Especially the last gig. I don’t even know what that’s going to feel like. Maybe we’ll have to play three hours because it’ll be hard to leave the stage.”
“We’ve spent so much of this career pushing forward on what’s next, that finally to reign that in is going to be quite hard for my brain,” Knight reckoned, while Larkin said that his final ever beat with Shihad will be as important and impactful as his first.
“I want it to hit hard and I want it to be significant, but I want that for every show,” he said. “I don’t want that just for the last beat. I want it for every beat.”
Then he paused and said, “The original name for this tour was The Infinite Hiatus. You know, I think this is the closing of a chapter. And maybe it gets reopened. Let me put it like this. Shihad needs to go away because it’s a magnetic force on people’s lives. People put aside things that they could do in order to leave room and perhaps others don’t make the same room. It’s an imbalance of opportunity, focus and commitment. So we need to collapse that. And if we can honour it and leave it here, then that’s fine. If that magnetism comes back and it’s all in balance ... then we’ll follow that.”
That can be considered a slither of light cracking through the dark, even if he immediately adds that fans shouldn’t hold their breath. But, it was similar to a sentiment offered by Kippenberger the day before.
“I don’t want to say, ‘never say never’, but we’ll continue to keep our relationships together and we can see how things go,” he said cautiously picking his words. “I’d love to write more Shihad music. That’d be f****** cool. But for now, I guess, it’s how it is.”
Then he sighed and said, “Is there ever a good way to finish things up?”
Shihad’s final tour, Loud Forever, begins on December 29 in New Plymouth before playing around the country and playing Auckland’s Spark Arena on March 14. Full tour and ticket info at shihad.com.
Karl Puschmann is an entertainment columnist for the Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
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