Modern progressive metal act Claemus has been shaking rock foundations in and around Wellington for a decade now. There have been some line up adjustments, but Claemus in 2026 is the riff crushing three-piece of Taylor Hemson, Kit Jenkins and Dan Hayston.

Spanning the spectrum between rock and metal, Claemus also attract the tag of ‘oceanic prog metal’, recognising the band’s heavy use of synthesisers, guitars and detailed rhythm.

Their 2022 single Purge made it into the Hot 20 Aotearoa Singles chart – and four years on from that taste of success Claemus proudly deliver us Nemesis – a track which earned New Music Single funding from NZ On Air, and heralds a forthcoming album.

The band talk us through their darkly atmospheric new song’s musical development below…

The inception of Nemesis was an experimentation with synth sounds, funnily enough.

Taylor stumbled upon a synth preset that was fairly close to the repeated single note zipping synth that ended up in the final song (though we did eventually re-record it with a real hardware synthesiser and a better sound).

Once we had that, elements like drum grooves and guitar riffs just seemed to naturally develop and began to fill out the main motif of Nemesis, all while being anchored by that pulsating synth. We like it, because it has this anxious, tense feeling. We actually heightened that feeling with another quieter, descending (and simultaneously ascending) synthesiser sound that runs over the very start of the song, not too dissimilar from what is referred to as the Shepard tone.

The middle section of the song (by contrast) is more subdued, with lots of space and ‘air’, gentle bell-like synth melodies, and a slow reintroduction of the drums and bass, before we bring back a bombastic, fuzzy, chaotic climax.

We wanted the instrumentation to reinforce the lyrical themes within; being the dynamic journey we face when confronting the darker aspects within us. Nemesis is the first single off our upcoming album, so we tried to both capture people’s attention and demonstrate the development in our songwriting and production.

When writing Nemesis, we were mindful of our 2024 EP, ‘Mercurial’, which is a more digestible collection of songs that adhered to a more conventional structure. With this new album, we are really just letting the songs ‘happen’, and whether they end up conventional or heavily progressive, that’s simply where the songs evolved to. Nemesis is an introduction of that aspect of our band.

We are a band that self-records and self-produces. As this is a very guitar-driven song, we chose lower gain, mid-focussed, tight guitar tones that could cut through the mix as well as layer for bigger, thicker sounds. There’s even a little bit of sub-octave sprinkled in for extra fatness. The last section of riffs needed something a little different (for us), so we deployed a couple of the Red Witch Fuzz God pedals for that nasty, thick, fizzy fuzz.

The whining at the very end of the song was serendipitous – it was just the oscillations the pedals were making when not being played through, and we ended up keeping it in the track. Forrester Savell, who we have been lucky enough to work with since our debut album ‘Daydream’, yet again mixed the absolute heck out of this track, bringing our DIY work to life in a way that, really, only he can.

We had the pleasure of working with Amelia Walsh (director, editor) and her incredibly talented team to produce the music video. It is super interesting seeing someone else’s interpretation of your music and we think Amelia and her crew nailed the brief. There are subtle nods to The Shining, and the overall feel is haunting and moody.

This was aided by a very appreciated NZ On Air grant, which afforded us the opportunity to go a little further than we have done in the past with videos. As previously mentioned, Nemesis focuses around our darker inner self, burying uncomfortable truths until we are forced to confront them.

In the video our protagonist is haunted by her own darker self – a fitting representation, we think. We are our own nemesis, and to find inner peace it is important we reconcile those inner, conflicting aspects within us.

The very last thing we’d like to say about Nemesis, is that we proudly engaged Wellington’s Otis Chamberlain to create all of the incredible art for the singles and the album – all hand drawn and no AI, something we are extremely passionate about. Otis’ work is definitely a change of direction for us, but we are absolutely rapt with what he has created – an intricate, interlinked series of creations that really evoke imagination and exploration, not too dissimilar to our own journey through the writing of this album.

Nemesis is the first single off our upcoming album, which we are in the final stages of recording with a view to release in early 2027. We’ve got a few more singles yet to come, which we hope will be a great showcase of this era of Claemus – from subtle and spacious, to syncopated and severe.

We’ve just launched our website at claemus.com and have a heap of exciting announcements coming in the very near future. Thank you so much to everyone who has checked out Nemesis and we look forward to sharing more of the album with you soon.