The Mixtape: Matthew Hyde of Beastwars

Although a 2017 cancer diagnosis made the last few years of his life "very hard work emotionally", Matthew Hyde is learning to relax.

After completing treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the lead singer of Kiwi metal band Beastwars trained to be a nurse.

“I had a fear of death and I wanted to go to the source. I've seen a lot of people go now and I just come to terms with it, it's just a natural pathway.

“That's the greatest gift [nursing] gave me, is to relax me a bit so I can actually enjoy my time here on planet earth, rather than being fearful, having anxiety attacks, which I was having when I was sick.”

Beastwars have just released their fifth album Tyranny of Distance –​ a covers album featuring songs by New Zealand musicians such as Marlon Williams, Superette, Nadia Reid and Julia Deans.

Now 52, Hyde grew up in Wellington's Stokes Valley and as a teenager formed the '80s punk band Microwave Babies.

“It was the age of punk rock and all the skinheads and it was quite terrifying, ultra-violent times.

“In Manners Mall there were people breakdancing and then there were people with mohawks and people with boom boxes. It was crazy.”

At 18, he left New Zealand to work in hospitality in Sydney, then moved on to New York and at 21, to London.

In 1991, at the Reading Festival in England, he ran into a guy he knew from Auckland who said, “Man, I need you, we need to form a band”.

“That led us on an adventure for a while, we played the toilet circuit for years in London… dive bars. It was another life, thinking back.”

Over the years, Hyde has never had voice training or played a musical instrument – “how far have I got without playing an instrument?” – but says singing and songwriting have delivered a sense of liberation unlike anything else.

“It’s the only freedom, in a way, that I can experience where you actually break away from the matrix, and in that moment you’re free.

“You’re not present, you’re somewhere else.”

Despite this, Hyde isn't encouraging his 16-year-old daughter Nina – “an incredible guitar player who taught herself from TikTok" – to pursue a music career.

“I’ve told her 'No, don’t do the arts'. I just said look, it's a mixture of poverty, mental illness, addiction. It can break your heart. You’ve got to be aware of all that stuff. I would never be pushing anyone into that. You can do it but you need to have some money.”

Hyde changed careers himself later in life. He worked as a chef before his 2017 diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, then shortly after completing treatment began studying to be a nurse.

“I started university a month after my last chemo. I realised ‘I can sit in a lecture theatre’ and I just told myself ‘go every day’."

He graduated from nursing school at 50.

"Six months later the pandemic hit, so what a time to be old and to be learning a new job and all the stuff that goes along with that.”

Through nursing, Hyde says he was able to face his fear of death.

"I wanted to go to the source. I've seen a lot of people go now and I just come to terms with it, it's just a natural pathway.

“That's the greatest gift [nursing] gave me, is to relax me a bit so I can actually enjoy my time here on planet earth, rather than being fearful, having anxiety attacks, which I was having when I was sick.”

Rediscovering snowboarding after a 20-year absence has also been helpful, both musically and emotionally, Hyde says, and helped him manage the fear of getting sick again.

“I was [worried about cancer returning] until I started snowboarding again, and now I don’t [actively worry]. This whole winter I haven’t thought about it. So I’ll continue to snowboard for as long as I can afford it."

Hyde says that after the 2019 album IV, he didn’t think there'd be another Beastwars album or that the band would stay together – “so many times it has seemed that it’s naturally come to an end” – but he now has a new outlook.

"I’m going back to the mountain and then I went and re-recorded all my music, I just totally changed.

“Snowboarding I started doing in the '90s to the early 2000s then life got in the way again, I had a kid. I mean, I’m 52, I don’t know anyone who really snowboards anymore. So I just said ‘I have to go’.

"I went by myself and it was a trip of absolute loneliness but absolute 'oh my god'. I just saw the most incredible things, experienced the most incredible things. I didn't really meet many people, you know, it was just me and the mountain.”

On the mountain, Hyde doesn’t listen to music, he tries to listen to the world.

"Quite often, I think, we can listen to music too often. Sometimes we need to listen to the planet, when it breathes, it moves. I like the silence of the mountain sometimes."

For Hyde, songwriting begins with this kind of silent observation.

"I definitely took it as a creative time.”

Matthew Hyde’s Mixtape picks: 

Tim Buckley - 'Pleasant Street'

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - 'Let the Day Begin'  

Mark Lanegan - 'Old Swan'

Johnny Thunders - 'You Can't Put Your Arms Round a Memory'

The Rolling Stones - 'Moonlight Mile' (2009 Mix)

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'Jubilee Street'

Beastwars are currently touring. See here for details.