IN THOREAU, Darius Yazzie thinks about songwriting when he’s not organizing bus drivers for his day job as transportation director at Rehoboth Christian School. Yazzie is lead guitarist and vocalist for Testify, with his wife, Candice Yazzie, on bass guitar, his father, Edmund Yazzie, on drums, and his friend Nick Willie, also on guitar. What started in 2010 as a rez garage band emulating idols like Metallica and Iron Maiden has grown into a distinctly Native American metal sound. Testify has since been hailed by the New York Times and featured by PBS as a key player in the larger Indigenous metal movement known as “rez metal.” The band’s gritty, fist-pumping yet melodic songs explore close-to-home historical subjects like Navajo Code Talkers and the Long Walk, while Testify also leans into personal stories to inspire Diné youth and families. With new music coming next year, Darius says Testify is facing a stacked concert calendar.
We finally found our sound with this last record [Rage, 2023]. I want to keep expanding on that, and also to keep promoting Native American metal music.
Along with other metal bands, we’re kind of opening that door to where we’re getting recognized nationally. [People are] saying, “Hey, there are Natives that play metal music.”
We were featured on SiriusXM two years in a row.
I just want to keep expanding in the future and to see how far we can actually get.
A few high schoolers follow the band, which I didn’t even know. That’s awesome. They come up to me and ask me, “When’s your next show?” To me that shows that we’re hitting all ages still.
When life hits—when we’ve been experiencing the loss of loved ones and trials and burdens—instead of us going and doing things that we shouldn’t do, we just put it into our instruments and put it into our lyrics.
With our newest material, I hope it reaches someone out there who is feeling the same way and uplifts them. Even though the music is heavy and darker, I want to at least inspire someone or help someone that is not feeling 100 percent.
¡MÁS MÚSICA!
If you’re into Testify, listen to “The Watchers” by Under Exile, from Shiprock.
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