Halestorm drummer Arejay Hale recently sat down with Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke to talk about the bands new album ‘Vicious’, the organic approach with which the band took to the recording process and much more! Read excerpts here or watch the full interview below.
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On how ‘Vicious’ is being received in its first few weeks, Arejay said,
“It’s been surprisingly positive! I mean, every time you go in to make a record you never know what the reaction is going to be. So I was very glad to see that people are liking the new stuff. We’ve been putting a pretty fair amount of new songs in our live sets on this tour. We were maybe a bit worried that it was a bit too much unfamiliar material, and people wanting to hear the old songs, but so far everyone’s been singing along to the new songs. They’ve been really digging it, so I think that’s all a pretty positive sign! [Laughs]
Steering clear of the “cut, copy and paste” method of recording for a far more organic pasture, Arejay shared some insight on the recording process behind the powerhouse that became ‘Vicious’.
“I appreciate the kind words, man. Thank very much! I mean, you pretty much nailed it right there the way that you just described it. We really wanted to bring kind of a quote – unquote, powerhouse feel and approach to the record. I feel like a lot of bands in our genre are starting to branch out and explore new territories. So for us, we felt like the wisest choice and the wisest direction to go in would be to kind of go back to our roots and try to recreate the energy and intensity that we try to bring to our live show.
Arejay also spoke about the challenge of capturing the essence of their live show on record.
“Trying to capture that on tape has always been a huge challenge for us. For some reason it’s just very difficult to have that same energy and that same aggression and on record. So we felt like it was a pretty wise choice going with a producer [Nick Raskulinecz] that was not only so brilliant in not only making records with that organic feel but that really good energy”
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Speaking on the importance of finding the right producer for the record.
“We felt very confident that he knew what he was doing. But at the same time, he was also a big fan of our live show. He was the only producer that had seen us live so many times. So he kind of had a way better idea of how to capture what we do live on record. We think that with this record, it’s probably the closes that we’ve gotten to finally achieving that.