Interview: The Hollow

The first time that I ever saw The Hollow live was back in.. 2008? I think.. No Apologies last show up in Sydney. I remember that show so well because I drove up from Canberra that day with a mate and drove back that night after the show. The weather was an absolute nightmare on the drive back. It was raining so hard I could only see the little reflections off the white posts on the side of the road, nothing else. And the wind was so strong that it was just blowing my Toyota Carolla across both lanes of the highway. I was convinced that I was going to die at age 17 in a horrible car crash somewhere near Marulan. Anyway, earlier that night I saw those dudes play and they blew me away. I grabbed their demo (Which I still have) and I caught them in Canberra not long after with 50Lions. They have been a band that I have kept an eye on for many years now, always awesome live and always good blokes to have a chat to after a show.

James, I play bass in The Hollow. It doesn’t require much to be honest, Shaun leads our riff attack.

Right, so the new record ‘I, Destroyer’ came out last month. It was a little bit of wait, but now it’s out are you guys pleased with the final product?

Yeah it was definitely a relief to get the CDs back and to able to look at it as the result of about a year’s hard work writing, recording, and a lot of just waiting around for it to be finished. I think we’re all pretty happy with how it turned out. I know when we first got the tracks back I listened through and was blown away by the job that Jay Maas did on it. There is obviously some things on the record, that if we had our time over we would go back and alter, but I think that is just natural, it’s pretty difficult to produce a record that is “perfect” or anything like that. Overall I’m extremely stoked on it and I think that the other guys feel the same way. I was actually very surprised at how the packaging came out too. Nico from Black Sails did a nice job on the design and the gatefold packaging was a nice touch…and it’s nice to look at haha.

So the CD was meant to be done and in stores on July 1^st, and everything was looking good, the pressing place had everything and was about to start doing all the printing, pressing etc. There was the smallest of issues with the art because some of it fell into an area on the template that was meant to be left blank so we had to go back and fix that, and by the time it was all done and finished it was a few weeks late. In the end it wasn’t a massive issue or anything, we’re just glad it all got done. I wish I had an interesting story about why it was delayed but I don’t haha.

Not only was the record done through Melbourne’s Dead Souls again but Marty also sat in on the recording process with Jay. What was it like working with both those dudes? Having been in the studio with Marty only a few months ago, he seems quite comfortable in the control room for such a young engineer.  

Working with both of them was really cool because they have both been involved in the recording processes of so many good recent hardcore records. Jay and Marty both had a lot of good ideas and were pretty up front and blunt with us – if something sucked, or didn’t sound right, they didn’t beat around the bush, they made us do another take, or they would help us change something up to make it sound better. I think that helped us and it pushed us a lot. Having those guys around made us all want to play better and tighter on our respective parts. Marty definitely seems very comfortable and that made us pretty comfortable as well, not to mention we’ve known him for a while now so it was just fun sitting around in the studio goofing around with the guys. While Jay was working on drums with Biggie, Marty would be working with Shaun and I on guitars and bass. That also helped fast-track it all and we got everything done in the time we booked.

The song writing process definitely changed from the EP to the full length, but I wouldn’t say it has changed drastically, just progressed. When we were writing the EP, it was all pretty rushed towards the end and the songs were mostly written individually by one of us, then we’d all come together for a jam and there wasn’t that much collaboration. We’d just jam out the song how it was written.
For the album, there were a couple of songs written like that, but for the most part Shaun, Biggie and myself were getting together and running through rough songs we’d written and changing stuff up, adding stuff, and bringing our own ideas to songs. I feel that worked well and it created more songs that we were all happy with. Of course then Jesse came in and added his suggestions as well and we did some rough recordings and he would write his lyrics to them. We were also a bit more focused on what we wanted to sound like, we wanted to the songs to be a progression from the older stuff and we were definitely going for a heavier, darker sound.
Of course having one guitarist makes it a whole lot different but we just focused on writing songs that weren’t going to be impossible to play live with only the one guitarist. 

Yeah, funnily enough we recorded our demo at Shaun’s place, in a spare bedroom, before he was in the band purely because he was a good friend and he was keen to hear our demo I think. When our original drummer Mitch left the band, Biggie took over almost straight away and at that point we asked Shaun to play second guitar as well. While we were in the very early stages of writing I, Destroyer, Aaron, our original guitarist, made the decision to leave the band because he was moving down to Melbourne in a few months to study and work. We had a last show with him and it was all on good terms so that was cool. We initially spoke about getting another guitarist to fill that spot, but honestly we’re all pretty content with just Shaun handling the riff duties. Every now and then we speak about it but nothing ever comes of it, we’re all pretty lazy.

Yeah it would have been awesome to have it done by then, unfortunately the art wasn’t done and releasing AYS’ album through the Dead Souls label was also Marty’s priority for that tour. I’m really eager to do some more touring now that we’ve got the album out, because we were playing a few of the new songs on that AYS/Warbrain tour and we had a lot of positive feedback about the new songs, it just would have been really nice to have the CD available for those people that liked it to pick up and check out. On the plus side we’re doing some shows with Ghost Town and Skyway up in QLD and Byron at the end of August, and we have some other shows coming together hopefully for early September. It would be great to do a full tour towards the end of the year but unfortunately nothing big planned yet. The run of shows in August should be fun and it will be good to play some more of the new material to crowds outside of Newcastle.

It would have best if you asked Jesse this one because it was a theme he came up with, but I will do my best to pass on what he has told me regarding the theme and title of the album. Basically Jesse wrote the lyrics with an overarching theme of destruction, apocalypse and all things badass, and the title reflects that. If you want some more insight into it, you’ll have to ask Jesse though! 

This might seem a little pushy seeing as the record just came out but it was recorded (off the top of my head) a little over 9 months ago wasn’t it? Have you guys done anything in regards to writting since then?  

After we recorded we actually said “let’s start writing again”, but nothing eventuated. Now that the record is out, Shaun and I have started playing around with a couple of new songs, but we only just started jamming one of them last night, so a new release is still a little while off. The new stuff is again going to be a bit different I think, a bit more melodic but also combining some more elements of metal and some more technical riffing. We tossed up the idea of a 7” or another full length, but I suppose it all depends on how the writing goes. If we start coming up with a whole bunch of good songs we might just work towards a new full length, if we just get 4 or 5 written that are nice and tight, we will just do a 7″ I suppose. Recently Shaun and I have also starting jamming for a new band with Luke from the Dead Walk and LLR. It’s very different to The Hollow genre wise but it’s sounding sweet so far, so Shaun has spent a bit of time writing a demo for that band. We’re keeping busy either way.

Yeah, the other reason for CD was also because Marty had just secured distribution for Dead Souls Records through MGM which means that his releases end up in all the big music shops like JB Hifi. With this in mind we decided we could reach a lot more people with a CD because JB aren’t likely to want to stock some small Australian hardcore bands’ 12”. We have an offer from an overseas label to release it on vinyl but that is still in the works, I hope it all comes through because I’d like to see it released on that format. Vinyl obviously has that real collectors aspect to it as well, I know I’ve bought a couple of records and never actually played them, just used the digital download to play them on my computer or ipod. But I still love having the record there physically, and I think a lot of people feel the same way so it’s definitely something we want to do for future releases. Like I said in the last question, we are beginning to write some new material and that might end up being a 7”, it could be a 12”, we don’t know yet but either way when it’s done it would be nice to release that on vinyl if we can.

Thanks for asking some original questions besides the same old boring ones, haha.  I would usually wrap this up by giving a shout out to some bands that I think people should listen to or check out, and this time will be no different. Listen to Marathon, Civil War, Tired Minds, Colossus, and check out Distance, a new band from Newcastle that we’re all mates with, they’re doing that whole pop-punk sorta sound, I don’t know how to describe it properly but whatever it is they’re doing it well.
And hopefully we’ll be back out on the road again playing some shows, playing new material and people dig it.
PEACE!

In the last 2 years I have bought two CD’s. I have an unhealthy obsession with vinyl, there have been times when instead of paying bills I have bought records purely because I wanted to get in before a pre order sold out. Those two CD’s were The Hollow’s Selt Title and their debut album I, Destroyer. Normally when it comes to CD’s if it doesn’t have a vinyl release, I’m not buying it. But in both these cases I wanted to hear the records so badly that I couldn’t wait a few weeks for someone to chuck them up on Mediafire. Two years on the Self Title is something I still listen to quite regularly. When I heard I, Destroyer I was blown away. Personally, I believe it is leading the pack as best Australian release this year. Do yourself a favour and get I, Destroyer and go along to one of their shows next time they play your town. You will not be disappointed.

Interview By Ben Robertson

Photos Thanks to John Hatfield and Destroy All Lines

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