Halestorm are the cover stars of the new brand new issue of Metal Hammer ahead of their brand new album Back From The Dead. We grabbed guitarist Joe Hottinger for an exclusive track by track run down of the album.
Back From The Dead
Joe: “We had it mixed and mastered. Then I played it on my phone, and it got to the solo, and I was like, ‘Fuck! I fucked up.’ Lzzy’s ripping on there, we got to the solo and it… just… happened. The next day I was like, ‘I’m going to redo that solo,’ and so that’s the one you hear. It’s much better.”
Wicked Ways
Joe: “I love the aggression on this, it’s nonstop and Lzzy does something she’s never done before; that bridge, that triplet scream – almost like a decade-old angry emo moment, like, ‘I GOT MY WI-CK-ED WAYS.’ There’s so many great screams on it.”
Strange Girl
Joe: “One of the things we’ve been working on for years is trying to write music and songs that will reverberate in an arena properly. Big rock’n’roll. It’s one of my favourite songs on there. I can’t wait to play it live.”
Brightside
Joe: “I love Brightside, it’s so sarcastic. It’s such a good moment when she says… ‘But nobody likes you!’ It’s a character and a perspective Lzzy doesn’t discuss much.”
The Steeple
Joe: “It’s right-up-the-middle rock’n’roll and it’s great. Lzzy is just ripping. It’s about the live show. We’ve played it live in the UK and it was so much fun.”
Terrible Things
Joe: “I think she did such a good job discussing a heavy subject without being preachy. We all do terrible things; it’s not picking any sides, it’s just saying, ‘Good Lord, have some empathy.’ It was the first time I finger-picked on acoustic through a whole song. We had this basic song with some acoustics and Lzzy’s vocal and the strings just bloom. It became cinematic; it gives me chills thinking about it.”
My Redemption
Joe: “This is a beautiful song. Lzzy just ripping throughout, and I love that. It’s just a ripper, it doesn’t stop the whole time.”
Bombshell
Joe: “We’re writing with hugeness in mind. It’s kind of experimental in its weirdness and arrangement cos it stays in F the whole time and there’s an allusion to a chord change in the chorus. Then when it finally changes on the last chorus, it’s this big release.”
I Come First
Joe: “Lzzy wrote it and the rest of us were like, ‘That’s pretty on the nose.’ It was a bit of a discussion for a few weeks until she went back and rewrote some of the verses, and turned it from another Halestorm sex song to something with substance.”
Psycho Crazy
Joe: “It’s that other side of Lzzy Hale – Mz. Hyde. The screams in it are like, get out! We must have put together 30 to 50 sequences of these songs, and a moment I love is Psycho Crazy into Raise Your Horns. They belong together.”
Raise Your Horns
Joe: “The first time I heard Raise Your Horns, I cried. There’s no other place you could put it on the record. It’s gotta sit with you. There’s got to be some silence after that to digest for a bit.”
Halestorm are on the cover of the brand new Metal Hammer, out now
