Halestormhave just announced their third album Into The Wild Lifewhich will be released on April 3!Lzzy Halerecently spoke to Full Metal Jackieabout the album, find out all the details below!
A bands third album is usually the one that really solidifies their style. Whats the most important thing about Into the Wild Life that establishes Halestorm that maybe wasnt so evident with the first two albums?
With this record, we kind of threw everything out the window that made us feel comfy and safe and normal. The past two records weve made were done very differently than what we just did on this new record. This new record we really wanted to bridge the gap, so to speak. What people see on our live shows and then what people hear on all our records. We basically went back to the beginning. We went with a completely new producer, a new town, a new mindset. We did all of the tracks live, just the four of us standing in a circle in this beautiful church in Nashville. The goal was to capture performances and moments that the four of us only know when were in our practice space or back in the day when we used to practice in our parents basement. [laughs]
Its such an amazing thing to capture the type of energy that you feel from your guys and your bandmates every night onstage and try to get that down on tape. We did the record with Jay Joyce in Nashville and what an awesome freaking mad scientist of a dude! He brought some stuff out of my little brother that I havent seen him do in a studio, ever. Just really was kind of our fifth member and was there from beginning to end. When we told him about this idea and said, Hey, we want to set a standard for this record. We want it to start and end with us. He definitely was the one guy who had the guts to actually do that with us when everyone was like, No, people dont do that anymore. It was wonderful. We accomplished what we set out to do and hopefully everybody likes it. Honestly, Im warning you. Its Halestorm, warts and all [laughs]. In every aspect of the word, everything that makes us pick every aspect of music that we get excited about we put onto this record. Were stoked to show it to the world.
Into the Wild Life was recorded more of a live performance than typical assembling of each song in piecemeal fashion. What was most liberating about not being so pristine and perfect?
Honestly, singing wise and performing wise for myself. Its a very mental game, to me when Im onstage. To me its almost a euphoric state of mind. How you feel mentally definitely affects how you are physically and how you perform. You can be having the best night of your life and if you go out onstage and youre performing in a studio thinking, Oh my god am I going to be able to hit that note? Is it going to be perfect? Am I going to be in time and in tune?, you sing differently. Maybe you wont hit the note because youre thinking about all of these things. So what was so liberating about going into the studio and basing this one, you know, is it doesnt matter if were perfect. Having that mentality of, Hey, lets have a great time and play some music that we love and capture some happy mistakes and really be human on this record. It took away a lot of the staleness I feel like on some past records that comes across in some of my vocals.
Yes, it sounds great Im not knocking anything weve done in the past, but obviously weve had a lot of success [laughs] with the last two records. I love them to death, but they were very much based on lets get this as perfect as possible. It was so freeing to just walk into the studio every day and you should see it, Jackie. Its beautiful. Its this reformed church that Jay Joyce bought and he actually had to become an ordained minister to actually buy it. [laughs] So even though hes not necessarily a crazy religious man, he could definitely marry somebody if he really wanted to. The whole common room is full of any instrument that you could possibly think of. There were so many days where I would just sit down at the piano and start playing and wed end up recording it and putting it into the record. It was such a wonderful state to be in with the guys and I. We were having fun and chasing anything that got us excited and basically the finished product, Jackie, what ended up happening through that was we actually made a record. We made an album. It wasnt based on singles or EP sections, anything. We just went in there and did our thing and what came out, like I said, for better or worse, Halestorm.
What challenged you most about making this album and how did it make you a better musician?
Its a lot harder to do a record based on the four of you in a room than it would be going in and doing everything separately. The last two records that we did, we did them differently. We did them very assembly based so we would go into the studio for the last two releases and it would be, all the drums were done in two days. So Arejay would play all the drums, to a cooked track and a scratch dummy vocal track that Id do. Then the next day, we would start all the guitars, all my guitars for two days, the next day all Joes guitars, the next day all of bass then Id start singing. We were never actually all riding the same wave together or actually played the songs front-to-back together in the studio. So to me, it was actually a lot easier to do it that way. The goal wasnt anything more than hey, lets make sure we can hit these notes. Whereas this was a lot harder to do because we have to trust each other and be looking in each others eyes and also, because were trying to create a performance, well run through the song recording it and if one person royally screws up the rest of us all have to do it all over again [laughs].
So, really, in all honesty this is how Zeppelin used to do it and a lot of our idols used to do it because you had to be good to go into a studio because there was no real re-dos. There was no you can fix that in post. Even though we do have a lot of this technology today, obviously, we can do all that stuff by us setting a standard and having people, our engineer and producer Jay Joyce really keep us to that. Every time wed say, Yeah we can probably fix that, right? Hed be like, No! We set a standard, were sticking to it.
It was challenging as a band but also it really helped us grow because just when I thought you know the four of us couldnt get any tighter, with all of the years we have been touring together 250 or 300 plus days a year we found something in ourselves again. We found this kind of grassroots confidence in the four of us and what we do together. Because in all honesty Jackie, were not virtuosos, none of us graduated college, none of us went to Berkeley. There is really only one of us in the band that can still read sheet music. But whatever happens with the four of us is magical and unapologetically Halestorm. You know?
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