HUNTED
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 4th August 2011.
Cardiff, Wales band Hunted started as a cover band, but they now have their excellent debut album "Welcome The Dead" out on German label Massacre Records.
We caught up with the chaps to find out more.
Hi guys, thanks for taking a moment to answer these questions. Hope you are well?
Hunted: Hey Jon, all well here and thanks to you for the interview!
How and when did Hunted get together?
Hunted: Well, to cut a long story fairly short, Hunted first ‘appeared’ when myself and a couple of mates had just about been playing our respective instruments (bass, guitar and drums) long enough to try and have a decent shot at covering some of the bands we loved. I guess this would have been, right at the start and a long time before we started working on our own songs, about nine years ago.
I understand you played cover songs to start with? What sort of tracks did you play, and would you list those bands as your early influences...or did you play them more for the audience reaction?
Hunted: Hunted in it’s early line-up would cover bands such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Deep Purple and Megadeth and these were certainly our influences and you may hear a bit of them in our music. As the line-up has changed and everyone has been in different bands, everyone has slightly different ‘strong’ influences and other bands such as Judas Priest, Helloween, Manowar come into the picture. I believe any tracks that were covered were played because we simply enjoyed those songs and it was a great feeling to be able to play them in a band setting; invariably, these same tracks would always generate a decent audience reaction! In fact, we played ‘The Trooper’ so many times I think we all tried to avoid that song for quite a while afterwards!
When did you start adding original songs to your repertoire?
Steve: It must have properly started around 2 or 3 years after forming the band, with the first line-up we only wrote one, which in fact was ‘Chosen’, but in an extremely embryonic form compared to what it is now. When I joined the ranks we started taking our songwriting more seriously and tracks such as ‘Shadows’ started to develop – funny fact: Shadows used to be 11 minutes long and was remarkably repetitive! With time, we have adopted a slightly more solid approach to songwriting and songs have been trimmed, nevertheless we still try and keep things exciting for us. As a final comment, it was when Mr G joined Hunted that we really started to focus on absolute originality, and we thus became a 100% original band.
You have an unusual sound (in a good way). Did you deliberately create that style, or is that simply where the music steered you?
Steve: Thank you, thank you! Unusual is a compliment! Not that we set out to be unusual, but we definitely want to make sure we come across as original and not just ‘another’ band mimicking others. I mean, that’s great if you’re happy knowing you’ve just ‘cloned’ someone else’s style but we want more than that, and would like to be respected and/or appreciated as an original band. So yeah, we did deliberately set out to try and do something a bit different – nevertheless you can’t help but accepting that the music you listen to sort of shapes the music you project, maybe that’s where we differ as within the band there are many influences and everybody wants to project their influences in an original way, Letson has a unique way of playing bass and Mr G loves to shape his own way of singing – in addition, it may be taboo for some people but we love all sorts of metal including trad, prog, power, thrash, doom and black, and therefore we do try and capture a bit of everything with the exception that we stay away (almost!) from guttural voicing in order to create some reference to traditional singers such as Dio, Adams, Halford, Tate, etc. We also try our best to stay away from keyboards, despite being very tempting at times, just to try and get a more ‘raw’ metal sound.
Jon: As Steve said, it’s really cool to hear people describe our stuff as ‘unusual’ – I don’t think we ever set out with that in mind when we write songs though… I think we just try and be as open-minded and open to everyone’s ideas and influences as we can (for better or worse!). It may be a slightly weird way of doing things but we’re usually pretty happy with what comes out of it all in the end!
You released new album "Welcome The Dead" independently to start with. Were you chasing record companies at the time, or was the intention to stay away from the labels?
Steve: there is no doubt that we were always looking to be supported by a label! However, it seems harder and harder to come by that support and unsigned bands, like ourselves prior to joining Massacre Records, simply have to try and push their music as much as possible. Therefore, we set out to record an album that expressed how we felt about Metal, our take on the Metal we enjoy, and despite extreme financial restraints we achieved it – we were and are very happy and proud of ‘Welcome the Dead’ and that made it easy for us to really make an effort to promote and try to market it – it seemed daft to just sit and wait to hear back from labels as you never know how long it could take and it most cases you never hear back anyway.
Jon: No, we definitely wanted to try and find support from a really good label. I mean, we just want to try and get the band and our music out to as many people and places as possible, and I think it would be a dream for everyone in the band to be able to make music our living, so the support that a label like Massacre can give us in terms of promotion, distribution and everything else is just too good to miss out on, really.
How did the deal with Massacre come about?
Steve: following on from the previous response, we set out to promote ‘Welcome the Dead’ to the best of our ability, and we did start to receive really really good reviews, so we were really happy! Hard to say whether Massacre Records got in touch prior to the little bit of exposure we were getting or if it was genuinely part of their A&R department spotting a marketable product/investment… either way, they got in touch with an offer and given the reputation that Massacre has, and the amount of CDs we own released on Massacre, we just had to say yes, we knew it was the right move!
Is the album that's out now on the label the same one you released...or has it had a few tweaks?
Hunted: We are happy to say that Massacre has kept the original format in its entirety which is fantastic, all the artwork is the same, the audio production is the same, and the booklet includes all the lyrics which is very important to us as we want people to connect with the lyrics! The only difference is that our work now has a glowing red Massacre stamp! Fantastic!
How long did the album originally take to write and record, and was the process pain, pleasure, or a bit of both?
Steve: Ah! What a memorable time! We absolutely loved recording the album, some of us maybe more than others get a real buzz being in the studio… it’s such an amazing feeling to hear your own music come to life! On top of that, Tim Hamil is an outstanding engineer and a real great guy, and his studio, Sonic-One, is remarkable too! That’s not to say though that there was no pain!!! There was!!! Because of financial restraints we had to work very efficiently and had to make sure no time was wasted… this did put a lot of pressure on the band and there was a little bit of moaning (as you’d expect) but nothing major! It all flowed relatively well and cannot wait to do it again!
As it’s our debut album, it’s just too awkward to calculate how long the writing took, some of the songs on the album, as you’ll notice from question 4, have been around for a long time, but they have evolved significantly, and we REALLY started tweaking the songs maybe 6 months before entering the studio – by tweaking I am referring to the pre-production period where we worked on all instruments to make sure they were all as good as they could be (layers, harmonies, flow, etc…) and making sure the album flowed as a whole. So, pre-production maybe 6 months working around our hectic full-time jobs, and recording took us around 16 days – that’s including recording and mixing.
Jon: It was an absolute blast recording the album, so I’d have to say much more pleasure than pain! (although some people did end up with some ‘unusual’ additions to their drinks, which might fall more under the ‘pain’ section from their point of view!) As Steve was saying though, it just would have been really cool to have had a lot more time to do what we wanted to with the album. Unfortunately, we actually ended up having to cut two songs from the final album because we just ran out of time and money…
How do you go about writing your songs? Talk us through the construction of a typical track...
Steve: well, nothing is set in stone and I guess we are flexible enough to adapt to however the songwriter wants to present their song…. In some cases we trust the songwriter and work on the song bit by bit without hearing the entire piece, but in most cases, especially now as we grow more tech-savy, the general gist of an entire song can be presented to the band via audio or MIDI recordings, this can provide insight into the ‘depth’ of the composition – from there, if there are several, we decide as a band which song should be the next to work on. In most cases, music will come first and lyrics are then adapted, but this is not always the case, for example the lyrics and general vocal lines for ‘The Silence of Minds’ and ‘Aria (In Memoriam)’ were written before any music was in place.
Where do you look for your lyrical and musical writing ideas?
Steve: We take our lyrics very seriously and try to make sure they are always full of emotion – we want our listeners to connect with the music and generally this is via the lyrical content. We therefore use our personal experiences as a prime source for inspiration, but we may also use any theme or story that evokes real feelings. We do not purposely set out to be philosophical in any way but we do try and make sure our songs have a point to make, otherwise it’s all ‘empty words’ that don’t really mean anything to anyone.
Jon: I think that the lyrics are a vitally important part of the song as a whole so I guess I always want to try and write about things that have a kind of ‘universal’ feel to them – human nature, tragedy, history, death, fate (all the happy stuff!) – so that anyone who wants to look a bit deeper into the lyrics can relate to, or at least have an opinion on, something in there!
Are there any particular tracks you rate highly, or is it all brilliant?
Steve: well, we’re trying to sell our music so it’s all brilliant right?! Seriously, brilliance is very subjective, and the album may be brilliant for us but maybe not so much for others. It’s actually quite interesting the contrast in reviews thus far and really reflects the different stances and tastes that people adopt or have. I believe we all have slightly different favourite tracks, my favourite is Aria (In Memoriam) for the emotion and feelings it evokes, but sometimes I fancy something a bit faster and I’ll opt for ‘I want nothing’, or something more chaotic I’d listen to ‘Impaled’. Whereas some artists don’t like listening to their own work, I can listen to ‘Welcome the Dead’ over and over and over again. Goosebumps every time!
Jon: Definitely Aria for me, I think it captures the emotion behind the whole song perfectly and it always seems really powerful when we play it live. (Although, I’m always interested to find out if anyone’s noticed the random bass tapping in ‘Scars…!)
Talk us through your existing touring plans, and what sort of show you put on...
Jon: We always try and put as much energy into a live show as we possibly can (which usually involves me running around like a crazy person and making lots of strange faces at the crowd!) and I think with all the different personalities within the band on stage, it makes for a really entertaining night! We’ve been working on tour plans while Massacre have been preparing the release and we’re just trying to finalise things with agents etc at the minute and, as we mentioned, we just want to try and play to as many people in as many places as we can so hopefully we’ll be heading to somewhere near you soon! Please come along – it’ll be an awesome night of metal madness!!!
What have been the highlights of your musical lives so far?
Steve: definitely recording ‘Welcome the Dead’, it was a first class experience! Playing Bloodstock and getting signed to the legendary Massacre Records!
Jon: Ditto to all the above… Oh, and meeting Nicko McBrain once in a hotel in Cardiff – that was awesome!
Any question you love being asked that I've missed? If so, what's the answer?
Jon: Question: Beer or whisky?
Answer: Both!
What are you up to once you've finished answering these questions?
Steve: back to work mate!! Lunch break is over!
Jon: Off to get a full English breakfast to try and cure my hangover haha!
Anything else you would like to mention?
Hunted: Thank you Jon, Rock Realms and all the readers for taking the time to produce and/or read this interview! All your support is greatly appreciated!! If you are interested in our music please purchase our album, now released and plastered all over the internet with Massacre Records, or download some tracks!, or if you’ve heard the album elsewhere please feel free to drop us a line at huntedrock@hotmail.co.uk or visit us at www.myspace.com/huntedrock and let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear on upcoming albums!! We welcome all feedback! Hope to catch you all at a venue near you some time soon! CHEERS!
Thanks again to the guys for their time. You can check out the Rock Realms review of Hunted's latest album "Welcome The Dead" by clicking here.
Label: Massacre Records
Artist's website(s): MySpace | Facebook
