Halestorm are at the forefront of modern heavy bands keeping an old school spirit alive. The quartet were a standout at last month’s Back To The Beginning concert honoring Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
Raised as rockers on a steady diet of Sabbath, Pat Benatar and Alice Cooper, siblings Lzzy and Arejay Hale formed Halestorm during childhood. Halestorm rose through the ranks in a fittingly classic way: cutting their teeth in bars and clubs and developing a loyal following. They created their buzz organically over five studio albums, three covers EPs and a GRAMMY Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 2013 for "Love Bites (So Do I)." They also continue a relentless touring schedule; since releasing their last album Back From The Dead in 2022, Halestorm have performed over 250 concerts.
The lyrics on their new album, Everest, are a testament to the highs and lows along that ascension. From questioning her legacy on "How Will You Remember Me?" to the angst-ridden "Fallen Star," Everest is open about Halestorm's climb.
In an unusual move for a heavy rock group, Halestrom tapped producer Dave Cobb for Everest; the nine-time GRAMMY winning Nashville veteran rarely works with such groups. Rather than recording in Music City, Halestorm laid down Everest in Savannah, Georgia, at the insistence of Cobb. That unique pairing produced a collection of songs that truly showcases the raucous quartet's artistic diversity. The quiet moments feel more intimate, and the loud moments particularly angry and intense.
Left unsupervised for weeks at a time in between tours, Halestorm got to explore sonically during the recording process. "Maybe we don't have to have that be something so grand. Maybe we're enough as a band, and maybe our instincts are correct," guitarist/vocalist Lzzy Hale muses. "We were slowly but surely rediscovering that about ourselves in that house."
In the middle of a six-month long tour supporting Volbeat, Hale sat down with GRAMMY.com to chat about making Everest, the mix of emotions fueling the new lyrics, and her involvement with the Recording Academy.
Halestorm recently performed at the Back To The Beginning concert. What was that like?
It was amazing, dude. It was such a mixture of feelings.
The day before the actual show we were all in rehearsals, so you're seeing everybody. We were hanging out with Steven Tyler. Then Sharon [Osbourne] was there and the guys from Anthrax and Megadeth. No head was higher; everybody understood this is Black Sabbath’s show. Everyone was just in this child wonder and giddy, and everybody was a little nervous. It was a lot of fun. The show was an absolute blur, and the audience was amazing as well.
Despite there being so many women in metal now, you were the only one onstage.
I don't know how that worked out or why that was the situation, but that's how that was. But it was really cool, just getting to hang out in the supergroup and doing a performance.
You feel like a little sister, and everyone's really sweet and supportive about it. It's funny because all of the boys in my band don't think about it much, about me being a girl, until somebody brings it up.
Halestorm is probably the most metal act Dave Cobb has recorded, and he's the least metal producer you've worked with. As a result, this album feels like it has more peaks and valleys than your others. Are you happy with how it turned out?
I think that that juxtaposition and that balance came together naturally because of the way that we were recording it and approaching the songs. We didn't have a whole lot of time to think it to death.
The chorus of "WATCH OUT!" I ended up recording at 4 a.m., and it wasn't even the chorus at the time. It was just something that I really liked for an outro to the song. So Dave's listening to what I did — Dude, this part is amazing. That's the chorus. He had a good instinct about it.
The same thing with some of the quieter moments. I think when songs get demoed to death — especially before you even start recording them — you have to almost try to go back to that place where you were; this elevated version of something that was very intimate and organic.
Whereas with this process, we were literally writing the song and then recording it in real time. A lot of these vocal moments, guitar solos and drum tracks were first or second takes, just before we could overthink it. Dave was very adamant about that. So that lends itself to the feel. But we have always had this idea where we always err on the side of making moments and being as true to ourselves as possible.
This might have been a different record if we had done it in Nashville. Dave has RCA Studios out here which is where "Jolene" was recorded. At first, when we were talking to Dave, [we thought] This is great. [But Cobb felt] it's too distracting because there's so much going on. It's like Vegas down here every Tuesday through the weekend because every day is a party downtown. He found that he gets a lot more done and we’d be more focused if we go out to Savannah.
The four of us were like 19 again, going on the road unsupervised. We rekindled a lot of things. There was a lot of stuff we actually worked through; little conversations that we had been meaning to have, some tough talks as well, that I don't think we would have had if we had just been doing the same thing we always do, just go in a studio and knock it out.
On the last album, you were dealing with the pandemic and isolation. This album is more about the journey of the band, but a lot of these songs feel very personal and relationship-driven. Are there double meanings going on in a lot of these songs?
Oh, absolutely. There's always a mishmash, especially considering I had been writing a lot of poetry through the making of this record. Part of a very important process of my writing is word vomiting first and getting into a poetic structure.
"Like A Woman Can," is dual-sided because I ended up getting the idea from a Meryl Streep interview, of all things, where she was talking about how, for hundreds of years, women have learned the language of men. We know how to talk to you, we know how to dress, we know how to do things, but there are a lot of men that refuse to learn the language of women. So it’s basically asking to meet in the middle. Then there's this tinge of bisexuality in it as well. The beauty of songwriting is that you can get a couple different subjects out all within the same house.
"How Will You Remember Me?" is talking about legacy, but it's also my funeral song. It was me trying to be okay with the fact that anything could happen at any time. What did I do? How am I presenting myself? Have I achieved everything that I want to achieve? Have I lived my life the way that I wanted to live it? That was something that I've been wanting to write for a long time, but there's been such pushback with that. So many people and producers thought that's going to be too dark, that's going to be weird. As soon as I brought it up to Dave Cobb, [he said] "That's awesome, let's go to a graveyard for some inspiration."
I love this album because there's so many different ways that you can cut these songs. I know what I wrote them about and the things that I was drawing on. But I feel like there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be able to see themselves reflected in it.
There's some anxiety and insecurity in these songs. You've always had a cathartic element to your music, but it feels a little more vulnerable this time.
I was very much wearing my heart on my sleeve, and the dangerous decision that I ended up making was trying not to base everything on whether or not it had a happy ending. I've gone through a lot of ups and downs with imposter syndrome, and I have anxiety and depression. I'm going through a little bit of that now. Post-tour depression is one of those things where it's like, Why am I sad? You work through it with the ebbing and the flowing.
But I'm at a point in my life where I just couldn't in good conscience be like, Things are weird, but it's all going to be okay. Don't worry, I know. Because I don’t know. If anything, there's more questions than answers within all of these songs and with everything that I'm doing, and the reason I did that was in the hopes of being a better role model. You can't just pretend to be the superhero all the time. In a way, by expressing my vulnerability and some of my darkness here and there, it might actually be more inspirational.
You're involved with the Recording Academy and with music education. Could you talk about what you've been doing?
I've been a part of a few committees and supported various charities through [the Recording Academy].
It's important to support any type of musical education, specifically for mental health, because there's something about playing and writing music that takes you to a place and out of your own head in a way that a lot of medications can't. It’s also just an outlet to find yourself and to find something that you can do that makes it yours and not anyone else's. Nobody can take that from you.
I think it's really important to make sure that all of those things remain affordable to kids coming up in the scene, and especially keeping the music education in the schools. It's been a tough situation.
It’s hard for younger bands to break through with media exposure these days.
You can't find your niche anymore. I'm still really proud of being a real rock band because we cut our teeth in the bars; there's something about being in a band and putting people together and playing live that [allows you to] find your own niche. We've always been very adamant about standing out.
At the same time, we've never had our weird moonshot moment. It's been a very slow, steady [rise]. We were very lucky to have a team of people around us [that allowed us to grow] when we got signed in ‘05. But it's a shame because young bands and young artists [now] aren't given the opportunity to find themselves first. You're not supposed to have it all figured out on your first record.
It's not fair for bands not to have a chance to grow and to find themselves, especially in front of people. Most of these poor kids are getting signed out of their living room, or from a one-off on a TV show, or from TikTok, where they don't know who they are in front of people, in front of an audience, and that's really scary.