HALESTORM Preparing To Record Third Covers EP

FaceCulture conducted an interview with HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale and drummer Arejay Hale at this year's Pinkpop festival, which was held June 10-12 in Landgraaf, The Netherlands. You can now watch the chat below.

Asked if HALESTORM has already commenced the songwriting process for the follow-up to 2015's "Into The Wild Life" album, Arejay said: "We really haven't stopped since we released the last record. But the last time we went into the studio, we were just kind of, like, 'Oh, boy. What are we doing?' It was crunch time. We were kind of stressed out about it. This time, we're trying to be a little bit more prepared, so when we go in, we have a little bit more of songs to choose from. But, yeah, we're all individually writing, we're writing together. We're trying to just get an idea of where we wanna go, what direction we wanna go."

Added Lzzy: "We're literally writing every day."

Regarding the musical direction of the new HALESTORM material, Lzzy said: "We're starting to get a clearer idea [of where it is going]. A couple of months ago, I had no idea what we wanted to do next, and so just kind of writing to write — write everything."

Added Arejay: "We're about to go in the studio and record another cover EP, and every time we go to do that, we get inspired heavily by the songs that we learn and that we work up. It's a great way to get an idea of different ways of songwriting. So I think after we do that, I think we'll have a whole new batch of inspiration. So it'll be cool."

Lzzy previously confirmed plans for HALESTORM to release a third covers EP to follow 2011's "ReAniMate" and 2013's "ReAniMate 2.0" during an interview with Shaw TV. She said: "There's always plans for those things. We've been using them, actually, to experiment with where we're gonna go next on records. It didn't start out that way, but the first one that we did, we experimented with a few different tempos of songs. Like, for instance, there's 'Slave To The Grind' [SKID ROW] and 'Out Ta Get Me' [GUNS N' ROSES], and we had never really experimented with that type of rockiness before. And we all turned to each other, like, 'We need something that sounds like that.' Out of that came 'Love Bites'. And then we did ['Gold Dust Woman' from] FLEETWOOD MAC on this last one, and out of that came 'New Modern Love' for ['Into The Wild Life']. So it's kind of a safe way to be, like, 'Okay, let's cover a song that's already proven, but really try to discover something new about ourselves and what we enjoy.' Experiment with different genres — just to throw something weird into the mix and challenge ourselves."

HALESTORM's first two albums, 2009's "Halestorm" and 2012's "The Strange Case Of…" were both officially certified gold in March by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for sales of more than 500,000 copies. The certifications came after RIAA started including on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent in gold and platinum album award.

"Into The Wild Life" debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 56,000 copies in its first week of release — more than double the first-week haul of their second CD — but has not reached gold yet.