HALESTORM's LZZY HALE Says She Gets Letters From Parents Thanking Her For Taking A Stance On Social Issues

Terry "Beez" Bezer of WhatCulture Music recently conducted an interview with HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale and guitarist Joe Hottinger. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On bands having something to say about social issues:

Lzzy: "We grew up on bands where that was the idea. The fact, hey, man, I'm a real person. I'm a dork from Pennsylvania and I had all these ideas growing up but never had the medium, but now that you have the medium, it's, like, why not spread that out there? We grew up on bands who did the same thing. They talked about it in their songs, the things they believed in, they challenged people politically and did all these things with their music. I think music still holds a very important part in all of that and culturally."

Joe: "As a public figure, you [referring to Lzzy] more so than anyone else, it's good to have an opinion. It's nice to hear. People look up [to her] for things."

Lzzy: "It's funny. I almost expected — you have to cross your own line when you decided that, 'Okay, I want to be nice to everybody and we have this diverse fanbase and everything.' When you make that line of, 'No, it's really important for me and my soul to be able to use my life and this amazing gift that I've been given for good and to stand up for what I believe in.' The thing I didn't expect was so many love letters from parents. You would have thought that maybe you would gotten 'You're standing up for something… Shut up and play music.' And it's just been amazing. In meet-and-greets, too, the other day, I had this man — he's a dad and he brought his kid to the meet-and-greet and he hugged me and he cried on my shoulder. He said 'My little girl suffers from depression and you gave her this thing and all these ideas she has. She says, 'If Lzzy can stand up for what she believes in and not care for what anyone thinks, so can I.' It made me misty in the meet-and-greet because I'm, like, 'This is amazing.' It's something I was not expecting just from me being myself. Always err on the side of honesty. It works. [Laughs]"

On whether HALESTORM's "definitive statement" is still to come:

Lzzy: "I think so."

Joe: "I hope so."

Lzzy: "Honestly, our goal as a band, I don't necessarily think that there's ever… We always thought there would be, we thought there would be a line, 'Okay, there's going to be a point in time where, 'All right, we did the [METALLICA's] 'Black Album'. But I honestly think that we're always chasing whatever's next. We make a record and it's, like, 'Okay, it's going to be the next one.' And then we're going to make this one and it's, 'Okay, it's going to be the next one.' I just think that as long as we keep trying to top ourselves. [Laughs]"

Joe: "Our motto is to get better, always. Each live show, we talk after each show we play, 'Well, we could have done this a little better.' Just try to get better always. The same with records. Always focusing just a little bit more and try to, I don't know what is we're going for…"

Lzzy: "I liken it to you're just peeling back these layers; you're peeling back this onion. It's a combination of all these things. You're comfortable now lyrically, speaking my mind and singing things that I really feel passionately about. And then musically, we're getting better every day and we're touring a lot and we change up the set every day just so we can keep our chops up. And kind of harness that, 'Oh gosh. It's just the four of us.' We don't do tracks or trickery. It's one of those things hopefully, by the time we do every single record we're a little better. Always more. Never less. [Laughs]"

HALESTORM's latest album, "Vicious", was released in July 2018 via Atlantic.