LZZY HALE: HALESTORM's New Album 'Is Absolutely A Banger'

HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale talked to the 105.7 The Point radio station about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's follow-up to 2018's "Vicious" album. She said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We have it done. We literally finished the album three days before we left for tour. There were two new songs that kind of came together right at the end when we thought everything was wrapped. And we were, like, 'Now we have to do this, but we've gotta go.' It's just so beautiful."

Regarding the musical direction of the new HALESTORM material, Lzzy said: "This album is absolutely a banger. It's on eleven. We have really just kind of exceeded all of the energy that has come before on these albums, both technically, music-wise, vocally, drum, lyric-wise. I think because of the roller-coaster ride when we were making this record, and just through the pandemic and all the different phases of that, we just kind of looked at each other, like, if the future is unknown and we don't know whether we're actually going to be out and playing these things, everything has to be, like I said, at eleven. It's HALESTORM elevated.

"It was kind of funny. My bass player, Josh [Smith], he was showing some new songs to his parents. And his dad is, like, 'Wow. You really just grabbed on to your sound.' And I'm, like, 'We have a sound?' [Laughs] I didn't really think about it that way before. But, yeah, it's very us."

According to Lzzy, she and her bandmates recorded the new HALESTORM album in a different way. "This is the first time that we've ever had dual producers," she explained. "We went back with Nick Raskulinecz [who helmed 'Vicious']. And then I ended up doing my vocals with Scott Stevens from THE EXIES. He's like a brother from another mother with me. We've written together before, and we've known each other for probably just shy of a decade now. He and I, we produced and did all the vocals for [HALESTORM's recently released single] 'Back From The Dead' with each other, because I went out to L.A. And then we ended up sending it to Nick, and Nick's, like, 'This is just absolutely amazing. We have to do every song this way.' So we kind of did it differently. We ended up with the bare bones of a demo. I ended up finishing all of my vocals — like dunzo — before we ended up building the track musically. So it's kind of like building a pyramid upside down. But it ended up really just having this different energy, because what we were able to do with the lyrics and melody and all the vocals being done would really accentuate all of that — matching the theme to whatever I was singing about, but also just kind of really supporting the vocals musically when we went in to do the guitars and drums and bass. It's so crazy — it definitely has this very forward, very aggressive nature to it because of the way that we did that."

Asked when fans can expect to get new HALESTORM album, Lzzy said: "We don't have a date yet. We're literally talking about that this week, 'cause there are still some things that need to be mixed and mastered. But we'll get a date soon. But before we even release it, we're definitely gonna plan on, sooner than that, releasing another song. We're just trying to figure out which one, because they're all great."

"Back From The Dead" was released in August. The official music video for the track, directed by Dustin Haney (Noah Cyrus, Luke Combs) and produced by Revolution Pictures, features Lzzy and the rest of the band in a morgue and cemetery somewhere between life and death.

Raskulinecz first helmed HALESTORM's 2017 effort "ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP" and was previously described by Hale as the group's "fifth member."

Lzzy and her brother Arejay formed the band in 1998 while in middle school. Guitarist Joe Hottinger joined the group in 2003, followed by Smith in 2004.

In December 2018, HALESTORM was nominated for a "Best Rock Performance" Grammy Award for its song "Uncomfortable". Six years earlier, the band won its first Grammy in the category of "Best Hard Rock/ Metal Performance" for "Love Bites (So Do I)".