On the strength of its self-titled debut album, Halestorm has been touring the world nonstop for the past two years. But before heading out on the Avalanche Tour with Stone Sour, Theory of a Deadman, Skillet and Art of Dying, the hard-rocking quartet from Red Lion, Pennsylvania, found time to slip into the studio to record “ReAnimate: The Covers EP,” five songs pulled from the band’s varied influences and one selected by their fans. Before a recent sold-out show at Rams Head Live in Baltimore, Maryland, (the band’s biggest headlining show to date), Live Metal’s Greg Maki sat down with drummer Arejay Hale to talk about the new EP and more.
LIVE METAL: You’ve played here a bunch of times. This is your first time headlining. I guess that’s something that in the past year or so you’ve been running into a lot, right?
AREJAY HALE: Yeah. It’s really astonishing, actually, getting to go on tour, open up for a lot of great bands, and then come back and headline the same places that you opened up for. You go into the main dressing room, you’re like, “Oh, this is what it was like.” [laughs] It’s cool. It feels like you’re stepping up in the world.
After this, you’re going onto the Avalanche Tour. I really wish that was coming around here.
So do I, yeah. I wish it was coming to Hershey or something. That would’ve been great. But we’re really good buds with Stone Sour and Theory of a Deadman, and we got to play with Skillet a few times. Art of Dying, we’ve heard some stuff from them, and they’re cool, too. Hopefully they’re cool guys; we don’t know yet.
One of my favorite tours from last year was Uproar. I had a great time there. How was that for you guys?
That was when we first met Stone Sour. We knew Corey (Taylor), actually, from a long time ago. We wrote a B-side with Corey. It was called “Tell Me Where It Hurts.” It’s on iTunes—I think you can still get it. But Uproar was definitely the best tour to date. No doubt, not even joking. That was the biggest size tour we ever played with. We got really close with Disturbed and the Avenged Sevenfold guys and Stone Sour. There was Hellyeah and Airbourne and Hail the Villain and New Medicine. It was just this big rolling circus. City after city, it was amazing crowds and amazing people.
You got to go to Japan last fall. How was that?
We played the Loud Park Festival with Ozzy Osbourne, amongst other bands. It was one amazing place to be. I’ve never seen so many smiles in one place. It was just amazing walking into some place like you would in the States, like a McDonald’s, and people (here) are just kind of long face, they look tired, they hate working there, they hate their job. Over there, everyone treats everyone with such an amazing, mutual respect for each other and especially for people visiting their country, like us. We were outsiders and humbled by them welcoming us with open arms. We were only in Japan for like two hours, on our way back to our hotel, and there were already three or four people outside the hotel wanting autographs. I was just amazed. I was like, “How do they know who we are? We’ve never been here.” People really, really love music, and they really study music over there, and they find out about new bands that are really good and they like. So it was definitely amazing.
And with everything that’s going on over there right now, it’s very eerie ‘cause we were just there. I can’t think of more of a tragedy to happen to a more amazing group of people over there. Hopefully, when that’s all cleared up, we’ll get back over there. They’re great.
The thing I really want to talk about is the EP you have coming out, “ReAnimate,” the covers. I really like that sort of thing. I think it’s a lot of fun.
It was fun getting to play some of our favorite songs. Some songs that we were influenced by, other songs were our management giving us suggestions and our label giving us suggestions—like, “Hey, why don’t you try this?” And we tried it, and we were like, “Yeah, that’s pretty good.” And then one in particular was a total fan pick. We had one left, and we just couldn’t decide what we wanted to do. We wanted to do something a little bit more new, a little more current. We asked our fans, “What song would you really like to have us play?” And the majority of them said “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga, which we’ll play tonight, and it’s an interesting version of it.
We’ve had a lot of fun taking cover songs and making them sound like Halestorm songs. Me and my sister, Lzzy, we’ve been doing it since 1997. We’ve been doing it forever, always taking songs that we love and trying to put our own spin on them. And that’s kind of what we did with this EP. We tried to take all the songs and be really creative. We just went into a studio for like six days, totally financed, and it was right in the middle of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and we just went in there, and we got creative and had fun with it.
I thought maybe we could go through the songs, starting with Skid Row, “Slave to the Grind.” When I first saw that, I thought it was a little heavy for what I’ve heard from you guys so far.
Yeah. We’ve been having a lot of fun lately kind of exploring our heavier side as a band. We feel like the first record was very diverse and kind of safe. It was good. We had fun walking the line with songs like “I Get Off,” which can be taken in many ways—many obvious ways and many subtle ways for the real reason, which is we get off on playing for our fans.
But “Slave to the Grind” opened up a lot of doors for us. We kind of started experimenting with going back to our metal roots ‘cause Lzzy and I grew up loving metal. We always listened to Metallica, Sevendust and Pantera and stuff like that.
I’ve seen you guys cover Judas Priest and Dio.
Yeah. You saw that? [laughs] Oh, man. So yeah, “Slave to the Grind,” that was definitely a challenge ‘cause I wasn’t so used to playing fast stuff. It’s a really fast-paced song. We did a five-day run, it was a little mini-tour, and we started our set with it. I used to come out—I still do it every once in a while—but I’ll come out onstage wearing a skull mask and a marching band jacket. I can’t really breathe very well in it, and I almost blacked out playing that song ‘cause it’s really fast paced. It’s a high-energy song. It’s a bandana I keep around my mouth. It’s kind of hard to breathe through. I do OK. Usually, we start with “It’s Not You,” it’s a little bit more relaxed. Starting with “Slave to the Grind” was tough ‘cause halfway through the song I was like [breathes heavily, gasping for air]. It’s probably my favorite one to play on the EP, and we’ll play it tonight. It’s a lot of fun.
When I was first getting into hard rock and metal, when I was like 10 years old, they were one of the first bands I got into. So it’s cool to see someone showing some respect to them.
Skid Row’s badass. I love Skid Row, yeah.
You’ve already talked about the Lady Gaga song some.
Yeah, yeah, the fan pick. That’s a fun one, too. I’ve always loved it when I hear a great pop song and I love it, and then sometimes they’ll make a rock mix. Like when Katy Perry came out with “I Kissed a Girl,” it was a good song, and then I heard the rock mix for rock radio and it was like, wow, that rocks pretty hard. We were like, “Let’s try to think of how we can make a rock mix of a pop song and make it rock, give it some balls.” You see metalheads in the crowd—piercings, big, burly dudes with leather, [points to Greg’s sweatshirt] Black Label Society hoodies—and [pumping his fist in the air] they’re singing Lady Gaga, and they love it. We love it, too.
“Hunger Strike,” Temple of the Dog.
That was a fun one because I’ve always loved Eddie Vedder’s voice and I’ve always loved Chris Cornell’s voice. The two of them are probably the top—besides Layne Staley—‘90s hard rock/metal vocalists. I’ve always wanted to hear Lzzy singing Eddie Vedder. The two of them have very unique voices, and they’re very different. What Lzzy did with Vedder and Cornell, it’s awesome. She goes up really high and wails on it. When you take a cover, by making it your own, you just take it up to the next level. You bring the energy, you play it in a higher key or you sing it really high.
Just to hear one person singing what was a duet originally—
Yeah, yeah. Two completely different voices, and she can do them both. She pulls it off. It was fun for me ‘cause I love (drummer) Matt Cameron, too.
I really like not just your version of it, but the song selection for Guns N’ Roses, “Out ta Get Me,” because it’s not one of the big hit songs. Were you tempted to go with one of the more well-known ones?
Lzzy and I always covered Guns N’ Roses from when we started out. We covered “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and then we covered “Welcome to the Jungle,” and then we covered it again later. We had the idea of doing “Welcome to the Jungle” ‘cause we pulled it off really good. We knew we wanted to do GNR, and we couldn’t really decide on one. There were so many bouncing around. “You Could Be Mine” was another one. Everyone at our label and our management, they said, “How about ‘Out ta Get Me?’” We never really thought about it; it is kind of a B-side. We just love “Appetite for Destruction.” We love that whole album through and through.
Every song is a classic on there.
Out of all the songs, Lzzy really got to have fun with that song. She got to really wail and get really raspy. And she got to say the F-word [laughs], which was kind of fun to try. We do have a younger audience, but we figured if it’s not our song, it’s probably not as bad. But it was fun getting to do Guns N’ Roses in general. We’re huge Guns N’ Roses fans, always. That was a fun one.
Heart is a band I see come up in reviews of you guys, mainly because of the vocals. Was that an easy one to pick? (“All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You”)
Yeah, totally. That was the easiest one. That was probably the first one that we were just like, “Yeah, that’s definitely going on.” Lzzy would always sing it at karaoke; that was always her go-to karaoke song. Sometimes we would cover it acoustic in our set. It’s just a showstopper when she sings that song. We wanted to kind of take it to another level. We wanted to try incorporating the full band—the electric guitar, the drums and bass—and we got really creative with it. We pretty much just rocked it up in the studio.
When it all came together, everyone was just quiet, just like, “Wow.” It just fits so well ‘cause Lzzy, one of her biggest influences is Ann Wilson, and I’ve always loved Heart, I’ve always loved that song. We used to cover “Barracuda” back in the day. We covered “Crazy on You.” But we really like the later Heart stuff, too, when they started getting really melodic and really kind of ‘80s, like mega-pop. It was fun to rock up one of their mega-pop rock songs.
And then, the last one (“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”), you can’t go wrong with The Beatles, right?
Oh god, we had to end the EP with that one just because it’s so epic at the end. That’s another one we used to cover. We used to just play it Beatles-style. We were just kind of jamming on it, and we were like, “What if we just thought, ‘What if Zeppelin was covering The Beatles? What would they do?’” And I started getting my John Bonham on. And then from there, it evolved to “What would Halestorm do if we were covering The Beatles?”
We stayed true to the original, but halfway through, we just started rocking it heavy. I think that one is probably my favorite one on the EP. My favorite one to listen to is “She’s So Heavy” ‘cause I’ve grown up loving The Beatles, and I worshiped every Beatles record when I was younger, and I still do. It’s a trip. It’s a mindtrip when you hear it. And she combines lyrics from “Oh! Darling” and other various Beatles songs in the outro of “She’s So Heavy,” so it’s kind of like this big, Beatles, crazy mindtrip. It’s a mindfuck. I love it.
When might we hear album number two from Halestorm?
We’re hoping to record it during the summer. What we’re gonna do is we’re going to try out two new songs that we’re gonna release as singles—hopefully release as singles. We’re gonna try two brand-new originals on Avalanche. We’re gonna do a couple festivals into May ‘cause all the radio stations across the station have supported us so much. So we just want to do that for those guys. We love ‘em all; they’re friends of ours. After that, we’re gonna go back to L.A., and we’re gonna record the record. Hopefully, it’ll be out later this year. We’re hoping. Fingers crossed.
Is there any particular direction it’s gonna go in, do you think?
Buckle up. [laughs] The stuff that we’re coming up with I’m really excited about. I think it definitely takes the level way above and beyond the first record. Now when I hear the first record, I feel like there was so much missing on that record that we could’ve done better. We’re gonna get a little bit more dangerous with it, I think. We’re not gonna play it so safe this time. We’re gonna experiment and get creative with it. It’ll be fun.
Well, I’ll let you get going. Anything you want to add?
Well, so far, this is the biggest headline show we’ve sold out to date. It’s like 1,400 capacity in here, and it was sold out by pre-sale. We’ve sold out venues, but with pre-sale and walk-up. This was all pre-sale. It says “sold out” on the fuckin’ marquee out there. So I just can’t thank the support of Maryland and Baltimore and everywhere surrounding this whole East Coast region enough. You guys have always felt like home to us. And thank you guys for supporting and writing about us and getting our name out there. You’ll get sick of us soon, we’re not going anywhere! [laughs]
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