Hillhaven has made quite a splash in 2024, quickly becoming one of the more active acts in the “active rock” space. The new band dropped its debut single, “Damned to Dream,” in April and followed that with a new song every month, concluding the year’s release schedule with “This Time Tomorrow” in November. With a lineup consisting of Chris Kelly (ex-Ice Nine Kills, ex-Galactic Empire, rumored to play in Babymetal’s band) on vocals, From Ashes to New’s Maty Madiro on drums, Ice Nine Kills’ Ricky Armellino and From Ashes to New’s Jimmy Bennett on guitar and Jaime GoWell on bass, Hillhaven might be a new band, but its members are seasoned professionals. As they look ahead and begin to plan for what promises to be a busy 2025, Chris Kelly checked in with Live Metal’s Greg Maki to discuss all things Hillhaven.
LIVE METAL: A few years ago, I found out that I had been a fan of you without even realizing it. When you started touring with Ice Nine Kills, I was like, “Who is this guy?” So I looked you up, and I love Galactic Empire and I’m also into the other band that you may or not be on tour with now.
CHRIS KELLY: Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. (laughter)
So I’ve been excited to see what you would do steering the ship creatively in your own band, which brings us to this new band, Hillhaven. Obviously, you and the other guys in the band are in other bands, so why did you feel the need to start this new band?
Well, it wasn’t intentional at first. The first song that I had written that wound up sort of spawning the whole thing was a song called “Gaps” that we put out back in June. It was written to be used for another band that I was working with at the time. I had been producing them for a while, and then I joined the band for a little bit. It was sort of trying to mold it into this new active rock thing. We had put the song together. The singer came to my house. I put the instrumental down. It started with a completely different instrumental, and it wound up morphing into something that had zero (laughs) remnants of the original one, which wasn’t received the best by the other members of the band. They were like, “He changed the whole fucking thing!” The singer was about to have a kid, I have two kids, and he had this one line that he thought about, which was “fill in the gaps.” So I built the whole song off of that, basically.
It wound up not being used by that other band, and then I wound up parting ways with them. So, with the original singer on it, I sent it to Maty, our drummer, and was like, “Do you know anyone who would be interested in this?” I didn’t really know if I was asking about if a band wanted to buy it or if a label would be interested in it. There was definitely some delusion going on there—like, I know how this shit works, but still I’m asking my semi-famous friend, “Hey, do you know anybody?” (laughs) He, surprisingly, was like, “Are you gonna do something with this? This song’s sick. If you need a drummer for this or if this is a project that you’re doing, let me know.” I hadn’t actually thought about that. I hadn’t really put any thought into starting a band in my 30s. The idea kind of seems terrifying.
So I was like OK, it’s got the original singer on it. He sounded really good on it—I always liked that guy’s voice—but it didn’t seem like he was gonna be interested in doing a new thing. He wanted to stay with the band that he was with. So I re-recorded the vocals on it. I labeled it Singer 1 and Singer 2, and I sent both files to Maty and then a bunch of other people—some musician/producer people and some totally casual listeners who I know like rock and metal music—and was like, “Tell me which one you like better.” And to my surprise, most people preferred my take on it. So I was like OK, this is another new thing. (laughs) I had never thought about fronting a band before, but if the feedback both from professional and casual listeners seems to be overwhelmingly in my favor, then I guess I’ll give it a shot. Why not?
So that was what started the whole thing. Then Maty and I started talking about who else we could get involved. Obviously, at the time, I was touring with Ice Nine, so I asked Ricky if he wanted to do it. Maybe these things shouldn’t be surprising to me because these people are my friends, but I’m always surprised when anyone wants to do anything with me. It’s just my personality. (laughs) So I was surprised when he said yes. Maty brought Jimmy in. We got Jaime, our bass player, a few days before the music video shoot. We had originally talked about having another person, and that didn’t wind up working out. Jaime has been a friend of mine for a long time, and I kind of always thought he deserved a shot. So I was like, “Hey, dude, can you be in Lancaster in two days and learn these three songs?” (laughs)
So it was all very impulsive, spur of the moment. Until the music videos started, I think there was also sort of a tone of this could very well be one of those things that you and your friends talk about, like “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this,” and then it fizzles out and nothing happens. But from the moment that Maty was like, “Yo, you could do something with this,” I was like, “Cool, well I’m gonna.” So I made sure that the material was written, and I got all the music videos scheduled, and I made sure I got everybody in the same place. I was like, “Dammit, this is gonna happen”—even if it completely fails out of the gate, I’m gonna say I did it.
So that was it. It was a combination of impulsive, spur-of-the-moment stuff and then kind of scrambling like, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I have to make this happen, and I don’t necessarily know how.” (laughs) So I’m doing my best.
So this was your first time doing lead vocals?
Yeah. I’ve been doing backup vocals for a while. I did a lot of singing when I was filling in with Ice Nine, so that helped me get some confidence. And on that tour, too, Motionless in White had put out their newest record and they had that song “Slaughterhouse,” and they were kind enough to let me do the guest vocal spot on that for a few shows. I refuse to watch videos; I’m sure it sounds terrible because I had no idea how to scream. I was just figuring it out kind of in real time. That was another scary thing about this project: I know what I want it to sound like, and I can’t sound like that, so I’ve gotta figure out how to do that. (laughs) So a lot of flying by the seat of my pants.
So it took some time to sort of find your voice then?
Yeah, for sure. The singing was relatively easy because I’ve been doing that for a while—I just never did it as the frontman. But the screaming was definitely a hurdle, for sure.
Obviously, this is your baby. Was there any collaboration with any of the other guys in the songwriting or anything like that?
Yeah. Everything that I would write and finish—I say that loosely—I would send it to everybody to get some feedback. We’d all love to be able to find time to get in a room together and meld the minds and do the thing that I think everyone assumes is what bands do. It’s certainly not off the table. Everyone’s busy. Everyone’s doing stuff. And when it’s that kind of thing where this could just fizzle and it might just be an idea that we have, you can’t really expect five different people to all put the same amount of time into it and make sure they’re at this place on this one day off that they have.
So me being the core writer of everything kind of happened out of necessity really. I’ve worked with Ricky before. I’ve worked with Maty before. We all trust each other’s instincts, so when there’s notes or something, there’s not a lot of arguing. It’s like, “OK, cool. That sounds like a good idea.”
Ricky was very helpful on some lyrical hurdles and stuff that I would have. He’s very good at demoing vocal ideas. If I was stuck on a lyric, I would send him the song with a piano playing the basic melody that I had in my head, and then I’d be like, “This is the lyrical vibe that I’m going for. This is what I’m trying to talk about and I can’t find the right words, and this is the melody. Just see if anything comes into your head.” And there were a couple of times where he really cracked it and gave me at least the first line or two where I was like, “Oh shit, that’s good,” and I was able to build off of that. So there were parts in this writing process where I definitely wouldn’t’ve come to the same point without the other guys providing feedback.
I’ve heard lots of stories from musicians over the years about agonizing over the band name and how hard it was for them to come up with. How was it for you, and what’s the story behind Hillhaven?
My first childhood home was on a street in Newtown, Pennsylvania, called Hillhaven Court. It’s not that there’s any particular significance to that, but when we were throwing names out, I was like, “Yeah.” The one thing that I wanted to make sure—and I think everybody else was on board with—was that we didn’t want the name to be too definitive as far as genre is concerned. We didn’t want it to be like this is obviously a metalcore band, this is obviously a “dad rock” band—that kind of thing. I wanted something that sounded kind of serious enough without putting its own limits on whatever kind of music we were gonna put out.
There’s seven songs this year that we already put out so far, and then there’s three more that were completed in that first batch. I really think that there is—to the best of our ability anyway—a cohesive identity to them, but they are different from one another, especially the one that we just dropped, and there’s been a couple of outliers, I think. We didn’t want a name that was gonna pigeonhole the band into having to be one thing. I think Hillhaven did that.
I also think it was just a matter of it was the least bad idea. I think that’s what most bands kind of land on: This is the one that sucks the least. (laughter) And also, even though it’s one word, you can kind of make a stamp-style logo with it with the two H’s and then the sort of symmetry between the H and the N. It was like OK, we can work with that. I tried to think of the aesthetic that could go along with it. So that was basically how it came about. I wish there was a more significant thing to it, but yeah. (laughs)
As you were saying, there’s some variation among the songs, but overall they definitely fit into that active rock or Octane type of format. Is that what you were going for?
Absolutely. Like I mentioned, starting a band in your 30s feels like a suicide mission kind of, especially when you’re already touring full time, making a living at it, used to being on buses and getting hotels and all that kind of stuff. If I start a new thing, it’s not just gonna be that. I’m kind of accepting that I have to go back to the grind, and that’s scary. That’s another reason that, especially with the conversations Maty and I were having, we wanted to get pros—at least to launch it and we’ll see how everything goes. Hopefully, everyone’s happy with it, which so far, it seems that they are, and that’s great. Nobody wanted to have to babysit anybody. Nobody wanted to have to show anybody the ropes really. We wanted a group of dudes that they know how it goes, they know how everything works.
So with that same mindset, the music was very intentional, too. Not that it even would’ve been a conversation, but there wouldn’t’ve been a like, “Oh, do we want to do old-school death metal?” Probably not. Not because any of us dislike that type of music, but just because if you’re gonna be rolling the dice and starting a new thing when you’re this far into your career, you want to make sure that it has some level of accessibility. You want to set it up for success as best as you possibly can. So the sort of Octane-focused, catchy, anthemic emphasis is definitely very intentional.
The strategy you’ve taken for introducing the band—I don’t know that I’ve seen a new band go quite this route, releasing a song a month for seven months in a row. Why did you decide to do it that way?
I had a lot of help from a lawyer named Eric German, who represents a lot of big people in this space. He was the one that told me—and I had heard things similar from other people before, but I was kind of on information overload and didn’t really know what the right move was—he was like, “Look, when you’re starting something new, even if it has all these people in it, it’s not just gonna blow up. The general public doesn’t have the attention span to just get one song and it’s awesome and it skyrockets and it’s everything that you want it to be. It’s just not how it works. What you need to do is you need to stay top of mind. So you need to set a release schedule, whether that’s every four weeks or every eight weeks. It shouldn’t be any more than eight weeks between songs. Make sure that everything is done beforehand. If you’re doing music videos, have it all done beforehand. Make sure that all the songs are written and good to go so you’re not caught with your pants down, and whatever that release schedule is, you stick to it no matter what. It’s a holiday? It doesn’t matter. But try not to schedule on holidays. If a war breaks out, just keep going. There’s so much information being thrown at everybody all the time that they’re gonna forget, so you have to keep drilling it in. And then once the song is out, there’s got to be a post every single day. There has to be some kind of content going out, and you’ve got to be ready for it.”
So he was the one that helped me iron out the release plan, which I’m very, very grateful for because I’m relatively good at following a plan; it takes a little bit extra for me to make the plan because, like I said, information overload, kind of option paralysis—I want to make the right decision, but I don’t know what that is. So having that roadmap was very helpful. I knew we wanted to go with Atom Splitter—Amy (Sciarretto) and Shane (Handal)—for PR because I had worked with Amy a long time ago with Galactic Empire, and I knew that she was a killer. It was helpful to have the core group of people that sort of confirmed that this is what you want to do.
So far, it’s worked out fairly well. Eric was right: The project didn’t immediately skyrocket. There’s been a lot of figuring things out as we go, but I think that’s inherent when you’re starting something new. You’re just taking shots in the dark. You’re throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Some songs are gonna do better than others, and you can take notes as everything goes on and adjust accordingly.
What’s the plan moving forward? You’re making your live debut next month at Christmas Burns Red. Are there plans for an album, or are you sticking to the singles strategy?
The plan was originally to do a record. There was an album title, an album cover. Like I said, there’s three other songs outside of the seven that we’ve already released, and they were gonna be part of it. And that could still happen. It’s just that when you put an album out, you want to have merch bundles and you want to have the right promotion behind it and all that stuff. Because so much of this was establishing proof of concept and seeing if it actually could work and seeing if anyone would even really give a shit (laughs), by the time it got to the point where I was like this is where it would be nice to announce the album, we didn’t have that stuff in place. Also, we had been keeping costs low intentionally because a new thing can fall apart at any moment and you don’t want to be out tens of thousands of dollars and owe people money.
We’re only just now ramping up the PR because the last single that we put out got a good enough reception, and it was like OK, I think we can afford to start putting some more into this. So it was really just a timing thing. Now that we’re working on new material, the conversation is well, if there’s a record, do we want it to be the songs that have come out so far? Do we want it to be the new ones? The new Falling in Reverse record, I think there’s only three or four songs that hadn’t been released in the last six years or whatever it’s been. But I think that was incredibly intelligent of them because all those streams carry over. Those songs have amassed millions and millions of streams, so day one the album’s got 200 million or some crazy amount.
Obviously, our streams are not that high (laughs), but we can pick and choose the ones that have the best numbers and bring them over, then have a bunch of new stuff, and then we might have to remix because the new ones sound different. So there definitely is a plan and a desire to release a complete body of work in some form. We’re just not really sure what form it’s gonna take. Right now, we’re gonna keep focusing on making the best music that we can and being confident in what we put out. We’re having conversations with potential labels and booking agents and things like that to try to see what we can do next year.
Is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?
I guess all I can ask is for people to check it out. I feel like I should be like, “Go listen to the new song”—which, obviously, that’d be great—but if you don’t like that one, we’ve got six others. Go find one that you dig. (laughs) If you’re into the active rock space, I’m sure there’s something for you.
LINKS:
www.youtube.com/@HillhavenOfficial
www.facebook.com/hillhavenband
www.instagram.com/hillhavenofficial
www.x.com/hillhavenband
Hillhaven merch
