Hot Water Music: Riding High
You won’t find many more dependable punk bands than HOT WATER MUSIC. Fast approaching their 30th year together, the Floridian veterans’ output may have slowed down over the past decade or so, but its quality has never wavered. Perhaps most remarkably, they’ve held down the same core line-up – at least on record – since their inception. Their latest effort is a little different though; it’s the first to feature guitarist and vocalist Chris Cresswell as a fifth permanent member, who joins the long-time four-piece after having spent the last five years covering live duties for co-frontman Chris Wollard. A shake-up of sorts then, but, as if there was any ever doubt that it would, the output speaks for itself. Feel The Void is vintage HOT WATER MUSIC, a collection of 12 massive, melodic punk rock songs that reveal a band who continue to grow old gracefully.
For bassist Jason Black, “getting the songs together was a lot less of a headache than you would maybe think it was.” Chatting to us just a couple of days ahead of the album’s release, he describes a relatively seamless writing and recording process involving weekly Zoom meetings and plenty of time to tinker afforded to them by the COVID-19 pandemic. “I found it really productive because it was easy to keep track of where we were with everything and it was also nice to be able to sit back and spend some time thinking about stuff when you’re writing. On the flip-side of that we were able to do a few pre-production sessions before we even got going with Wollard, myself and George [Rebelo, drums] in the studio, which was equally if not more productive, so we kind of got the best of both worlds.”
Of course, it’s perhaps no surprise that a band as consistent as HOT WATER MUSIC would take the past couple of years in their stride, but Black is quick to emphasise that even this far into a career these things take work. “Sometimes it’s harder than others,” he laughs. “As an only child it’s what I imagine is very brotherly, and love and hate are closely related some days. It can be really tough, but we do love each other and we have been doing it for a long time, so there’s kind of an unspoken language that everyone communicates in when we’re writing. I think there have been points in time where some of us are more engaged than others, and that always inevitably ends up showing up in the output too, or the shows, but we’re firing on all cylinders on this one.”
Bringing out the best of Black and co. on Feel The Void is producer Brian McTernan – a long-time friend of the band who also sat behind the desk for some of their most acclaimed records of the early 00s. Naturally, their reunion proved pivotal. “It was good for us to just have someone say ‘this isn’t good enough’ pretty regularly, and not back down from whoever didn’t want to hear that, because nobody ever wants to hear that! It was from someone that we’re friends with too so it wasn’t like some person that we don’t know that came in and was just like ‘you guys aren’t ready’ or whatever, he’s someone that we trust and have known for a long time. From my perspective he made us make a really good record instead of letting us make a pretty good record.”
As one might expect, those themes of friendship and brotherhood crop up a lot over the course of our conversation. HOT WATER MUSIC have always provided a source of camaraderie and catharsis for their fans, and Feel The Void is no exception. “I think it’s just kind of an inherent thing at this point,” explains Black. “I’m also glad that that’s a big chunk of what we do, or our personality, because I think it’s important for people, in particular right now but it always seems like it’s important. Sadly human nature cuts both ways on the regular, so there’s always something to need to blow off some steam about.”
Perhaps more than anything else, it’s this spirit which has turned HOT WATER MUSIC into the hugely influential figure they are on today’s punk rock scene. Black admits that the idea that there may be bands breaking through at the moment who wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his own makes him feel old, but he’s also incredibly positive about the state of the genre in 2022. “There was kind of a time where it wasn’t that I necessarily felt bad about the state of punk rock but I wasn’t sure that we fit into it anymore – and I think we made our way through and we’re still here.”
“I feel like there’s a lot of newer bands that aren’t so concerned about having anything to do with punk rock and they’re just kind of doing their own thing, which I think is really cool,” he adds “That’s kind of where we came from. We didn’t really know where or if there was anywhere we were ever going to fit in and we never really worried about it.” With that, Black has arguably summed up just what makes HOT WATER MUSIC special; they’re a band who’ve played by their own rules since the very beginning, and one we can only hope continues to do so for many years to come.
Feel The Void is out now via End Hits Records/Equal Vision Records.
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