Halestorm: Reimagining The Past and Shaping Their Future

When you’re very much known for one particular style of music, it can often become very easy to be kept stuck within the boundaries of that genre, with little room to grow as a band. Pennsylvania titans HALESTORM however are not exactly ones to stick rigidly within their lane, the Lzzy Hale-led outfit frequently packing soaring ballads in amongst their typical anthemic, arena-bothering hard-rock fare, and often branching out with diverse covers EPs that’ve seen them put their own spin on the works of artists as varied as LADY GAGA, TWENTY ONE PILOTS and THE BEATLES. Now though, the band are taking perhaps their biggest stylistic divergence to date, reworking their own back catalogue by dialling back the distortion and throwing in a few surprises along the way for a new mostly-acoustic EP, fittingly-titled Reimagined, as we found out when chatting with the band’s livewire drummer Arejay Hale.

“You know we’ve done a few acoustic renditions of things; I mean since the beginning of our touring and like when we released our first record and we were privileged to do, a lot of [radio] station visits”, the drummer notes of Reimagined’s genesis. “And, you know, you can only bring like an acoustic guitar and a cajón and and you just kind of figure out how to do the songs on an acoustic and just make it work. So we’ve been doing that since day one. We actually did a tour a couple of years ago, an Evening With… tour where we we had no openers. It was just us. And we would open up for ourselves and do like a half hour acoustic set. And then we would take like a ten minute break, then come back and do like a full on, plugged in set. And it was really fun. Like we like I think the beginning of it was what we did, this kind of bluegrass version of Mz. Hyde, and then it kind of snowballed from there. We’re just like, well, what else can we do? How else can we kind-of acousti-fy these HALESTORM songs? So we started playing around with I Get Off and I Miss The Misery. And it was like, ‘oh wow, this is something cool – what if instead of doing another cover EP, let’s cover ourselves’. But, you know, do the songs a little bit different, and I think the hardcore music fans; like they love to see a different side of a band, you know? Like, oh, look what else we can do.”

With an overall goal established, the members of HALESTORM once again turned to Vicious producer Nick Raskulinecz in order to capture the feel they were after in bringing together what would subsequently become Reimagined. “Nick has become like our George Martin, our Quincy Jones, our Glyn Johns, our Brendan O’Brien”, Arejay notes proudly. “He’s kind-of become like our fifth member which is great. He’s just so good at like knowing exactly; he’s got his ear really close to the ground, like what our fans want to hear, and also kind of like what we like to do. And so, he just he just dishes out great ideas. He’s got so much input, honestly, like like even before this whole pandemic hit, we were all gathering together, just the four of us and just kind of hashing ideas out, getting stuff together. And the four of us have this really great ability to come up with, like, new ideas. But then we don’t know how to finish them because it’s like we’re just like chasing our tail. Like, do we go this way? Do we go that way? Do we need another verse? And then so it’s good to have that kind of outside opinion. That brain from an outside point of view that would be like, ‘No, I think you guys should just do something weird here and then go back into the verse’. So he’s really good at arranging and really good at coming up with ideas. And he’s so much fun to work with for me as a drummer because he’s worked with some of the best drummers in the world. I mean, he just was working with EVANESCENCE’s Will Hunt, who of course, is an absolute beast. He’s done MASTODON, he’s done RUSH, he’s done the FOO FIGHTERS, so, like, I’m standing amongst these giants he’s worked with, you know. For me, it’s very humbling”.

Of course, one of the bigger talking points on Reimagined is the presence of EVANESCENCE leader Amy Lee, duetting with Lzzy on a reworked take on The Strange Case Of… track Break In. “We’ve been friends with Amy for a long time. We did our very first tour with EVANESCENCE”, notes Arejay. “It was the Carnival of Madness Tour in 2012 maybe? It was EVANESCENCE, CHEVELLE, us, CAVO and NEW MEDICINE and it was such a fun tour, and we just really hit it off with all them. And from there, like it was just so amazing to see Amy; she’s just there to have a good time. Like I was kind of expecting because like, you know, she’s a big deal, she was like she’s such a pioneer, such an originator for female rock and roll singers, you know; like when when they came out they were it, that was it, you know? And I was kind of expecting her to just kind of be very standoffish, kind of keep to herself and just be very polite. But no she would come out and hang out with us and drink beers and smoke weed and it was just like, ‘who are you?’ You know, we became such good friends with her and we’ve been buddies ever since. So obviously, Nick did the self-titled EVANESCENCE record, I love that record. And now he’s doing stuff with them again. So it was just a no-brainer. Like we all had the same people and he was like, ‘What if I reach out to Amy and see if I get her on the record?’ We’re like, ‘Sure!’, and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah’. So that was a big win for us – I love you, Amy, if you’re reading!”

As if bringing in another of modern rock music’s greatest voices wasn’t enough for one EP, Reimagined also sees the band taking a leaf from their own book and their usual ReAniMate covers EP series – this time electing to try their hand at the immortal DOLLY PARTON/WHITNEY HOUSTON epic I Will Always Love You.

“You know, I’ve always loved that song. I well, I mean, all of us have always loved that song. But yeah, I think if memory serves, that was kind of more of a last minute pick”, Arejay notes of the song’s inclusion. “Just strictly because we started implementing these little improvisational moments in our live show. Because I think that after touring for, you know, 11 years or whatever, we were kind of like, okay, you know, we don’t really want to be one of these bands that does the exact same structured set every night, because we kind of  go into autopilot and then the show kind of loses a lot of its feeling, you know? So we started implementing moments in our live show where we just kind of improvise and just go off on a tangent just like that, like a lot of guitar jams and certain moments and songs, and and one moment we wanted to do was strip it all the way down to where it’s just Lzzy on a piano and she sings a song. And she started doing like I said earlier, she started doing I Will Always Love You. And it was just going over really well. So we’re like, well, why don’t we just put that one on the record, you know?”

With talk of Reimagined out of the way, and touring a no-go for the foreseeable future thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, the line of conversation finally turns to HALESTORM‘s inevitable fifth studio album – a subject which Arejay, though coy on too many specifics, is more than happy to drop hints about. “We kind of lucked out because when this whole thing hit, we were already planning on taking a lot of this year to write anyway and write and record,” he reveals. “But we have started, we still have been productive, like, we’ve been writing on our own. I turned my closet into a vocal booth, and every day I’m writing music and I’m demoing songs and compiling ideas. And all of us are doing that. And actually, this past Sunday, we all got together in the studio with Nick. We spaced out, each took a corner of the studio. We’re like, ‘Hey’, you know, from a distance, like hanging out together, but at a safe distance and starting hashing ideas out. And it felt very productive. I think, you know, it was cool that we kind of put the brakes on everything for like a good six, seven months, and we’re able to kind of just pick up right where we left off. And, well, hopefully with all this time to be creative, we’ll either come out with the best HALESTORM record ever or the weirdest HALESTORM record ever. But either way, it’s going to be very, very intense. Let’s just put it that way. A lot of pent-up aggression is coming out on this next record. So I can promise you that!”

Reimagined is out now via Atlantic Records. 

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