Hawxx: Ready To Storm The World
Bands and artists within rock and metal music kept busy within the last couple of years during lockdown, resulting in many albums and EPs that have been released in the last year. The genres of music have presented some amazing work from both established names and up and coming musicians, one of them is London quartet HAWXX with their EP, You’re Only As Loud As You Shout Right Now. With the return of live shows on top of this, the band have joined TREMONTI on tour across the UK and Ireland with many more shows coming down the pipeline and Distorted Sound caught up with them to discuss the creation of their EP, where the band started, and how much the group love the duo, NOVA TWINS.
“They’re our dream band to support,” says vocalist Anna Papadimitriou. “I remember seeing them with Jess [Dann, drummer] a couple of years ago at a small festival in London, and look at them now. We’re so happy, NOVA TWINS are absolutely killing it.” Guitarist Hannah Staphnill agrees, adding praise to the duo’s new record, Supernova, stating “their song, K.M.B., Kill My Boyfriend, is so great. It’s become a true anthem of rage, I just love it. Anytime I’m angry with my boyfriend, I just send that title in a message.”
Speaking of records released this year, HAWXX’s own EP, You’re Only As Loud As You Shout Right Now, should be included in the conversation for notable records for 2022. Like many releases, this EP was written during lockdown and much of the production was conducted socially distanced. “It was quite unusual,” Jess describes. “Because most of it was written in lockdown. We had to send each other files, all our ideas and we had to collate it all separately. So it was really different, just finding new ways of working during that time was quite difficult, but ultimately, I think it worked. A lot about how we work. It was really interesting and it’s a different way of doing it because you had to analyse every part yourself before sending it to the other people. Like less of a jamming together and more of a compositional process.”
“It was really nice, like Zoom saved us,” Hannah adds. “I think during lockdown, we had all these songwriting sessions via zoom, and I think we got to know each other as songwriters. It was a special thing about that EP. I guess we’ll never have another process like that, again. Can take elements of it, I suppose, but, it’s so much easier being in person all that. Whilst we’ll never have that experience again, that’s also a great thing. Unless there’s another global pandemic.”
Whilst the band are currently based in London, the group come from many places across the globe, including Italy and Greece. In fact, the band first began in the UK capital, as Anna explains. “HAWXX started, I guess at the beginning of 2018,” she begins. “I was looking for a band and used to go to Alaska Studios in Waterloo. Hannah used to work there and used to manage the studio there, I used to go there and practice on my own. She used to hear me through the walls, and I also would see her jamming with all these different people, she’d be on the drums and she’d be on the keys and I was just like, ‘who is this magical creature?’ I sent her a message saying ‘hey, do you want to come and jam?’ and then we jammed and it was perfection!”
“It was a very different sound back then,” Anna continues. “We’d drag each other down further and further into the depths of metal. When we first started it was much more rockier and had many more blues influences, I was playing a strat. Then we figured out that we all had our roots in metal as teenagers and so then the sounds got heavier and heavier and the tunings got lower and lower. I met Jess through doing function gigs around London that we used to play together. We used to just play these four hour long sets and bond over how badly we were being paid. Then Jess offered me a cheese string and the rest of us talked a lot about cheese and meat and all that. Baby bells have been a feature! Julia joined our lineup recently as well, we found her on the dark web actually and that’s been a godsend. So that’s been really awesome. This is our first tour, the four of us and that’s just been brilliant.”
The tour Anna described was their most recent tour supporting TREMONTI across the UK and Ireland. “TREMONTI are all such lovely guys and made us feel really welcome and we all had a great time,” Julia rounds off the interview with. “We’ve got a heated pool in our accommodation, which really beats sleeping in a service station. It’s a big step up, like we got some new kits like we’ve got new monitors now. We were so stripped back up until now. I remember the tour in December. It was a very old school setup, but now we’ve got these new monitors and everything feels like a step up and we can hear things which is really life changing. I guess getting a tour with someone like Mark Tremonti, it forces you to have to step it up, we do actually have to be professionals about this now. Just having all this new gear has been great and playing to the crowds that size and these sorts of venues like O2 Academies. That’s a dream come true. We were in the pit with the crowd for TREMONTI. That was so fun, like interacting with all the fans. We’ve been made to feel very welcome on this tour as well and by the band as well, they’re just such lovely guys all of them. The whole crew are really great.”
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