HELL:ON (Eng.)

1- Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?

Hello. Thanks for your kind attention for the activity of our band. Now we are resting after the fourth European tour – if it is possible to say so because immediately after the return everyone went to work.

2- First off, could you make some history of the band?

Our band was founded in 2005. We already new each other and occasionally played together in different other bands, then we decided to make something more serious – so Hellion was born. However when we started to promote our band in Europe we had to change the name to Hell:On as Hellion already existed. Two months after the foundation we participated in one of the biggest Ukrainian metal festivals – Metal Heads Mission. So the start was really great. At this date (the end of 2012) we have three full albums, several EP and video clips, and nine tours (four of which were European).

3- How could you describe your sound?

It’s nice to hear some new question (nobody asked it before). I would say that it is a fusion of old school and contemporary metal. The whole sound is made by our sound engineer who is also our guitarist – Anton. However we argue sometimes about the sound. As for me I like the sound of Slayer (not very clean and shrill) as well as the sound of Pantera (sterile distinct). So maybe that IS the fusion…

4- What are the band’s main musical influences?

Metallica, Slayer and Sepultura. The list is far to longer but those are the “fathers”.

5- How is the feedback for your new album being?

We are highly marked by different webzines, paper magazines and metal web sites. Now we already have about 70-80 reviews from all Europe and still receiving it. During our touring new material was accepted very positively by the metal heads.

6- And are your personally satisfied with the final outcome?

Yes, we are satisfied with the final result. We received almost all that we planned when there were no or maybe just few songs of this album. This work is a turning point in a certain sense. It expresses all our skills which we developed during the existence of Hell:On. The music style of the band is completed. At least at this stage – however who knows what surprise will be our next album…

7- How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?

Metal Up YourAss!!! (sorry I had to write Your Ass as one word to make a three word expression).

8- How has the production process for your new release been?

The process was quite usual. We gathered to rehearse and guitarists brought new riffs. Sometimes new riffs were composed just during the rehearsal. Then we put all this together, arranged it, rearranged. Again rearranged and that’s it. During the recording of the album we had one huge problem – we’ve lost all the material due to the failure of the hard drive. So we recorded the album twice. However the material stayed totally unchanged.

9- And how do you use to work on the songwriting?

As I mentioned almost everything was arranged during the rehearsals. There are some songs which were arranged by all the musicians, there are some which were arranged by not all. I would emphasise the last song of the album. It was the song (at least the idea of the song) which was born rather long ago and it was growing till the very album. We discussed the idea of it with the guitarist Alex during the touring nights. The name of the song is Satan – however it is about eternal fight of evil and good (as in fairytales 😉 ). At first we had only images in our minds and we thought that the idea of the song would be expressed only by the instruments, but suddenly the words were born (really very quickly).

10 – Finally, what are you near-future plans?

We plan to make a video on one of the songs from our new album “Age of Oblivion”. We would like to invite some rock star musician to participate in our next album. And we plan to have more prolonged tour with some band of higher echelon.

11- That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.

Thank you for interviewing us. We would like to wish all people to listen to good music. I intently said “all people” because metal heads already listen to the best!