- What inspired the name of the band and what are your influences?
The birth of the band name did not happen yesterday. I was more or less a teenager when I formed the band. The only thing I can clearly remember is that we wanted to have a one-word band name. I came up with the idea when I was working at one of my very first jobs, at a rockabilly bar as a bartender where I didn’t even earn 2$ / hour, so far from home that it was almost impossible to get back late at night. So the birthplace of the band was quite a hopeless place and compared to that we’re very happy about how far it’s come.
We’re all kids of rock’n roll. All of us have other heroes: starting with me, who comes from an underground rock scene, Gabi, who is an extremely educated musician who grabbed his bass first as a child cause he wanted to be like Flea and our drummer Béla and guitarist Jozzy are metalheads. So the musical influence came from our roots and combined all of that.
We’re not old, but old enough to understand that time is ticking away, it runs out like sand in our hands and if we don’t use it wisely, we will waste the most valuable thing in our life: time. Our lyrics are kind of a shout out for the right questions or even more to HAVE our own questions. A shout out to your brain, to use it wisely, to be aware of the right things and to feel the weight of responsibility of your decisions of the things you do and of the things you say. So all in all, we would say our biggest inspiration is to be able to inspire people, to make the best of their time!
2. How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?
All of our
albums had a totally different writing process.
In the last two years we worked on our upcoming album ‘God On The Run’, which
is going to be released in January 2020.
These songs were not written in the rehearsal room. Most of the parts have been written separately by all the members putting the puzzle pieces together afterwards, so everyone has their own writing process.
I’m pretty old school when it comes to the lyrics: I can’t sit down and figure out what I want to write about on purpose. The ideas find me randomly, so I always write down 2-3 words or a line in my phone wherever I am in that moment, otherwise the idea is gone forever. When it comes to the song I look at my idea board, pick out one of these ideas to work on. When I start to work on the words, I need to be alone and I’m not able to write in digital form. I need to have a paper and a pen in my hand, otherwise my brain is blocked.
3. Why do you write the sort of music that you do?
Anyone who follows our work knows that our style has changed a lot. We started as psychobilly influenced band, wrote 2 albums in that style and after a split up and reorganisation in 2014, we restarted this band with a new spirit. A spirit, which is basically sick of boundaries, a spirit which likes to mix punk with rock and a bit of metal and hardcore, a spirit which is definitely part of rock music.
The only thing which was always out of the question is that we’re not a profit oriented band, so of course we create, whatever we personally really like to. We all grew up with rock music, but we come from all different corners of rock’n roll and exactly that mix of differences can result in something unique.
4. How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?
Somehow these songs are chosen by a pretty natural process. When the songs are recorded it’s already clear for us without any negotiation in the band which of them could work live well and those that are also the chosen songs we release as singles.
Of course, from time to time we decide to play some songs that haven’t been released separate to the album, but this only happens if a song has had some unexpected “hype” or if we’re a bit bored of a setlist.
5. What are your plans for the future?
A lot of things are going to happen in the near future: We just
released our very first single called “Men In Grey” from our upcoming album. On the 18th of
October we’re going to release our second single “Red Sky” and start the
presale of our new album on our homepage www.thehellfreaks.com.
Beside the music we preparing a lot of new merchandise items for our fans. Many of them will only be available as presale so you all should keep an eye on that. And if this wasn’t enough, we’ll let the cat out of the bag: we’re going to release a third single at the end of the year!
In January 2020 our new album “God On The Run” will come out on CD and a super
deluxe Vinyl, which will be a dream for any collectors and of course our
booking agency is already working on our album release tour for 2020!
It’s the perfect time to follow us on instagram, like us on facebook and to
subscribe to our YouTube channel as it’s not certainly not boring these days!
Website: www.thehellfreaks.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHellfreaks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehellfreaks/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thehellfreaks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehellfreaks/