HALESTORM Singer Talks About Making Of 'The Strange Case Of…'

RockConfidential.com recently conducted an interview with HALESTORM singer Lzzy Hale. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

RockConfidential.com: We've got to talk about the new album. Tell me how you approached songwriting this time around. It sounds more live and raw.

Lzzy: Definitely. With the first record we were thinking, "Does this song have mass appeal? Is the label gonna like it? Will it do anything on radio?" With this record, we really didn't think about that stuff at all. We almost didn't even have time to! We literally got off tour last summer, had 24 hours to pack and flew straight to L.A. and started in the studio the next day with a handful of songs. Some of them weren't even finished. We thought we would have the entire summer write the record and record it. No, no, no. It was, We need the record now! We had no choice but to follow and chase after whatever got us excited. We compiled a bunch of ideas and anything that struck us as true and human we recorded. We could always delete it later! We ended up falling into this eclectic mixture of everything we're interested in. I'm so proud of it because for some odd reason it all goes together. I don't know how! There are still some songs I can listen to from this record that get me a little emotional because of where my head was at at the time. I can't say that about the first record. This is the first time we can collectively say that.

RockConfidential.com: What did you guys use as inspiration while you were in the studio? Did a certain song set the tone of the record?

Lzzy: It went in a few different stages. When we first started recording, we were fresh off the road and the amplifiers were still ringing in our ears. We wanted to write something hard and fast and with a lot of energy. One of the first songs we wrote was the first single, "Love Bites (So Do I)". That was directly inspired by our time on the road and our covers EP. We experimented with tempos we'd never experimented with before. One was SKID ROW's "Slave To The Grind" and the other was GUNS N' ROSES' "Out Ta Get Me". We never thought we could pull off tempos like that, and now that we had covered those songs, we decided we needed a song of our own. A lot of the songs after that were inspired by people we met on the road and the energy we feel live. We even went as far as recording the drums on 2-inch tape so my little brother had his work cut out for him. If you record on tape, you have to get it right. You have to do the whole song — you can't just cut in on the chorus. We really wanted to create that live feel. Halfway through, when all the aggressions had settled, we started writing more intimate songs. I turned to the guys and said, "You know what? You brought this on yourselves." They told me in the beginning to write whatever I feel and not worry about trying to represent the band. They didn't want me to think about it too much — just keep my brain out of it. I did and the floodgate opened and I wrote some of the most personal songs I've ever written. The label was like, "We didn't even know this about you." The album is kind of like two different sides of myself and that ended up inspiring the song "Mz. Hyde". The record is very "Jekyll And Hyde". After everything was done it was like a whirlwind of creative purging. I'm really glad because in the beginning I was afraid it was going to be a rush job. I realized we can work on a deadline and that's much better than giving us all the time in the world.

RockConfidential.com: How have you changed as a front woman over the past few years?

Lzzy: Now, this is my career. I'm making a living doing this. I still have the fire I always did when I was 13. It's still just as exciting every night. I still get this tingly feeling in my hands. I don't attest that to adrenaline. It's part of what I love about playing live. I've got that since I was a kid. I might be less shy now, but the feeling is still there. The love is still there. The love of the chase is still there. The four of us have such a passion for whatever happens next. We keep one foot in front of the other and we'll keep doing this as long as we can and be happy doing what we love.

Read the entire interview from RockConfidential.com.