Hail The Sun On New Album ‘cut.turn.fade.back’

Hail The Sun have released brand new album cut. turn. fade. back., the forthcoming studio album from the acclaimed experimental California-based rock band, out now via Equal Vision/Civilians. Produced & engineered by Pete Adams and GRAMMY® Award Winner Johnny Kosich of Beach Noise (Kendrick Lamar), and mixed & mastered by Zakk Cervini (Blink-182, Bring Me The Horizon, Coheed and Cambria), cut. turn. fade. back. truly finds Hail The Sun going the distance, encompassing the complete cycle of life with its four monosyllabic words. An album touching on topics such as military atrocities, humanitarian crises, addiction, lost love and death, the eleven songs presented here capture the cyclical nature of all those things, as well as life itself in general.

Anybody familiar with Hail The Sun will know there’s always a great deal of meaning beneath the surface. Theirs are songs that probe the very nature of existence, that strive to find the answers to the fundamental questions that being human raises, and that don’t flinch away from any form of self-reflection whatsoever. That’s been the case since the band, lead vocalist Donovan Melero, guitarists Shane Gann and Aric Garcia, bassist John Stirrat and drummer Allen Casillas—formed in Chico, CA in 2009, but which is especially the case on cut. turn. fade. back.., their seventh full-length.

For the first time in their career, Hail The Sun worked with the production outfit Beach Noise, whose experience is much more steeped in the hip-hop world, most notably, they worked on a good chunk of Kendrick Lamar’s acclaimed 2022 album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. On paper, it seems like a drastic shift, but the reality is less dramatic, the band actually went to college with a member of Beach Noise, so they’ve been in each other’s orbits for a while now. Donovan Melero talks to Hi Fi Way about the album.

Awesome to be talking to you. I saw Hail The Sun with Fall Of Troy earlier this year. It was an awesome show and it’s great that you’re finally getting an Australian release with this album.
Yeah, Fall Of Troy and Closure in Moscow are bands that we absolutely love. So it’s really nice to have played with them and I’m excited to come back to Australia.

Are you planning on touring next year?
Yes, we are!

All around the country or is it too early to say?
We’re going to try your five major cities. We’ll see if we can make it happen.

How’s the whole build-up, launch, and just having the album finally out?
It feels great. It feels like I’ve given birth. I’m no longer walking around with an additional twenty pounds on my person. It’s amazing.

Does it surprise you how much of yourself gets invested in an album like this? It must almost be like purging of the soul in some ways?
Yeah, we were really excited for people to hear it and we’re happy with how it’s been received and the growth we’ve seen from it. But we’re most happy with how happy we are with the album.

When you were approaching this album, was the vision clear in your own mind in terms of where you wanted to take it?
We wanted to try something different, and it was the writing sessions we were doing with our friends in a production group called Beach Noise. We started co-writing sessions, I’d go over there in the middle of the night in Santa Monica from my house in LA and just write songs I had in my head. We had to get going because of a deadline, and the flow was so nice that we decided to bet on ourselves and our close team.

We had gone to college with Johnny Sage from Beach Noise, he went on to co-produce albums for Kendrick Lamar, Baby Keem, and others. But we both grew up playing in rock and pop-punk bands. He was even our merch seller back in 2013 with his partner Pete Adams, who had worked with Periphery, Armor for Sleep, and other rock bands, we decided to do the whole album with them. Then having Zakk Cervini mix it helped create a bigger modern rock sound, which we hadn’t done before. We’ve only ever gone to the same producer twice in our career. Kris Crummett, who did our last two albums, is incredible. But we had the itch to try something different, with a new sound and production style we were very hands-on with.

You mentioned deadlines. How is it being under pressure with that sort of thing looming in the background?
We have such a good relationship with Equal Vision Records, so when I say deadline, I mean deadlines we set ourselves. We have plans plotted into a calendar year that we hold ourselves accountable to. Having those deadlines means I’m losing sleep constantly, feeling up against the clock. But it creates stress and pressure that yields good results. It forces creativity out of us that we might not otherwise get. This session, we came in with the most songs we ever had and cut back four, saving them so we could focus on the ones that made the album.

Did you feel really challenged with this album? Were there the usual dramas and problems that come up making an album?
We were challenged in the sense that we wanted to keep writing the same style of music but with different production and a different overall finish. Once we decided the direction, it naturally presented itself.

These songs seem destined for the live set, they’ve got that live feel. Was that part of the intention?
Definitely! I’ve always considered our strength outside of song writing to be live performance. Personally, I want to entertain, I don’t just want to perform a song well. My inspirations are Cedric from The Mars Volta and Eric Nally from Foxy Shazam. They’re entertainers, fun to watch. I want our shows to feel natural, not contrived. These songs are good on their own, but presenting them live with the energy flowing through us really drives it home to the crowd.

It’s great that you mentioned Foxy Shazam. I reckon they’re one of the most underrated bands around.
Incredible, incredible band. You know, I’m also a booking agent, this is a side note outside of Hail the Sun stuff, but I’m a North American booking agent for Sound Talent Group. I grew up listening to this band, and I love this band. I recently picked them up as a client, so I’m now booking Foxy Shazam. We’ll also have some Australian plans coming, I booked them in Australia now. To be able to work with such an inspiring act is really, really nice. I think they’re on their second wind, given another opportunity to prove they are the best rock band in the entire world. I can’t wait to see what happens.

In 2011 they played Soundwave here in Australia, and it was one of the highlights for me personally.
That’s amazing. I love working with them, and I love their music. Bands or performers like that inspired me, At The Drive-In, same thing. Just great, great live acts.

The three or four songs left over, did they not quite fit, or are they better aligned to the next album or another project?
We’re not sure yet. We may scrap them entirely, or we may decide to put out a deluxe with them on it. We may save them for their own thing. We might just figure out if they belong with another collection of songs.

What were your thoughts when you played the album back for the first time, start to end, with headphones on like a fan would?
I was very proud of us for having gone through this whole cycle in such a short amount of time. We had one session last June/July, then picked it back up again November/December. We all met up in January to play the songs live in a studio. We have to play them live, we do a lot of computer stuff, placeholder drums, loops, but when it comes down to committing them, we have to play them as a band. Sometimes the tempo feels like it should be slower, so we slow it down and redo the whole song. Sometimes we speed it up. Sometimes we transpose the music down a step or half step to fit my vocal range. These are things we do to make sure it comes out the way it’s supposed to be heard.

We did that, then went on tour, straight from that tour into recording the album, then straight into another tour. I was flying in and out of that tour in May to finish vocals, then doing music videos June through September, then releasing it in October. I was very proud we had done it without sacrificing integrity in song writing or quality in how we wanted the album to roll out.

When you’re so invested in the songs, was it hard letting them go to the next stage of the process?
No, it was so easy. In fact, I couldn’t get them off quick enough. I love that expelling of the next collection of songs we want to deliver, the messages I want to say, or even just inner thoughts that are now out in the world. I get very excited for people to hear them.

Did you have a special release party or event to commemorate the occasion?
We did. At the end of recording, before it was mixed, we had a nice big meal to celebrate being done. The day the album came out, we were in Denver and had a big celebration show. It was also our photographer’s birthday, so it felt like a really special event.

What are two or three favourite albums you’re into at the moment?
At the moment, I’m really into Lobby Boxer, a band I’ve also signed to Kill Iconic Records. Their latest release is great. Mella just had a really strong album come out, very good band, you’ll see a lot of them coming up. Foxy Shazam’s new album as well, I’ve been listening to that a lot and Julia Wolf, I’ve got her on repeat. She’s a great artist, super sweet, and I really love her lyrics. They resonate with me, and the way she puts them into a pop song that still feels R&B is really nice.

Interview By Rob Lyon

cut.turn.fade.back is out now through Equal Vision/ Civilians…