Hollow World are Melbourne’s melodic death metal sweethearts with Ben Roberts on vocals, Michael Truscott on guitar, Theo Goslett on guitar and backing vocals, Josh Hynes on bass and Michael Hodgson on drums. The guys are about to set off on their ‘Beneath The Frozen Sky’ Five Year Anniversary Tour next month and they have an absolutely stellar line up of shows for their fans. GC Live had a chat to Ben about the upcoming tour, their latest single plus the new film clip and more.
Kicking off on the Gold Coast on November 2nd is Hollow Worlds ‘Beneath The Frozen Sky’ five year anniversary tour! You must be super pumped for that?
Yeah absolutely! We haven’t done a headline tour since we dropped ‘Examinate’ about 18 months ago. We have really been hanging out to do one. We have got Wild Thing Presents organizing it for us so that is really cool. They really know what they are doing. They have got together some ridiculously good line ups. There is not a single gig that has a weak line up; they are all awesome, starting at the Gold Coast at Mo’s Desert Clubhouse on Friday 2nd of November. Then November the 3rd at Crowbar, which is like pretty much my favourite venue to play outside of Melbourne, I love that place! We caught Level H at Shredfest in Brisbane and we were really impressed with their set. I think one of the things we’ve noticed about the Gold Coast is that over the years every time we have played with bands from Queensland whether it has been down here or up there, they have always seemed to have been from Brisbane, but in the last 12 to 18 months, with Facebook and everything it is really easy to network and we’ve had a lot of bands we thought because they are from Queensland, they must be from Brisbane but it turns out they are from the Gold Coast. The quality of the music that has been coming out of there has been really flooring us a bit, and with how many bands that were reaching out to us that are just that good!
After the Gold Coast and Brisbane, the tour then goes onto Wollongong, Sydney, Melbourne and then finishes up in Ringwood on December 7th, it sounds like it is going to be a really good time and a great tour?
Yeah definitely. We have never played Wollongong before. We have played Canberra a couple of times and Newcastle a few times. We sort of wanted to change it up a bit and not make it exactly the same run every time we do a tour. So the opportunity came up for us to play in Wollongong. The guy who organized it is a local guy from there. He reached out to us and it was just timed in perfectly when we were organizing all of the shows; it all just kind of fell into place. Then playing at Frankie’s in Sydney, which is my favourite place in Sydney, the pizza is awesome and it is rock and roll as hell and it is free entry so it is going to be ballistic! Then Melbourne show is Cherry Bar which is kind of like the rock and roll heart of Melbourne. I kind of almost live there. I could take up residency there *laughs* and then the Ringwood show, to paint out where that is, it is about an hour East of Melbourne. That is kind of where we are all from. So it is almost like a hometown show. We haven’t played out that side of town since I joined the band. So we are going all the way out East and it is going to be a ripper!
Who are some local bands from Melbourne you’d like to give a plug too?
Obviously Âme Noire, I can’t go past them. They would be right up there with our favourites. We have known the guys , they were formally a band called Athenas Wake, we had played a lot of shows with them before they disbanded and had a line up shuffle and changed the name and changed what they were going for a little bit and honed what they were doing and they became Âme Noire. Obviously everybody knows Whoretopsy. Awesome dudes that have really helped us out a lot, especially like early on, giving us a leg up and they are just really good dudes that get around the scene. Then there are bands that are from Melbourne but we only ever played with them for the first time at Shredfest in Brisbane, and that was Toxicon. I had been meaning to see them for years but it just never worked out that they had been playing at a gig I could go to. They really blew me away up in Brisbane, I was stoked on them. Obviously there is Orpheus Omega, I have known them forever.
You’ve recently premiered your new single The Rose Of Rancid Petals along with an awesome video clip too, can you tell me some more about that?
So it is a new single that we are putting on the re-release of the old material just to have some sort of new content on there as well as the old songs. It was a pretty quick turnaround, we weren’t even sure if we were going to do a film clip or just release the audio and we thought no let’s do a clip. We hadn’t done one for ages. Originally it was going to be us playing in some run down shed somewhere and we thought we have kind of done that in some aspect in all of the other things we have done, so let’s do something silly. We were thinking about the King Parrot videos but we didn’t want to be quite as King Parrot as King Parrot are because that’s there thing. But we were thinking more about the Miasma clip, by The Black Dahlia Murder where they just go out on the town and get shitfaced. We wanted to put something together that was just really silly and really fun because we have done all of the serious stuff before and while that is part of what we are as a band, we are also incredibly silly. We are just 5 dickheads, we take the piss, we don’t take ourselves too seriously so we sort of thought it would be good if we had a video that portrayed that. I dropped that idea as a joke to the other guys and they all just ran with it.
We hit up Miki who has done all our other videos and he thought it was great so we sat down and had a couple of brain storm sessions and it ended up all falling into place really well. It is one of those clips too where the more you watch it back, the more stupid shit you pick up on. There is one point where, it is probably my favourite thing in the clip, where Andy who actually plays guitar for Mors Precipium Est is toasting a marshmallow on like a CRT screen of a fire and everyone is looking at him like what are you doing and it actually toasts *laughs*. It is so dumb but it is just beautiful. Grant and Alex from Âme Noire are in the clip and Karl our previous vocalist who is now in Boris The Blade. He actually does a guest vocal in the new song. We thought that would be cool, while we re-recorded all of the old instruments, we kept his original vocals for the five songs off the original EP. I just thought it would be a nice way to tie it in and pay homage to when he was in the band. Heff our old merch guy is in the clip too. He used to have this gag, he used to try to make Karl do a Jerry Seinfeld type joke you know “What’s the deal with TV dinners?” on stage and Karl never did it, so that is why he heats up the TV dinner in the clip because it is like a six year old joke that he was trying to push to get it to happen so we were like alright, you can do it. And Elgin, he is in there, he is just awesome. He is from Singapore and he saw Orpheus Omega play over there and he fell in love with the band. From that he thought Oh I might look at who else they play with in Melbourne and he found all of the Melbourne bands and fell in love with the Melbourne scene. Basically for his 21st birthday his Mum was like you can have whatever you want and he was like I want to go to Melbourne and see all my favourite bands. So he came here and loved it and applied for University over here and got it and now he is here and everybody loves him because he is just the nicest dude! He turns up and he is a ball of charisma, he takes awesome photos of everybody and he is just the best.
What does the future hold for Hollow World?
Look obviously we would love to say look we are going to become the next Behemoth! *laughs* But yeah we work really hard and put a lot of time, effort and money into the band and it is an important part of all of our lives. We don’t try to think too far ahead because you end up losing sight of what you are doing. If an opportunity arose, we would love to go overseas. But beyond that we are obviously keen to get a second album together, we have kind of started writing for that. The EP will be released in a couple of weeks so we will put that out and then start working on album two. If it takes us to bigger and better things then that’s awesome, and if it doesn’t then we are still having fun doing what we do so it is not like it is a band thing. We are still getting to do what we love, writing riffs and getting up in front of people and screaming like an idiot and getting heckled, it’s awesome *laughs*
Presented by Wild Things Presents, Hollow World‘s ‘Beneath The Frozen Sky’ Five Year Anniversary Tour commences Friday the 2nd of November at Mo’s Desert Clubhouse. This is a gig you do not want to miss! with supports from Âme Noire, Red Bee, From Crisis To Collapse and Level H.
FRI NOV 2 – GOLD COAST – MO’S DESERT CLUBHOUSE
SAT NOV 3 – BRISBANE – CROWBAR
SAT NOV 10 – WOLLONGONG – ILLAWARRA MUSIC FOUNDRY
SUN NOV 11 – SYDNEY – FRANKIE’S PIZZA
FRI NOV 16 – MELBOURNE – CHERRY BAR
FRI DEC 7 – RINGWOOD – ELLIOT’S BAR
Get your tickets HERE!
