Line 'em up - Power of  Metal.dk

 

 

Webpage: www.hel-on.net
MySpace: www.myspace.com/hellonbandmusic
Facebook: www.facebook.com/HellonOfficial
Video clip: Let It Feed
Review: 80/100 @ PoM.dk
Ever wanted to find out what inspired a particular song?

Was it based on personal experience or simply passive observation?

What happened in the recording studio or on stage to make one song sound different from the rest?

These are just some of the question bands and musicians attempt to answer in Line 'em Up - the newest page of The Power Of Metal.Dk.

This is where your favourite bands comment on their albums, track by track, because as someone once said, “Ideas are the building blocks of ideas”.

Enjoy!

 

Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your new release, ‘Age of Oblivion’. But could you please start off by introducing the readers to Hell:On?

Hi everyone! Hell:On is a Ukrainian thrash-groove-metal band. It was founded in 2005 in Zaporozhye (the cradle of freedom loving Cosaks – Ukrainian warriors). A few months after the foundation the band participated in one of the biggest Ukrainian metal festivals – Metal Head Missions. So this was a really great and fast start. Then there were a lot of Ukrainian concerts. There are nine tours behind our backs, four of which were European. We already visited Russia, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. We have three full albums and several EP's as well as several video clips.

And now onto ‘Age of Oblivion’ - track-by-track! What inspired you, which topics are you dealing with, what do you want to express with the songs etc.

First of all I would like to tell you about a sad fact of the album recording. Actually it was recorded two times from the very beginning to the end. The first version was totally lost because of a hard drive failure! However the material stayed totally unchanged.

01. Disaster
This song was written as one of the last. It was composed and arranged very quickly during rehearsal, maybe in one-two hours. We just decided to do a fast song, moving like a train – and here we are. Speaking about the lyrics I would say that the idea behind them is very similar in almost all the songs – they are about an inner perception of life and death, of what is good and bad, of what a man should be (in our point of view). Speaking about the lyrics I do not want to tell exactly the meaning. They consist of metaphors and images. So sometimes the direct meaning of the phrase may have absolutely different interpretation. It’s for listeners to decide the meaning and it would be very interesting to know what people think about those meanings. I suppose that in spite of the fact that it was our creation the interpretation maybe absolutely different.

02. Bottom Line
This song starts out with a couple of mad riffs that Alex brought to the studio, and I think this song is not about meanings, it is all about energy and emotions. This is a piece of pure metal as it is. This is perfect for stage, we love to play it live. So take a deep breath and... Bottom Line!
03. Rise
The main riffs appeared during our „Hell Damage tour” in 2010 in Warsaw, before the concert. In our opinion this song is a good combination of fast thrash stuff and groove bits. And the song was made in a classic Hell:On way.
04. Let It Feed
This song is interesting because of its dynamics. It gradually increases its strength. We like to play this song during concerts because its intensity grows. You can watch the video clip of this song.
05. My Doll
We wanted to compose something monumental like a march. That’s how this song was written. Solo by Jeff Waters needs no comment!
06. Punk Guys (cover)
We were invited to make a cover from a Russian band for a Russian Metal collection. We chose this one. However we liked it so much that we asked the authors’ permission to include it into our album.
07. Emptiness
In this song we decided to experiment with time and accents. This Darkness is really full of light.
08. Burn
Here we tried to do something with a great groove. I think that it is not like something by Pantera, but it was inspired by them. And maybe a bit by Black Sabbath.
09. In The Name Of…
This song was a surprise! We all came to rehearsal and our guitarist Anton and the drummer showed us this song and we said OK!. I think that our second guitarist Alex can’t play any riff of this song ;)

10. Voices Of The Abyss
As far as I remember this was our first song written for the album. It stays somehow separate because the whole idea of the album was not worked out yet. Here I would like to say a word about the lyrics: they were inspired by the Dark Tower by Stephen King.

11. Satan
For a long time we supposed that this song would be instrumental. I don’t remember when we decided to add the orchestra. But it was really great experience. We do not plan to play such music, but exactly because of it the song become even more underlined. We talked a lot with Alex about what is God and Satan for the people, why they “appeared” and so on. However I could not find the word to express this – that is why we thought that it would be instrumental. However, after the next listening to the song, the words came out by themselves, so the instrumental was put aside for the next album.

Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?
The artist's name is Seeming Watcher. He is from the Ukraine. We found him somewhere on the internet. He has a big gallery of his art and we were very surprised by his pictures. It is really impressive. For this album we had a full conception of all lyrics and other things regarding to the album, so we decided to ask him to perform our ideas in his personal style.

 

Thomas Nielsen, November 2012