Hippie Death Cult on DIY

photo by Shannon O Sullivan

New studio, new music and the dawn of a new era for heavy stoner rock

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The Pacific Northwest has been the home of much of the greatest rock music of our time. 90s grunge era Seattle brought us some of the best heavy music ever written by bands Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Nirvana. Neighboring city Portland Oregon has long been a hotspot of quality rock music as well. After the end of the grunge era, grunge music fans wandered around lost, wondering what could top that? What will come next?

The PNW has now entered the dawn of a new Era and is the leader in great new heavy rock music once again. Portland, Oregon’s band Hippie Death Cult is at the front of the wave of stoner rock that is being birthed in that region.

Hippie Death Cult is one of the most dynamic heavy rock bands to date. Their live show is one of magnitude, with thunderous, explosive energy, and an unforgettable big riff rock sound. Their massive touring schedule over the past couple of years under the Heavy Psych Sounds label, has taken them all over Europe and to many cities at home in the US. They have played countless (over 200+) shows, delivering their specific, dynamic, brand of raucous rock n roll to audiences for the past several years, making them one of the most exciting rising bands in the current psychedelic rock music scene.

Their music defies strict categorization. Their sound is as heavy doom as stoner rock gets but anything but droning. Their lyrics are thoughtful and poetic. Their sonic landscape is wide, their flavor palette spicy, and range of tones  and moods seemingly endless. They are standing out among their contemporaries for the fluency and fluidity with which they blend all these very different elements together to create something truly unique.

Hippie Death Cult played another unforgettable set this weekend at  the First Mojave Experience Festival in the dusty, dry, hot desert of Joshua Tree, California. Their set was fiery and high energy despite the brutal beating of the afternoon sun and infernal temperatures.

An interesting intro was debuted to the signature speed-metal-esque song “Toxic Annihilator”, which is always a fan favorite for it’s high intensity high speed tempo, driving thunderous machine-gun-fire guitar riffs and bass lines, and growling vocals. The band’s  power packed set and Laura’s commands to “WAKE UP!” made a desert worn crowd smile, cheer and move a bit despite the oppressive heat.

Hippie Death Cult’s members Eddie-guitar, Harry-drums and Laura-bass/vocals kindly granted me in interview in the artist tent when the sun had gone down.

We talked about their new music, new studio that they built themselves, and how their songs are born as a group effort and their commitment to DIY. The band’s mission as a DIY group is to bring the raw power of their music to the public.

“We want to just give people the raw power and energy of Hippie Death Cult”-Harry

Full transcript:

Me: Since the nineties grunge scene, there was all this great music. I think, after that, we all felt kind of lost for a little while.

Eddie: Yeah. Bigtime.

Me: …Wondering what’s going to happen next? You guys are from the Pacific Northwest, from Portland Oregon.

Band: Yeah

Me: And now, what’s happening. It’s just so exciting. I feel like it’s come from the grunge scene but also it’s much different.

Laura: Yeah

Eddie: Totally.

Me: It gives me hope.

Laura: I’ve been feeling that, too.

Eddie: People are taking things into their own hands and DIY’ing it and it’s a really healthy scene up there right now.

Laura: Just in general with this kind of music , it feels like there’s such excitement and energy and yeah I’m feeling hopeful too. With bands we get to play with on the road and everything, specifically. We have a lot of awesome bands from Portland. I feel very lucky to get to hang with them.

Me: Yes, Spoonbenders

Eddie: Yeah

Laura: Yes I love them yeah they’re awesome!

Me: I don’t know how I found youguys but it started with a friend of mine introducing me to the music. Being invited to play doom metal was actually my introduction to it.

Eddie: Oh wow

Me: That’s how I found out about it, six or seven years ago, ya know, Sleep and all these bands.

Eddie: Wow

Me: …Kadabra and youguys…it’s so exciting and um

I wanted to talk with you about Helichrysm. When you were writing it, the writing process.

Eddie: Sure.

Me: Do you come with a whole song and teach it to the whole band, or do you come with like a nugget, like a riff and y’all collaborate, or do you jam for like seven hours and decide what you’re going to develop together?

Eddie: It’s all three of those, actually. Some of them come in cuz I have stuff worked out, some of them develop from us just jamming together and sometimes we have parts and we just figure it out as a band, you know?

Me: mm-hmm

Eddie: But even the ones I do bring in that are kind of complete as far as structure-wise, the band kind of takes it and we mold it into…like so everybody’s involved in it. But yeah, it’s all three of those.

Laura: The music definitely gets finished first before vocal melodies or vocals come in and then sometimes the structure will change a little bit…but that’s honestly the first album I’ve ever done vocals on, so, I don’t know. That was our once experience. We’ll have to see what this next one is. I feel like it’s evolving in that same way.

Eddie: Totally. Yeah. And Harry kind of came in when half of it was kind of already written, so he had a few months to put his stamp on it and he really did.

Laura: He nailed it

Harry: I was actually doing construction at the time. I was using the hot saw and I just had my headphones on and I was listening over and over to the album and hearing all the different things. A lot of the drum parts were already written but some things I was able to put my own sort of flair on.

Eddie: But for the most part, even the sway and the feel changed when Harry came in in the best way, ya know.

Laura: Yeah

Eddie: He brought this whole thing and we’re really in tune with it. It was like a perfect match, ya know? It brought the songs to another level just having him play the songs in general.

And with this new album, we’ve all been able to be a part of the writing of this one we’re working on now. Right after this, actually we’re going home to record it, so it’s about ready, yeah.

Me: Do you have a studio that you like most or do you do it yourself?

Laura: We built it ourselves, at our house.

Eddie: We have just been working on building a studio for the last three months, doing all the construction ourselves, and everything.

Laura: We were in full construction mode before this and we’re like, we gotta shift

Eddie: We’ve gotta do a show

Me: (laugh)

Laura: We gotta get out of the overalls. I was thinking, we could just start wearing that look on stage now

Eddie: We were thinking about that.(jokes) Mud is our new stage look

Laura: Sheet rock in the hair

Harry: Yeah

Eddie: We’ve been doing dry wall and all that shit, so we’re getting this new studio together and we’re really excited to get working on this new album. That’s kind of pretty much what’s happening. Right after this, yeah.

Me: That’s exciting! I can’t wait to hear that. And doing it yourself, you get ya know, that creative control, cuz as you know, mastering and mixing are a whole nother level of writing a song. When someone else is at the helm, I don’t know if you feel this way, but it always comes out like so close to what I wanted but not there.

Harry: Definitely

Eddie: We’ve experienced that when we’ve tried to work with people, but I’ve been doing mixing and engineering for over twenty five years. And I know that sounds that Harry wants and I know the sounds that Laura wants. I know how to dial everything in. So, rather than trying to explain that to someone else, I can just do it myself. It’s so much quicker. But as far as even just recording it in a studio, too, to not feel under the gun, cuz you only got a certain amount of hours, (Laura and Harry nod) cuz we really like to experiment with mic placements and tones to try to make it as unique as possible. There’s no way around it, it takes time to do that, you have to try different shit out. And when you’re under pressure at a studio, you’re paying $500 a day or whatever it is, ya know. You want to be kind of prepared to get in and out of there, whereas we like to have fun and experiment and do something more creative production-wise.

Harry: And especially, right now, in the age of AI and a lot of different things, like an album that’s like purely DIY, recorded by the band in a studio the band made, mixed by the band, it’s like the complete opposite of like the whole AI thing. We want to just give people the raw power and energy of Hippie Death Cult. That’s kind of our mission.

“We want to just give people the raw power and energy of Hippie Death Cult”-Harry

Me: I respect that so much. And I am not scared that AI is going to [replace us] and here’s why: Real music is made by real people.

Eddie: Yeah.

Me: And it’s made by people who play real instruments. And that cannot be erased. They can try forever.

Laura: And the live experience

Eddie: I think it’ll have a place somewhere for like a second, it’ll be a fad. But I think, in a way, it’ll probably help bands like us because people are going to start seeking out real bands after getting fed all the AI stuff. They’re going to really start looking for the real shit, so I think it’s really going to help bands like us.

Me: People who leaned on that before are going to lean on that again, let them lean all they want. I’m not worried.

Band: Yeah.

Me: So I have so many questions. So like, surprises. In this new album you’re writing have you experiences where you’ve come with something or you were expecting something and it just turns into something else?

Laura: Yeah, I can say that for one.

Eddie: We get surprised. When it comes to her vocal stuff…

Laura: I’m very secretive all the way up to the last minute.

Eddie : She holds it very close to her

Laura: I go into my hole. I have headphones while I’m weeding outside or like walking my dog, and I’m trying to write what I want to do. But I can’t have them in on that, I don’t know it makes me anxious. I don’t like eyeballs on me. You will be surprised but you will be pleasantly surprised.

Eddie: She always pulls it through and in the end we’re blown away.

Laura: Like one song in particular, I was like God I really just don’t know what to do. I made up a cheesy version, called “Banana Pants” (we all laughed) I was like really? Is that what I got? It’s the banana pants song.

“It’s called Banana Pants. It’s the heaviest song on the album”

Laura and Eddie

Eddie: It’s the heaviest song on the album.

Laura: Now it’s gonna be the most badass, HEAVY fuckin song and I’m so excited.

Me: That’s fun though

Laura: I do fake names all the way up to the end.

Harry: And there’s some surprises, too where we had a riff that was really cool, that we really liked, that was maybe only like 3-4 minutes long or something, and then, we’ve been jamming on this riff and we actually opened with it today. We decided like what if we just put the two together and just make it like a nine minute

(Eddie: I think it’s like 12 minutes)

Harry: Make it like a 12 minute experience, where it starts from one thing, does this whole crazy jam stuff and it brings it back in at the end, it ties it all together, you know? Like the perfect rug in a room, it just ties it all together.

Me: That’s rad. I’m so excited to hear this, I can’t wait.

You guys have so many elements, you paint with the widest palette I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’m listening to an album and I’m hearing the big heavy riffs, I’m hearing mellow parts, I’m hearing jam band, I’m hearing tribal drums (Eddie: Sure) I’m hearing blues elements, retro, whatever you’re using for Shadows, this guitar sound, what were you using there? I’m just hearing all these things, so many different things…

Eddie: (laughs)

Laura: That’s us, that’s our brain, we can’t just pick one thing.

Eddie: Well I also love dynamics, you know. I think that’s one of the things that sets us apart in a way, that we have so many different parts of us, and it’s something I like in all the bands I love too, they have a lot of dynamics. I mean it’s cool to get your head slammed for the whole time too but I think it’s cool to take people on a journey so that there’s a whole gamut of feelings and vibes and stuff.

“I think it’s cool to take people on a journey” Eddie

Me: Yeah, and you do.

Harry: And it’s cool because it brings people together, too. You got all the metal heads, you got the rockers, you got the jam bands. (Me: They’re all at your show!) They can be like “Oh I am a huge Grateful Dead fan and I really like you guys” and we got someone who’s been listening to metal since the 80s and they’re like “ Oh you guys are fuckin awesome!” So we just get so many different kinds of people  because we have such a broad sort of sound in a way.  And it kind of keeps us from being placed in like a certain box. It kind of broadens our horizon, we can appeal to the different groups of people, make everybody appreciate all sorts of music.

Me: (to Laura) Yeah and the epic screams…Every time you do that the audience goes “Wooah” and the guys are like “YEAH!”

(All laugh)

Laura: Gotta wake em up

Me: Even Prog rock, I was just enjoying that so much, I’m big into prog. I actually saw Rush’s last concert at the Forum [with Neil Peart].

Laura: Oh awesome

Eddie” Oh that’s awesome, how was it?

Me: Great, the sound at The Forum is amazing. …And I’m hearing that in what you’re doing and it does set you apart. You’re here cuz [your music is] heavy, right? That’s why you’re here but also, there’s not a dull moment. I feel like that’s what’s good about pop music (don’t hate me)

Laura: I don’t hate on the pop

Me: It keeps people’s attention

Eddie: Yeah, you have to keep people’s attention the whole time

Me: Yeah you just don’t do the same thing twice.

This show was amazing you guys. Thank you for sitting down with me!

Laura: Thank you!

Eddie: Thanks for having us! It was really nice to meet you.

Me: If you want to talk more about guitar sounds in the future I’d be down.

Laura: He loves talking about pedals, he could literally talk for hours.

All laugh

Me: Thank you for coming to Joshua Tree, it was hot as ---- today.

Eddie: We love it here

Me: Thanks for stopping by!

*The band also shared with me that their favorite place to play on tour is Ebensee, a mountain town in Austria, where the whole town comes out to shows, brings their kids, and parties well into the next morning.

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