Hope For The Dying | An Old-School Foundation
Do not over look this Facedown Records gem. These guys are pulling from some old-school influence and doing it like the mean it… the right way. When you receive new releases to your desk, these days, you never know what to think. I was not expecting anything, to be perfectly honest (there is a lot of music out there these days, but I don’t have to tell you that). After half a song, however, I was floored. This is new, this is different. Take a look at what guitarist James Houseman had to say about their history and their very bright future, including a new release at the end of this month and a strong presence on the summer festival circuit.
I love that you guys are out there attempting to do something different right now. And it sounds like you have been at it for a few years, so talk to us about the early days of HFTD.
James Houseman: Basically this whole thing started with Josh and I, along with our good friend James Red Cloud. We were playing in another band and decided we wanted to take our music in a new, fresh direction that just didn’t fit with the other music we had written. So after a couple months of making plans and writing, we picked up our original drummer Brice and guitarist Jack and played our first show as Hope for the Dying in November of 2006. We did our best to play as many shows as we could in our home area, and worked up enough songs to record what would eventually become our Strike First Records release in 2008.
Cornerstone Festival of 2008 was really a turning point for us as a band. We played eight shows during the festival and were getting a pretty nice response. Lacking a real press kit of any kind, we duct taped a business card to the front of one of our CDs and dropped it off at the Facedown merch table with a hope and a prayer. Anyway, to wrap things up, we got an email from Jason a month or two later about the resurrection of Strike First Records, signed the deal, re-mastered the CD and released it in November of 2008!
You clearly have some more classic influences. Who specifically are some of those bands, and what was the draw to make music with that sort of an influence?
JH: We’re all pretty much old-school metal heads. We all grew up musically on Metallica, Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Pantera…you get the idea…we like shred. So since we all like listening to that kind of music, I think it just naturally sort of manifests itself into the music we write. We still try to keep things fresh and progressive, but we’ve always kept that old-school foundation.
How has your music been accepted so far being so very different and combining different genres like you did? Has it been a fight at all?
JH: It’s definitely been rough with some crowds. With the prevalence of hardcore in the heavy scene these days, it can be hard for a metal band to get much attention. So long as we’re playing for the right crowd, everything is always great, but some crowds just want to two step and we just don’t really give them much of a chance to do their thing I guess!
I remember one show in particular. We were playing a song off of our new record called “Vile Reflections,” and apparently there’s a part in the song that’s almost a two step section, but it’s literally only four measures long. Well, we kicked into the part and a bunch of kids started doing their thing thinking “Hey, finally a chance to move!” Four measures later, the riff switches up and I happened to be watching this one kid in particular who literally threw his hands up and said “What the heck dude?” I guess he thought we should have kept that part going longer. So …to that dude from Douglasville, GA, if you’re reading this, sorry we suck at writing two step parts! to that dude from Douglasville, GA, if you’re reading this, sorry we suck at writing two step parts!
I guess you can’t win them all. (Laughs) Your Facedown Records debut album Dissimulation comes out at the end of April. I think that in order to sell a product you have to fully back it. So tell us about that album and what you personally love so much about it?
JH: We’re really proud of this album and we’re excited to share it with everybody. Going in we were kind of up in the air about whether or not we should try certain things and how it would all go over, but in the end I guess we just kind of went for it full steam and couldn’t be more happy about how it all turned out in the end. As different as this new album is from our first album, I think it still sounds like HFTD, it’s a little bit more on every level: more progressive, more shred, more heavy, more melodic, more neo-classical, just MORE!
Honestly I love what I have been able to hear so far and I think that this is a breath of fresh air to our scene.
JH: Thanks, we hope so too! And hopefully every one else out there will feel the same way!
Walk us through your album art, there has to be a good story there behind the woman, the capitol and the reflection.
JH: To sum things up really fast: “not all that glitters is gold.” Dissimulation basically means to conceal the truth or disguise oneself in an effort to deceive or mislead another. These days there are a lot of people and organizations out there professing to be doing the will and work of God, but are selling a pack of pretty lies and half-truths, doing all they can to trick Christians and non-Christians into falling away from the Truth. The artwork for the album illustrates that even though something might look attractive and even righteous or holy, we need to measure everything against the Word of God before just following along blindly.
I am excited, as I am sure readers are, to see you guys live! What are your tour plans as summer approaches?
JH: We’re working on some exciting stuff! We’ll be touring our way out to Facedown Fest in California with our pals in The Burial starting at the end of March and we’re stoked about that. Lately we’ve been trying to figure out our summer festival schedule, and it’s looking like we’ll be playing Cornerstone, Icthus, Lifest, Agape and possibly a few more if we can get things figured out. We’re in talks with a couple bands to do some tours and we’re going to be doing as much as we can!
Great! Thanks so much for talking with us!
JH: No, thank you!
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