ed warby hail of bullets

Interview by: Neil Woodfin

Date: April 2011

Via email

Photos by: Hail of Bullets / Metal Blade

For those unaware of the band can you give a brief recap of how the band formed and the idea behind the band name?

We got together at the end of 2006, Stephan (Gebedi, guitars) had the idea to assemble an old school death metal band featuring several veterans from the Dutch scene and we were apparently what he had in mind. We enjoyed a great night out, got along famously, and by the next morning we had a band. I'd written a few songs and Martin (van Drunen, singer/lyricist) felt they sounded like war, so we tried to find a name that reflected that and after some 200+ options we settled on Hail of Bullets. It's a great, brutal name and I think it sums up perfectly what we're about.

Was the World War 2 lyrical concept decided on before the band was formed or was that something that came later?

As soon as Martin heard the first demos he proposed doing an Eastern Front concept album, so that was in place right from the beginning. The combination was so successful we decided to stick with it for subsequent releases, it's a massive source of inspiration, both lyrically and musically.

For the new album On Divine Winds there seems to be just a little more melody that on the debut, without losing any of the band’s original heaviness. Was this a deliberate change to include more melody or was it just the way the songs turned out?

A bit of both, my favorite parts on the debut album were those where the bleakness is lifted momentarily by an unexpected dash of melody like in Nachthexen or Inferno at the Carpathian Mountains, so I wanted to incorporate more stuff like that. At some point the other guys started worrying things were getting a bit too melodic but it worked out fine. We're still heavy as a ton of bricks and the melody doesn't sweeten our sound at all, on the contrary I think it only makes the brutal stuff more effective.

How do you feel the general reaction to On Divine Winds been, both from press and fans?

Very good, we were prepared for some backlash after the almost unanimous praise for the debut but the general consensus seems to be that we equaled or even surpassed it. You can't please everyone and inevitably some will prefer the first album, or the promo, but on the whole I'm very happy with the way the album was received. We even made the German album charts, which is quite amazing these days for a death metal band.

Once again Dan Swanö mixed your album, how is he to work with and how much input, if any, does he have in the creative process? Has he ever made any uncredited guest appearances on either of your albums or the Warsaw Rising EP?

Dan is a dream to work with, he knows just how we should sound and he is as much a fan of this kind of music as we are. He's not involved in the creative process, apart from his characteristically enthusiastic e-mails in response to new material, but he’s essential to the band. He did some vocals on the promo and first album (in the song Ordered Eastward) but that’s the only time. Maybe we’ll have a guest spot for him on the next album again…

Obviously you’re all in other bands as well as Hail of Bullets so how does that affect the writing process for the band? Do you all get together to write specifically for Hail of Bullets or do you write separately? And do you find yourself thinking “yeah, that one’s for Hail of Bullets, this one would work better in Asphyx, that one’s for Thanatos...” etc?

We (that is me and both guitarists Stephan and Paul Baayens) write separately and once we found our groove there haven’t been any identity crises as far as that goes. When we started I was still writing for Gorefest as well and sometimes Steph would deem a riff “too Gorefest” but that soon went away. When I started the doom metal band The 11th Hour there was some worry it might sound too much like the slower stuff for HoB but we found the two sound nothing like each other, and in spite of the frequent, lazy comparisons I feel the same goes for Asphyx. We’re obviously cut from the same cloth but the way we work is completely different.

You’ve just, disappointingly, had a gig in London cancelled for reasons beyond your control, are you allowed to talk about the reasons behind that and are there any plans to come back for more U.K. shows – and possibly more than just one show in London?

There’s not much to say, it was a business decision based on the finances. We’re working on some UK bookings, so keep your eyes peeled for updates on our website / Facebook / MySpace.

With two albums and an EP behind you now does that make it any more difficult to choose a setlist, particularly when playing festivals where I assume you play for less time than you would at one of your own headline shows?

Yeah, we fight like dogs every time we have to do a shorter set, we all have our own favorites and if it was up to us we’d do a full set everywhere! But we always try to find a good balance between old and new songs, slow and fast, a set has to have a good flow to work well.

Hail of Bullets and Asphyx have toured together a few times in the past couple of years, is that something likely to happen again in the future, or maybe bringing Thanatos or Houwitser out with Hail of Bullets too?

I’m sure that’ll happen again, but not too often. We get along very well and it’s always a blast to be out with both bands but we want to be careful not to turn into the Dutch Old School Roadshow or some shit like that, haha! We actually did a show with Houwitser a couple months back and we’re playing a German festival with Thanatos later this year. 11th Hour has opened for Asphyx as well, so we’ve covered all possible combinations.

On the Warsaw Rising EP there was a song, Liberators,  specifically about the B-24 Liberator bomber, what was it about the Liberator in particular that made you want to write a song about it?

That song was initially meant to be a Nachthexen part II as it takes off on the final riff of that one. Because of the musical similarity Martin thought it’d be cool to stick with the aviation theme and he came up with this ode to one of the most bad-ass bomber planes ever built. If you read the lyrics and look at some pictures I’m sure you’ll get why Martin chose this particular plane. We used an actual B-24 sample in the middle and at the end, it's one of my absolute favorite Bullets tracks, I love the way music and lyrics work together to create a really vivid image. You can almost see the sky turn black with bombs during the final riff, love it!

Also on that EP was the only cover you’ve recorded to date, of Twisted Sister’s Destroyer. What made you cover this song in particular, and can we expect any more covers from Hail of Bullets in the future?

We’re all 40+ (except for Paul, our Benjamin) so we grew up listening to a lot of the same bands and one we all like is Twisted Sister. Their heaviest song is of course Destroyer and we thought it would sound great in our ultra-low tuning, so we adapted it to our style and used it as an encore for a few shows before recording our version. We didn’t think it’d be a big deal but it caused quite a bit of controversy on the web, a death metal band doing a Mötley Crüe (sic) cover??? If you take away the glam look Twisted Sister are an awesome and brutal band, especially live. I think they’d like our take on Destroyer. We may do another one at some point, if we do it'll probably be a song with more of a death / thrash metal pedigree.

You’ve now done two World War II inspired concept albums, with ...of Frost and War covering the Eastern Front and On Divine Winds dealing with the Pacific Theatre, are there any plans at all yet for a third album? If so will you continue to deal with World War II lyrically and will you continue to record concept albums or could you do ‘stand-alone’ songs about, say, the Somme in WW1 and then deal the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War on the same album?

I kinda like the idea of doing concept chunks of say two to three songs, but knowing Martin I’m pretty sure the next album will be a full concept again. At the moment he’s getting pretty worked up about a certain theme which is definitely big enough for a whole album. We’ll probably start writing later this year but there’s no hurry, we now have to live up to not one but two critically acclaimed albums so we’re going to take our time making it as good as possible.

Well that's the last of our questions! Thank you for your time.

Thank you for yours, cheers!