Band: Seven Hells
From: Melbourne, Australia
Their formation story:
(Dan, vocals): "The band is currently made up of Shannon on drums, Geordie on guitar, Jerm on bass, Jake on guitar and myself on vocals. We are based out of the northern/western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
"The formation of this band took about 4 years, multiple line-ups made of friends from all different bands in Melbourne; but the core of the band has always been Shannon and myself. We’ve been friends since high school (about 20 years now) and we’ve barely played any music together since then. I was deep into hardcore, and Shannon was more in the punk realm at the time. Eventually our ideas started to meet in the middle.
"Our first idea was just to be hard and heavy. Buried Alive was my main inspiration, and soon I realised I wasn’t feeling writing that more basic style of hardcore anymore. We had a line up change and wanted to tackle a more European sound of metallic hardcore. We got some mates together and the band kind of folded in on itself again, the people we were trying to do the band with needed to pursue the projects they were already working on.
"So, after 4 years of trying, I finally found a line up that was keen and ready to go. This included Shannon and Jerm, as well as Peter and Liam from Threshold. I sat down and wrote the EP with some help from Peter, namely the song Upheaval, and we eventually settled on the name Seven Hells.
"The band name was tough; I still don’t know if I like it that much. We wanted something dark and Shannon had pitched Seven Hells. At the time I was thinking of Big Trouble in Little China and just thought, 'Awesome, let’s go with that,' however I’m pretty sure in the movie they reference 10 realms of Hell. People often ask me if it comes from Game of Thrones; if you ask Shannon, I am sure he’ll say yep but I’ve never seen it [laughs].
"Both Shannon and myself are defectors of faith. He grew up a Mormon and I grew up a born again baptist Christian or whatever. We both denounce our faith now and feel the name and some of the lyrical themes are reflected in that. I like the idea of the name being evil. Seven Hells is like the place where sinners go in the Islamic version of hell and I am huge fan of Diablo 2 which I’m pretty sure mentions the seven realms of hell so I am going with that.
"Eventually, Liam and Peter left the band so they could focus on Threshold. That band was getting very busy, and we were still a work-in-progress. Due to the fact that we are in our mid 30s, we just didn’t want to waste time. We felt we needed to get a line up that was ready to go. In comes Geordie and Jake on guitars and that’s the current lineup.
"Recently, we recorded the 'Hollow Prayers' single alongside the Integrity cover 'Judgement Day' with them and honestly they add a lot to the band. Jake brings technical solos and Geordie is the most enthusiastic band member I’ve ever played with, he probably is most of the drive of the band. I’ve never seen someone so motivated and excited to do music and it’s refreshing."
Their sound in their own words:
"The sound of the band was from me pushing Kickback onto every member of the band, wanting to be more intense musically and lyrically. They’re definitely our main influence, I didn’t realise 5 years ago when I started this band, they would be the band everyone is trying to emulate and it’s been a bit tougher to make a mark when there are so many bands doing that sound so well all across the world right now.
"Since starting we’ve been trying to implement a more varied array of influences to the writing to flare it up a bit. I’d say our main influences are definitely Kickback and All Out War for the foundation, Reprisal and Sentence for the metal flourishes and our newer stuff. I was definitely feeling some Stout, Next Step Up, and Terror Ave.
"I’ve been told that we have Integrity and Ringworm all over it and look, I am never going to complain about that. I listen to Birth Is Pain and most of the Integrity records on the regular so that’s a huge compliment for me [laughs]."
Latest release info:
"'Hollow Prayers' feels like such an old song now, we’ve been playing it for a year in different versions but we finally nailed the song down in the studio with our friend Lewis Noke-Edwards and he did a great job. We got our friend Jake Zammit from Forewarned/Kingpin records to do guest vocals on the song and he killed it! Makes the song so much more cool.
"Lyrically, the song looks at people who believe in God from different walks of life, from Politicians to the everyday person. I talk a lot about the infliction of war in the first verse of the song. It represents how a lot of political chambers perform a prayer before they begin whatever it is they’re doing in parliament- it feels like an act. You can’t seriously sit down and pray and continue to be warmongers gambling with people's lives in the wars we are currently seeing. It sickens me.
"The second verse came to me about 6 months after playing the song live. I finally found something else to talk about. I found out some people I know believed in God but I never felt like they acted in good faith, they just seemed to hurt people and continue on a path of destruction without a worry. I just thought to myself, you think you’re good people but asking for forgiveness is not enough.
"If you’re evil, just own it. Stop pretending to act like you care about anything when you’re really just selfish and ignorant. I just felt I would respect someone more if they didn’t use the guise of being a good Christian person, wearing a cross, having rosary beads and then just continue to act like their actions didn’t matter.
"The line in the song 'please God, I swear I’m a good man' references all those people; but also my father who is a staunch Christian, but a terrible human being too. Leaving multiple broken families behind, stealing from his kids, beating up my mother. That is not a good Christian man. Praying will never ever change that. No matter how much you ask for forgiveness. He owes a lot more than just a prayer in my opinion.
"All my songs are pretty layered. It takes me a long time to write lyrics, because I try not to just write another song about friends being back stabbers and liars and what I pretend I’ll do to them in my lyrics. I just feel it’s too dishonest to myself. I try to go a little deeper and not because I am pretentious or anything, I am just extremely self conscious and self aware even if people don’t really care about or read lyrics anymore."
Future plans:
"We just finished up a short leg of the shows on the Forwarned tour which was so sick. We have the Iron Mind release show, a show in a Adelaide and we plan on doing some more shows interstate through out the year.
"In terms of music, we've been writing for another EP which should be 6 songs and that will hopefully be released via Kingpin records in Australia and Death Farm records in Europe. As things get closer we'll finalise everything and share all that information as we know what we're doing [laughs]."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"Australian hardcore is crazy right now. Every state has sick bands. I'll name as many as I can quickly.
• Adelaide - Desire, Time Ends, Twist Of Fate, Stressed, Theurgy, Bolt Cutter
• Brisbane - Entrapment, Wetwork, Halfman- all the Burning Hammer bands
• Canberra - Thantu Thicka, Retributor, Użi Akimbos Records
• Melbourne - Threshold, Death Tax, Dizdain, Grim Reality, Judged By Twelve, Ends In Tragedy, Blood On My Hands, Deliver Us From Evil, Iron Mind, Horsepower, Forewarned, Zero Hour- too many to name in Melbourne. Every band working with Kingpin Records!
•Newcastle - Feel The Pain, Spat Out, Cutthroat, Splinter, Volatile Ways- anything only B.I.G. Records does!
•Sydney - our favourite nephews DANCE, Negative Mental State, Bozo, L.O.W (Wollongong),
•Perth - End it all, Gaoled, there's so many bands I'm forgetting.
• Tasmania - No Scope, Severed
"Australia is bumping at the moment. Everything I've mentioned deserves some attention if you want to check out new bands!"
Seven Hells on social media: Instagram
Tagged: seven hells
