Conducting interviews is sometimes like walking a tightrope between two camps. One side is asking questions based on why the interview is happening in the first place. Like for an upcoming tour, a new single or a new album, for example. The other camp is asking the things that you as an interviewer want to genuinely inquire about and hear the answers to. Hopefully, blessedly, readers will want to hear these answers too.
However, in Australian music media, you’re often only given 15-minute blocks - 20 if you’re lucky, potentially longer if it’s a one-off chat you’ve snagged or is a podcast appearance – to have these conversations. (Real ones ask for the final time slot, hopefully squeezing extra minutes out of the interviewee, comfortably knowing some sap isn't waiting for you to finish.)
That tightrope walk is where I found myself atop when interviewing drummer Jesse Shelley and frontman Schuylar Croom from North Carolina’s He Is Legend, still hot off the heels of 2022's terrific Endless Hallway and ahead of their headline Australian tour in May. So let’s start off with a personal question I’d love to know an answer to: when will, if ever, second album Suck Out The Poison receive a vinyl pressing, as it’s the only remaining He Is Legend record not to receive that treatment?
“Those are questions for the hand that holds the key - and we don't” laughs Croom. “I did get a call about that from the people who got the I Am Hollywood one put through. So, it could happen this year, I'd like to think maybe this year. But that album will be 20 years within this decade, so who knows, maybe they'll wait around for that.”
Shelley has a similar take but also keeps it a buck fifty, which I respect, saying “Rule of thumb: all these people love money, and there’s money to be made off that album. People don’t like sharing money. But to actually answer the question - it will happen."
“I'm stoked for the fans to have those albums and to relive them. It's cool that they kind of get to relive something that they did 20 years ago, of having it in their hands for the first time. I think that's something that makes vinyl so exciting for people. It's like you kind of get to have that record store day thing that you did so many years ago. I have no qualms with the fans getting their hands on that kind of stuff, even if it doesn't benefit me any, that's neither here nor there, so I hope it happens.”
Sometimes, via a selfishly asked question spurned purely from what I'd like to one day have in my personal record collection, a neat bit of exclusive trivia is given to Wall Of Sound about the artwork for the band's 2006 sophomore LP. I’ll let Croom explain it.
“One cool little tidbit of trivia for that record exclusively here: back in the day, we hired out artists in town and we got people that were close to the band to create art pieces for single songs. And we had a compilation of these different artists that had made these pieces for each song on that record. And the record label at the time, one of the pieces was a Renaissance painting of an elf and she was topless. It was like a high-art Renaissance painting, but they wouldn't put it out because she was topless. So, we nixed the whole thing altogether, but that artwork exists somewhere out in the universe.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4pz1ugxXvU
That actually sounds pretty awesome... which probably means we won’t ever see that particular version of a Suck Out The Poison LP come to pass. Still, fingers crossed that the rights holders somehow read this (Internet, do your thing, I guess) and print something during or in the lead-up to its 20th anniversary.
Now, from one camp to the other, we must obviously talk about Australia and their return to our shores in support of 2022's lethal Endless Hallway (and 2019's White Bat too, technically). Initial questions range from their own excitement to come back to the ratio between deep cuts and the main material from those last two records making an appearance. Well, it’s a big “YES!” to all of the above from both members. Croom even revealing that “It’s the longest set we’ve had in years.”
“I’ve already emailed the powers that be to say: 'Hey, we might go over because we wanna play a lot of songs!'. And there’s a, I feel, sense of responsibility. I know just by the fact of how few times we’ve been in Australia, a lot of people at these shows have never seen the band. And it’s really important because they missed every record cycle. If you’ve never seen the band before, you’ve missed everything thus far. So, I wanna make sure they get to hear a song off an album they really enjoy. I try to play it like: 'If I’m seeing this band for the very first time…'”
“And they didn’t play anything off their first album! I would be pissed!” chimes in Shelley. “It also makes for a better show, you know? It’s just fun, you run through a time machine with 500 people, and you watch people feeling emotions from 20 years ago. It’s crazy! I mean, why would you keep yourself in a little box of playing only new stuff? It’s just a recipe for having people talk shit about you on a message board.”
Social media shit-talking aside, He Is Legend is a rare case where you do really want them to play new material. Because such work is as good, if not better than what came before it. In fact, as Shelley goes on to state when talking about their most recent pair of LPs, they fed into one another. These two albums co-exist in a way, especially in a chronological growth and fluid writing process from White Bat over to Endless Hallway. Expect plenty from both on this run, basically.
“Endless Hallway, I don’t want to take it away from being its own piece, but it is in a lot of ways an extension of that last album. With White Bat, we had like 40 ideas to work with, we were whittling down a lot of them, and a lot of the songs that we just couldn’t button up on the last record are on this one. And with a lot of songs we created from scratch we were like: “This is what we were really trying to get the last time”, but just didn’t get all the way there. I feel like they’re not the same thing, it’s not to say that Endless Hallway is White Bat II. But there are lots of calls to the last record, and I think in some respects it is an extension of that album.”
Something to keep in mind when we witness the U.S. act tear through awesome recent bangers like ‘The Prowler’ and ‘Burn All Your Rock Records’ back-to-back come May.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnee6dEg4-Y
As an avid Endless Hallway enjoyer – it's literally in my top three records for this group, behind the best one, It Hates You and the saddest one, Heavy Fruit – it’s impressive how they’ve again straddled the line between what He Is Legend once was and currently is. It’s a bit darker, much heavier too, but feels quintessentially like them at the heart of it all. Something I’d start a thesis over is how these guys have a unique feel to each record as if each album is its own distinct era. If there are any other bands from this scene that have achieved that same balance, it's Thrice, Alexisonfire and My Chemical Romance.
“In my eyes, I can’t see us as one of those bands, but it’s an honour to be mentioned in the same category with those bands because they’re pretty iconic,” Croom comments back, before adding, “I think we are one of the last bands that really put out records that you listen to start to finish, we kind of craft them in that way."
"I think it’s also the way we write, like what Jesse said earlier, having things that were from another era almost spilling over. We usually go into the studio with a pretty solid idea of what we’re going to have. Before we actually get into tracking, we know that the album is going to be this many songs long - because we’ve meticulously handpicked the best riffs, the best things and ideas that go together and whatnot. I can’t look back on it in a weird linear time frame and view the band in that way. I just know how we are now compared to how we were then. And I feel like we’re the best we’ve ever been now, and I feel like we have just continued to get better. And the more we challenge ourselves, the more we grow.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYSWW49q0Gw
Many listeners still place He Is Legend under a metalcore-sounding context. I do too, to some degree, as I hear plenty of moments like that on Endless Hallway and so far back as the first album, 2004’s I Am Hollywood. Yet there’s so much hard rock, classic metal, doom, southern, sludge and blues pulled into their heavy, riffy mixture that it all goes beyond mere core breakdowns and open chugs. That’s their whole appeal, really, how genuine it all sounds no matter what they’re doing. I pose this idea to the duo, about how they’ve been around for over two decades and how even on their seventh album, it can be heralded as one of their best. All thanks to how it’s clear they never phone it in and try to challenge themselves.
Schuylar’s take: “It’s cool because that was the press that we were getting for White Bat, that White Bat was the best album we had put out to date. And we believed it, you know, we felt that way. And to be honest - I don't know that we felt that way about this album. Like, I don't think any of us thought that Endless Hallway was our best work to date. We just felt like it was an aggravated work of art that we had to get out of us.”
Jesse’s thoughts: “It felt sincere, and it felt absolutely like none of it was phoned in. I couldn't say this is our best album. I'll say this is the most challenging thing we've ever done. And it was done with sincerity and intent. And it sucks that we've never been a band that has generated so much money that we've all moved away. Not to discredit some of the huge and very successful metal bands, but we see it all the time. It's like these bands are just as much of a business and a brand as they are a music project, and they don't actually hang out and write music together anymore. It's like: “You send me what you got from your studio” and it's almost like an obligation: “Oh, we gotta put out a record because we gotta keep this business thing going”. We write in the room together with the intent to make something that is extremely sincere and challenging and to push ourselves. It’s too taxing on us as people in our own personal lives, too much has to go into this if it wasn't anything but our best efforts. We can't just do this recreationally, we're all in every single time. That's what keeps the records, I think, pure in a way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICUpwQ59h8I
For years now, there's been this occultist, spooky, witching-hour tone to He Is Legend, with the lyrics and music. So much so that I feel it's become an identifiable aspect of their sound. It's something that attracts me to their output and I know I'm not alone in that. Remember the crappy tightrope interview analogy I used at the start? Well, you miss one hundred per cent of shots you don't take and now was the best time to hear it from the horse's mouth(s). What drives those musical and lyrical themes? Is it just simply a mere horror aesthetic they prefer? Thankfully, Schuylar kindly obliges me with such an in-depth response and assessment about where that comes from, and the magic of it all, that I wouldn't even know how to follow it up. So here's the wrap-up from the man himself.
"I’ve always been interested in spirituality in general and the darker aspects of it," he admits. "So lyrically for me, I like to write about spooky shit, for lack of a better word. I think that's where the fun side of this band and the tongue-in-cheek aspect can come into play for me. I always have said that I'm given this platform to create what's behind the door that the band create sonically. And each instrument is an extension, what you're hearing on the albums is an extension of the person who plays them. You're not hearing overdubs, and you're also feeling that live, you're hearing the growth of the talent. If you go along with the records, if you come to our shows, you're experiencing that first-hand, which is a form of magic."
"Music is very witchy, it’s like the first earliest tonal magic, and I like wearing that on my sleeve lyrically. And creating little storybook lands is more fun to me than just singing about love. I mean, I think all the songs are about love, either loss of, or the gain of, in the same way that most Beatles songs are about love. But I think most of it is a transitional way that you can put those lyrics to work for any real situation and use them to make yourself feel better - that’s also magic."
"To me, I think that using little witchy things and quips from things that I've read or practices that I think are worth keeping, things that I've studied over the years - it's just fun for me as subject matter. Whereas other people could write about cars or dogs or whatever. But that other stuff is really just what interests me. And that's why it comes outta me when I write, and I've always tried to write in a sort of code when I write lyrics, and let those things be deciphered. Also, Endless Hallway had a lot of fever dream elements to what I did vocally and trying to piecemeal together to a song that's already structured and finalised. It does create this kind of puzzle-piecing situation in the studio, and if I haven't gone with an idea that completely gets nixed on the day, it's really hugely altered when I actually get to a microphone. Because you just never know what you're gonna sound like. Like, even in your head what you think you might sound like is completely wrong and backwards and you can't do the thing that's in your head, or the thing that's in your head is not what you would do and something else comes out of it - and that is also like a form of magic. And so is learning an instrument and playing that instrument. I think there are all these little neat things that could be looked at in these esoteric schools of thought of how to create your own destiny. And making music is that, you are creating something out of thin air to have a shelf life. Those things fascinate me. And they always will."
Interview by Alex Sievers
Tickets on sale via beatscartel.com/showtickets
He Is Legend – Australian Tour 2023
w/ Hammers
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2023 – MO’S DESERT CLUBHOUSE, GOLD COAST
THURSDAY 18 MAY 2023 – THE ZOO, BRISBANE
FRIDAY 19 MAY 2023 – CROWBAR, SYDNEY
SATURDAY 20 MAY 2023 – STAY GOLD, MELBOURNE
SUNDAY 21 MAY 2023 – LION ARTS FACTORY, ADELAIDE
WEDNESDAY 24 MAY 2023 – BADLANDS, PERTH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-P_nap1ZY
