Hailmary

Perth natives Hailmary have without a doubt become one of the hardest working rock and roll bands in the country over the last little while. Having played at the infamous Rock N Load Festival at the Espy in 2012, the band has since clocked up a massive 170,000 kilometres travelling all around the world playing music and recording their debut album Choice Path Consequence Solution (CPCS). They have also in the last week released their latest EP, Navigate the Sunrise. Over the next month and a half, the band is touring to all parts of the country in support of the release. I caught up with Kev Curran, guitarist and vocalist for the band.
“It’s always a relief and a little bit nerve-racking when you release a new body of work,” Curran said about the release, “and we have been receiving nothing but positive feedback so far from critics and our fans which is great. Over the past few years since we’ve branched out into interstate touring, there has been a lot of support for the tunes and what we are doing and we can’t thank everybody enough.”
Navigate the Sunrise, the third EP in the eight years the band has been together, sees Jeff Tomei, who has worked with the likes of Smashing Pumpkins and Skid Row, return to the producer role. A long-time collaborator of Hailmary, having Tomei behind the project has allowed for the songs to sound the best that they can. “Working with Jeff is always a pleasure and every time we work with him it is always fantastic. He has a great idea of the direction that the songs should go in and everything he does for the band is top quality.”
To coincide with the release of this EP the band has enlisted the support of their fans to help offset some of the costs involved with the release and tour budget. The aim was to raise around $5k, which is around 20 per cent of the overall cost of everything, the target of which was achieved in a matter of days. This support to Curran is very humbling and he is extremely thankful, as he relates. “With two weeks to go we reached the target and when you do those things you sort of think, ‘Will anyone care?’ It is a jump into the unknown sometimes, yet to have gained this much support early on and reach the target was just great. We can’t thank our fans enough.”
One of the main tracks on the debut album is ‘Yellow Light of Death’, which as you probably wouldn’t expect is about the PlayStation. “I was playing FIFA on my PlayStation and one day the disc stuffed up and wouldn’t work and there was just this yellow light flashing at me all the time. I Googled the problem, which is more commonly known as the ‘Yellow Light of Death’. I thought that was a classic song title and that [it had] to be used, and so it developed from there. On that track there is an Armageddon-type theme within the lyrics that links to the story of the title, I believe.”
With European and American shows in the pipeline at the moment, be sure to head down to check these guys out at their Melbourne or regional Victoria shows whilst they are still around. One of Australia’s greatest hard rock acts at the moment – c’mon Forte! Do yourself a favour.
When&Where: Cherry Bar, Melbourne – June 18; Music Man Megastore, Bendigo – June 20; and Rock N Load Festival, Melbourne – June 21
Written by Tex Miller