Here at Forte Mag we love fresh music, and if Melbourne hardcore band Hope In Hell were any fresher they would fall off the vine! Although they’ve been gigging around the city for a little while now – with a new drummer in the mix and the release of their debut EP – things are heating up for Hope In Hell.
“Now that we’ve released this EP we’re doing everything we can to get it out there – any gig that comes up we’re happy to jump on it. We did our first all-ages gig yesterday; it wasn’t a great turn out,” laughed frontman Scott Curtis. “But it was fun,” he added with a smile.
This band is full of firsts, so I wanted to know how it all began – and Scott was happy to oblige. “Oh, it’s kinda a cool story. I’ve known Troy [Power, guitar] and Adam [Turcato, bass] through previous bands years ago. I was a guitarist and I’d played with them before, and Troy always mentioned to me that he had songs he was working on. Unfortunately I was pretty young back then but whenever we jammed together it opened up a whole new world of music to me.
“I remembered they were so driven and into what they do. Then a few years passed and I found myself doing vocals in a band, and by chance I happened to run into Adam – overseas, in Europe. He mentioned they’d started what would be Hope In Hell and they needed a vocalist.
“It all happened quite quickly from there, but our EP’s been in the recording process for ages. We didn’t have a drummer for a long time so we hired a session drummer to record these tracks, who ended up being Simon [Mazzei], who’s now in the band.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
Hope In Hell promote themselves as modern hardcore, but in reality Scott admits that they’re influenced by loads of diverse music. “Our EP has a lot of different styles on it. It’s such a good mix of songs – when we play live it always goes down really well. A bit of everything makes for a good live set I think.”
Scott believes that the variety in their music springs from the eclectic tastes of the four-piece. “We’re all very much into a bit of everything. You’ll see us at metal shows and at rock shows, punk, hardcore and everywhere in between. We’re not really locked into one fad. We’re pretty open.”
From there the conversation inevitably turns to the Melbourne live music scene. “The heavy scene is kind of in fragments at the moment. There’s the big, heavy sort of digital-sounding stuff that’s going on and then there’s still the really grassroots hardcore thing, I guess you could say. Then there’s a bit of a mix in the middle, which I think we fall into. The bills we’ve been playing go from metal to punk.
Check out their self-titled EP at hopeinhell.bandcamp.com and stay tuned for gig updates. NB music lovers – When googling, be aware that Hope In Hell is also the title of Canadian heavy metal band Anvil’s latest album!
By Natalie Rogers