Silverhex

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Silverhex

Interview conducted on November 25, 2020

By Dan Locke

Silverhex create music the way they believe it should be; Evocative, powerful and fun. Combining elements of metalcore, nu metal and melodic punk with stadium rock vocals, we aim for a sound of pure energy and atmosphere with powerful cathartic lyrics.

Describe your music:

We’d describe ourselves as a combination of heartfelt lyrics mixed in with influences of punk, metalcore, and groove metal. In terms of what we all listen to, there’s quite a range of bands, but that’s probably where most of our influences converge and where we’ve been trying to develop our sound.

How did you get your first guitar, and do you still have it?

– Rick: my first bass I got on ‘indefinite loan’ from school. Eventually the loan ended and I had to give it back, because I had too much other stuff to bring across from Colombia
– Rob: mine was a Christmas present 15, when I asked my parents for a guitar. A squire strat in black and white, and it lives in the loft.
– Steve: See above!!!! I still have mine, it’s somewhere in my mum’s house, doesn’t work but never want to throw it away. It was the classic Argos starter kit, and came with a tiny practice amp
– Rob: Argos has much to answer for our band

What was your first performance at like?

– Since we’ve been Silverhex, we’ve actually not been able to perform together. As the virus hit, we were right in the middle of renaming ourselves so we could start fresh with the EP release and a new bassist. However, in our previous incarnation, we played our first gig back in April 2019 at The Horn in St Albans. It was a great night, it had been over a year since any of us had been able to play a live show due to previous bands breaking up, so being able to get out to such an amazing local venue was amazing!

What makes a good songwriter?

– Honestly, we don’t know. We all like a variety of music, all with different types of musicians and songwriters. Creativity, open-mindedness, but probably most importantly passion. Being able to write music that you love and are passionate about, because If you don’t love what you do why should anyone else?

What was the title of your first original song? Did you record it?

– Our first ever original song was ‘Eternal’, which is the opening track on our debut EP ‘Silverhex’. It’s a song we’d written the music for while we were still looking for a new vocalist, so it’s actually the song Holly wrote and performed for her audition, which basically sealed the deal that she was the vocalist for us!

Tell me about your EP?

– It’s been a labor of love, we’ve all been in bands for years but for a number of reasons never managed to get anything released on Spotify, etc, so this was a big step forward for all of us. Two of the three tracks we’d written the music before we’d even found Holly, but the third, ‘Flesh & Blood’, was the first song we wrote as a whole band. We started recording it in the middle of last year, then due to line-up changes it got put on hold. Luckily Rick joined us at literally the last minute; we managed to squeeze in one session as a full band before the UK went into lockdown, so we were able to get all the final parts recorded which allowed Bob to finish the mix & mastering in April. Even then it wasn’t plain sailing; the stresses of work, life, and Covid lockdown led to our drummer Lluis temporarily leaving the band, and the release date of the EP kept being pushed back because of delays with the distributer, but luckily all these things got resolved with time, Lluis is back and the EP is out! Still, I don’t think it is going to be an EP launch we’ll ever forget.

Tell me about the making of your new video “Flesh & Blood”?

– This was also another big milestone for all of us, as it’s the first proper music video any of us have ever done (we’re not counting our lockdown video for ‘Fear’!). As with the EP, we’re so lucky and so thankful we were able to get this done around the UK lockdown restrictions. We’d initially planned to film in April but that had to be pushed back until we were all allowed out of the house again. After the lockdown was lifted, we were able to find a new date so it was back on the table, but five days before the shoot, the videographer called to say he couldn’t make it anymore as he had to self-isolate. We were gutted, we already had everything else setup and ready to go, Holly had spent hours making sure we had our outfits sorted and they’d work with the set, and knowing another lockdown could come at any time we couldn’t risk delaying the shoot. At the last-minute Oli Duncanson was able to step up, and we still can’t believe how lucky we are; he is working with some amazing bands on the scene right now and we’re so happy with the result. That said, the day itself was exhausting, ten solid hours of playing (and headbanging to) the same track over and over again, and lugging equipment round, but it was all worth it.

What is your favorite track on the EP?

– As a band, our favourite track is ‘Flesh & Blood’, which is why we chose it for the video. It’s the first song we wrote after Holly had joined and it’s got so much sentimentality for us. The other two tracks both hold a special place for us. Eternal is always the track we use to open our shows because it’s just balls to the wall’s energy from the get go, and Fear is a really fun song to play, there’s a lot of different dynamics to it and its great fun to play live.

What are your feelings about streaming music?

– We know as musicians there are a lot of issues in terms of musicians getting paid properly, which we do have an issue with. However, as a band still trying to get our music out there, it has been such a useful tool – without it we wouldn’t have any way of actually getting our music to people, especially while we’re in lockdown and we can’t play shows and sell CDs, which we’d probably end up making a loss on anyway. Ten years ago, before streaming it was illegal downloads, which meant musicians got nothing, so we’re definitely in a better place, and without streaming there are so many bands we’d have never heard of, as without being able to hear them first we wouldn’t have bought albums or gig tickets. So there definitely has to be a place for it in the market, just hopefully with the artists getting paid fairly for their work

Do you think kids should go back to school?

– Yes!!!! There are certain life skills kids can only learn through social interaction with other kids in the real world, on top of the fact parents can’t do their own jobs if they need to homeschool their children as well. However, we understand this can only be done if the schools can be made and kept safe for teachers in the process. A few of our friends and parents are teachers we know they’re putting their health on the line every day, so we need to make sure they are safe in their schools

What song from the past is in your mind right now? Moreover, what is the meaning that song means to you?

– Bob: Erasure ‘Give a little respect’. We’d gone hiking in Wales last year and the town we stayed in just happened to have a music festival on. We couldn’t get tickets because it had sold out, but as people left, they were letting people in at the end of the night. We were sitting on hay bales in a field and that song came on over the loudspeakers, and we just sang our hearts out!

In March you were going to play a show, and it was cancelled. Did you think at that time that the virus would affect the world the way it did?

– Not at all. Back at that time, it felt like another one of these pandemics that was all over the news and would never really hit us. We were so confident we were going to play that we were desperately looking for a new bassist to complete the lineup, and used the last few weekends before teaching Rick all the songs. I think the seriousness of all this only hit home for us when we had to pull out of the gig because someone in Lluis’s family started showing what could have been symptoms and he needed to self-isolate. Luckily it turned out not to be the virus, but by that point, the show had been canceled anyway.

How do you feel the Covid-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?

– It’s definitely going to be harder to play gigs or even go to gigs, at least in the short term. Obviously, as it stands playing live gigs in any format is nearly impossible, especially for bands with a lot of members, and for bands like us, we’re still playing smaller venues where people are crammed into small rooms. If you’re big enough to play bigger venues then social distancing can be done, but that means smaller crowds and either the bands are going to struggle to earn a living or tickets are going to be way too expensive. Hopefully, once this all blows over when there’s a vaccine that means life can return to normal, then maybe we’ll see a big rise in the demand for live music, as it’s something that we’ve all missed, and maybe people will make more of an effort to go to the smaller live shows in their town to help get the scene going again, but for this to happen we need to support our local venues through this time so they don’t all end up shut down.

What have you been doing with your self-quarantine?

– As a band, we’ve released an EP, a couple of music videos, and we did our best to get really active on social media. We’ve also been trying to keep writing new music. Luckily most of us are able to record from home, so we’ve been trying to remotely record some new material, however it is really hard to keep the motivation up when you can’t actually play the songs together in a studio, it just makes collaborating together so much harder.

Have you discovered or rediscovered any new hobbies?

– A number of us have tried picking up new hobbies over the lockdown; Steve started brewing his own beer, Bob started making his own sausages and Holly has taken up yoga! Anything to keep busy at this time.

Many artists are doing nightly concerts over either YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. In October that is going to change at least on Facebook. Facebook is cracking down on livestreamed shows that include recorded music with new terms of service, preventing artists from using the platform for “commercial or non-personal” purposes, unless they have obtained the relevant licenses’ updated music guidelines state that users “may not use videos on our products [which include Instagram] to create a music listening experience […] This will includes [Facebook] Live,” and stipulates that such content should be posted for the enjoyment of friends and family only. How do you think this will change the landscape of Facebook?

– We’ve not really followed this, mostly because we’re not really sure we understand what Facebook are doing. From our limited understanding it does seem like Facebook shooting themselves in the foot, if they refuse to let bands use their platform to fully engage with their fans then eventually a new platform will emerge that does and they’ll lose out. Unless this is just because they’re planning to bring it back in the future but in a way that allows them to make more money from the artists, which would be terrible, but not a huge surprise.

How can bands keep their fans if they cannot play live in front of the fans and sell merch to them at the show?

– That’s the big question, right? As a new band we’ve been putting a lot of effort into our social media to try and create content, but without being able to go out on tour, get back in the studio or make videos, then it becomes really hard to keep creating content that will interest people. Since becoming more active on social media I think we’ve all grown a new appreciation for how much hard work it is to keep creating content that’s interesting and engaging

Is pay to play still a thing?

– Well at the moment there’s no playing, so we’re going to say no! It’s hard to know how this will all pan out when we’re allowed to play gigs again. Before lockdown started, as a band we’d made a conscious effort to avoid pay to play gigs any way. As a new band starting out, the thing you’re hoping to get most from gigs is to be able to play your music in front of people who might want to hear it, which means playing gigs with similar bands to an audience who might want to listen to you. We’ve been lucky to find a few promoters in our area who really want to encourage and build the local scene in this way, promoters like Juicebox in Hertfordshire who are always giving new bands a chance. With pay to play, whilst we can’t say it’s true all the time, mostly you just get bands selling tickets to their friends, who show up to watch that band then disappear.

How was it to get together after 6 months?

– It was the best thing ever. It was only the second time we’d all been able to play together since Rick joined the band, and it was great to be able to just let go again for a few hours. We had a bit of an emotional journey as that was the day, we both lost our videographer for the Flesh & Blood video and managed to find Oli to replace him. It was also the first time we were able to play some of the new material we’d been working on at home, so being able to hear that in the room together, it felt almost like life was back to normal, for 3hrs at least!

If you can’t do music what would you like to be doing?