HALESTORM‘s Joe Hottinger and Lzzy Hale have told Cryptic Rock that they have been using the coronavirus downtime to work on the follow-up to 2018’s “Vicious” album. “Yeah, we have a lot of new music,” Joe said. “We had a ton of new music that we had been working on before this thing went down. Now, since we’ve been stuck [at home in Nashville], Lzzy has written a ton of songs and I’ve been working on those. It all feels kind of fresh again; topics have deeper, new meanings.”
Lzzy added: “There is that dichotomy of, I’m sad that we can’t be in a studio right now to make our new record. However, we were one of the lucky ones because we actually slated this time to be able to write a record. Right now we are supposed to be in pre-production in the studio, but we can’t do that. The positive is, I think, we are writing better songs right now with everything at a standstill. It has become less of a career move, less of ‘We have to do a record and promote it.’ It’s more looking deeper inward, but also looking at that big picture in all aspects; everything means something different now. I’m trying to take advantage of that as much as I can.”
HALESTORM has been writing and demoing material since January, with Hale saying she can record almost everything except drums in her home studio.
The band has hinted at recording one or two EPs in the interim, but has not revealed any further information on whether they’ve been completed or what they contain.
Lzzy and her brother Arejay (drums) formed the band in 1998 while in middle school. Hottinger joined the group in 2003, followed by bassist Josh Smith in 2004.
In December 2018, HALESTORM was nominated for a “Best Rock Performance” Grammy Award for its song “Uncomfortable”.
In 2012, the band won its first Grammy in the category of “Best Hard Rock/ Metal Performance” for “Love Bites (So Do I)”. According to the Grammy web site, Lzzy became the first woman to earn a Grammy in the category.
