FEATURE: Gatherer - Heavy Hail (album stream)
New Zealand ex-pats (now Melbourne residents) Gatherer release their new studio album this Friday.
New Zealand ex-pats (now Melbourne residents) Gatherer release their new studio album this Friday.
In support of the full-length, today, Killyourstereo.com helps stream 'Heavy Hail' in its entirety.
Additionally, we sat down with the band recently to talk about the new record. You can read our chat below the song stream.
‘Heavy Hail‘ is out August 7th via MGM Distribution.
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Catch Gatherer on tour with Guards of May this August/September (presented by Killyourstereo.com).
The new album is the current topic of conversation at the moment, what’s the main thing you hope listeners can take away from ‘Heavy Hail’?
If we can help expand a few minds, show people rock bands can still be a whole lot more than just a rock band, then we’ll be pretty pleased.
You worked on this album quite extensively. How much do you have to almost divorce yourself from a record after a period of time, otherwise you start chopping and changing things to excessive levels?
Some things probably have been chopped and changed extensively, but to some degree that’s kind of the point. Between So Be It and now, so much has happened on a personal level, and that kinda made for some pretty intense manipulation to get songs into the shape they were born to be.
How hard was it to uproot and move from Wellington to Melbourne all those years ago?
That depends how you define hard. The difficulty of our situation was never a topic of discussion, it was more of an epiphany than anything. “This is your life now, if you don’t want it then go find another one.” It’s actually really easy - sell all your shit, get on a plane, work it out as it comes. We were homeless for a long time, but those days are some of the greatest of our lives.
What have been the biggest advantages of being a band in the Australian scene?
Well we’ve been able to play a lot more, and play with bands and work with people who take professionalism to another level. Every time we saw an Aussie band play in New Zealand, they’d have every element of ‘being a band’ running at a way higher standard than anything we’d yet encountered. There’s an element of competition amongst Australian bands. Bands here really want to be bigger, better, cooler, tighter etc than all the other bands.
For an up and coming band in New Zealand, do you think there’s still a necessity to move if you want to grow the band or can you make it work over there all the same?
Absolutely! Any band making a career out of themselves from New Zealand plays overseas, and so they should. NZ rules, sure, but it’s tiny. There’s just no way to dig your fingers in and get the most out of yourselves.
What would you still like to see improved in the local music scene?
It would be so great if line-ups for shows started looking a little more ‘cause it would be awesome’ and a little less calculated. The last tour we did had a super varied line up and it rocked. When I listen to an album, the next one I listen to is usually pretty fuckin’ different, so why go to shows to listen to the same shit for three hours? I want it to feel like the headliner picked the opener because they like their music, not because they got an email telling them who was playing first.
What are the plans for the rest of 2015, once the album is out and the shows with Guards Of May are complete?
Heavy Hail is also getting a super badass rad as hell vinyl release later, so we’ll hit the road with that then focus on broadening our horizons some way. There’s a lot more music already sitting there than what is presented on Heavy Hail, One thing at a time though eh?
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