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Unleashing The Beast With JONNY HAWKINS From NOTHING MORE · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:17
  Yeah, my name is Johnny Hawkins. Excuse me, I am the lead
• 0:28
  singer of the band nothing More. We're from San Antonio, Texas originally,
• 0:33
  but I'm up here in Nashville, Tennessee now and we are fighting to get
• 0:39
  back to Australia as soon as we can. We're back there years ago at
• 0:42
  sound Wave. That would have been fun. Yeah, it was a blast,
• 0:47
  but so nothing more on Lusia's new album, mcconnall on June the twenty
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  eighth, b So, how are you feeling about it? Man? Very
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  very optimistic and confident about this one. We worked really hard on it the
• 1:03
  last year and a half and we I don't know, I just felt like
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  we hit a new level of unity as a band and kind of a synergy
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  when we were making this album. So it's definitely something special aris for sure,
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  Manon, So tell us a bit more about it from a musical point
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  of view and what you were gone forward it. We did kind of a
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  deeper, more introspective, dense album before called Spirits, and that was the
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  first of what is probably gonna be a kind of a trilogy set of albums,
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  the second one being Carnal that's coming out and I worked for about two
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  years on the side on kind of a side project called a Spirits Test.
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  It's kind of like a meta personality test, and if you go to spirits
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  test dot com, you can take it and find out which one of eight
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  spirit types you are. And so that whole concept was kind of this launching
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  point for the last album, and it led to this album because we wanted
• 2:09
  to instead of focusing on kind of the spiritual psychological mental space, who wanted
• 2:17
  to focus more on the animalistic, survival, you know, primal side of
• 2:23
  our nature. And in doing that, we wrote an album that's a little
• 2:28
  more gripping, a little more immediate, a little more aggressive, and we
• 2:32
  wanted to write really big courses. So that was the goal of this album,
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  and I think we feel like we we succeeded. So when you say
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  it's going to be a trilogy, do you mean that lyrically or do you
• 2:44
  mean it sonically or spiritually? I guess yeah. So I think the third
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  album in the set will probably be something a little more human centric, you
• 2:58
  know, somewhere in the middle of our Arnald nature and our spirit nature.
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  And so that's what I mean by a trilogy conceptually, between the three albums
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  that they're just going to touch on the different aspects of our nature. That's
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  kind of explored in that Spirits test dot com thing that I had developed two
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  years ago. So yeah, cool. We probably haven't got enough anywhere near
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  enough time for you to go into this in depth with me, Bra,
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  but the petties just dropped. Now who you are? Like, because I
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  did that testa when it came out, and I'm normally against those things,
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  as I reckon they're full of shit, but on man, like what I
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  came out with. I remember sitting there thinking like have I met this guy
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  before? Like it was like, how did you come up? Was it?
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  How much research did you have to put put that whole thing together?
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  Well, it was awesome to hear they did it. Yeah, a lot
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  of them are pretty silly online, but this one was. I call it
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  a meta personality test, just because it's almost like with scientific studies have a
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  meta study where for those that don't know, it's like, you know,
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  the combination of all the studies they've done, they do a study on all
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  of them and together contextually, And that's kind of what I did with this.
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  I was always really fascinated with the Myers brig Briggs Personality Assessment. And
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  there's another one called the Big Five that I think Jordan Peterson is, who's
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  you know, real notorious now on YouTube and all that. I think he
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  was a part of the think tank on that one. There's another one called
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  the Anagram that's a little more you know, woo wooee uh, and then
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  all the way woo o ye is like the zodiac, right. So I
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  tried to take stuff that was real dry and scientific, and stuff all the
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  way on the other side of the spectrum that was real artsy and spiritual and
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  woo oo oo ee and try to meet somewhere in the middle of all of
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  them, because I often find that there's a different lens, you know,
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  one lens is blurry and spiritual and one lens is clear and scientific. And
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  so that was my goal with the Spirit's Test, was to put all those
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  together and make one test, right. And that was one way you answered
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  the series of questions that m hm yeah, yeah. What I really liked
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  about that from memory bro was like it was up to the individual how accurate
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  it was. Like, if you answered the questions honestly, you can find
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  out the truth, you know, over look because there was a couple of
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  questions in there. There were a little bit you know, like no,
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  I won't say much I wish, but you know, I was like,
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  I'll kick that one because I'm a tough guy. But if you had to
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  gone along that way, it wouldn't come out right. But if you had
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  to answer it honestly from your heart, right, you got to the other.
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  Yeah, Ca, that's always yeah, that's always. The trick is
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  getting people to answer honestly and in a calm level state of mind, whether
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  they're fully fully fed, calm uh you know those things play. That's why
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  I encourage people to take it more than once, because you might answer a
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  little differently. I like the way it came out the first time. I'm
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  game, but tried it again, I might end up something different. Yeah,
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  once you get attached to one of them, you're like, well,
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  I don't want to do it from now. That's me. Are some people
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  who get the spirit type tattooed on them? It would it would be so
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  disappointing if they took it again. It was that's so back to the music.
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  Man Like Spirits as an album. It was a massive success for you
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  bro like it was as a musician. Is there a temptation just to rehash
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  that winning formula over again on the next one because you know people like it,
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  or is it more a case if you want to want to grow a
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  little bit more and push it a bit extra. Up until this point,
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  I've always felt like we have more to gain than we do to lose in
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  regards to taking risks or just trying something a little differently. I don't feel
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  like we've arrived at our full potential by any means. So the goal is
• 6:59
  all used to try and keep growing and reinventing while still tapping into the things
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  that worked in the past. Like, for example, I think we we
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  wanted to tap into some of our roots from like our self titled album on
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  this one. A good example of that is House on Sand and the intro
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  to it is called Carnal, and those really tap into a lot of similar
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  vibes from this is the Time on the self titled album and its intro ocean
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  Floor. So we did kind of do that, but it's a total reinvention
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  of that part of ourselves. And then in other areas we totally tried something
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  new, like the song down the River is very different than I think any
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  of the other songs we've ever done on other albums. It's a little more
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  I don't know, it's a little more broad, maybe even touches on pop.
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  Even it's not hop, but it's it's very mainstream, whereas other songs
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  like House on Sand are much heavier and more niche Yeah, I was gonna
• 8:07
  mention Conda lighter, but since you bought it off, I'll bring it in
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  now. But there was I loved that track like it was. As I
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  was saying to before, I haven't heard much bigger music. So I put
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  the album on and that came out. It was a little nice and sweet
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  and ambient, and I'm thinking, what the fuck have I gotten into here?
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  And then it started slightly building up and slightly building up, and I'm
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  thinking, oh yeah, the breakdown's coming, and then banging you stop it,
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  and it's like these guys fucking with me a lot. It was.
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  It was a really really cool intro to the album. Oh is it?
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  Is it? Because the link that you have it stops before it plays the
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  next year is spice to no man. That's that's the that'll be give me
• 8:41
  blue balls right there? That sucks. Uh, Yeah. So if you
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  if you watch some music video on YouTube, it's seamless. It'll it'll go
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  straight from one into the other. That's the that's the annoying thing about streaming
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  nowadays is that we we have those We do a lot of conceptual crossovers from
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  track to track, and sometimes it ruins that process. I actually liked it,
• 9:05
  like as as I was starting off and I was thinking it was a
• 9:07
  bit how you go on, But as it was going on and then to
• 9:09
  build up, I thought it's clever bostage. They built you to a point
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  and then they've just gone vell. So actually what I turned the lights on
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  at the bar to a So today you've released the singles If it Doesn't Hurt,
• 9:24
  House on stand an Angel song. So I know the answer to this,
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  but are they a good representation of what to expect from the rest album?
• 9:33
  Yeah? I think they They cover a pretty decent range of what the
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  album is going to touch on. You know, House, I'm sand touches
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  a little bit of the heavier tracks that we have on there. If It
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  Doesn't Hurt touches more of the anthemic rock, you know, upbeat songs,
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  and then angel songs a little bit more of that broader, mainstream, big
• 9:58
  chorus kind of palable stuff. So I think we touched on those. Yeah,
• 10:03
  so I get to answer your question. Yeah, those three do touch
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  on a lot of the notes throughout the album, but then there's some surprise
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  tracks in there that are very different. Yeah. Two of those songs have
• 10:15
  said and Angels song featured guests on it. Tell us a bit about why
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  you brought that in none of the songs. Yeah. So we played a
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  show in Switzerland with Disturbed and I Prevail and we just hit it off with
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  I mean, we'd toured with Disturbed before, so we knew those guys,
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  but we didn't always have a lot of times to hang out, and this
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  show was just the perfect situation. It was a green room with a ton
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  of space backstage, and everybody didn't have to rush to the next show,
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  which is often the case, so we got to hang out with them and
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  I Prevail and we just had a great time. And then when we finished
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  that Europe tour and came back to the States, they were fresh on our
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  mind. We're like, you know, we should reach out to David from
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  Disturbed and reach out to Eric from My Prevail, and it just worked out.
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  But originally David was going to be on Stuck, which is the next
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  single we're about to release, But then we moved him to Angels song because
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  we thought it might be a bigger song at radio, and he's kind of,
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  at least in the United States, he's kind of a darling of the
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  rock radio. He's a legend there, and we're like, yeah, this
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  one might be a little bigger, broader, and it's more of a rock
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  song than a metal song. So we didn't want to just do the full
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  disturb thing because I feel like they already cover that territory with him, so
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  we wanted to try something a little different with him. I've never actually thought
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  to ask this to anyone before Bright, but like, as a vocalist,
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  like, how is it having other people come in and do songs with you?
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  Like? Is it sort of like like they're taking your baby off you
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  sometimes? I guess doesn't matter how big they are, but they come into
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  your territory a little bit. Is there ever any that like in the back
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  of the mind or is it just a you know, it was different with
• 12:01
  each song because I'll give you an example, like the song Stuck, I
• 12:07
  had never written a verse two to that song. So when Sinister, who's
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  one of the features on the album, he came in and I was like,
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  hey, try someone on this verse. It was actually a relief because
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  I was so busy with other parts of the album that I almost didn't even
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  have time to work on it. And I kind of wanted to see what
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  someone else would do anyway and give a spark of creativity. But then other
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  songs like you know, angel Song or House on Sand with Eric and David,
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  I had already recorded vocals for those entire songs, so they were complete,
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  and at first, I'll be completely honest, I was a little bit
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  reluctant to let go of certain lines. I was like, man, I
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  really liked this one lyric and I felt really connected and attached to it,
• 13:00
  and I liked how my vocal performance was, you know, after you work
• 13:03
  so hard on something. But I you know, I had to you know,
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  also listen to the guys in the band and kind of put take a
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  step back because I couldn't because I knew that I was being biased. And
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  then when I finally did over time, I was like, Okay, this
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  is this is the right move. I'm really glad to have them on the
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  songs. But at first it is like someone's taking your baby away and you're
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  like ah, Then you realize the baby's and paint in the ass, and
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  you know, I take it, take it. Yeah, yeah, I'm
• 13:33
  just trybing my water bottle. One here we go. I ran out of
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  water. Oh good man, yeah, oh good Now. The press release
• 13:43
  says that Condell features you my spiker's adventurous and intense music to date. Would
• 13:48
  you agree with that? Stemen? Uh, Yeah, I think so.
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  I'll say I think these songs are just really potent. You know, we
• 14:03
  have a lot like the Spirit's album is a little bit more of a journey.
• 14:07
  There's songs that we go real deep, like face It and Spirits and
• 14:11
  turn it Up. Like those songs just have so many parts and so many
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  twists and turns, and this album is a little bit more to the point.
• 14:24
  You know, it's just hit, play and go. You know,
• 14:28
  there's not a lot of you know, bands like Tool where you really got
• 14:33
  to let the music grow and you have to absorb it. And this album
• 14:39
  we wanted to be less like that, and I think we got that.
• 14:43
  It's just more potent. Yeah, did you say before that you had Sinister
• 14:46
  on the album too, you, sir. Is there a few Moale collaborations
• 14:50
  coming up? Yeah, well actually we have, so Sinister is the one
• 14:58
  coming up on the next single called st But then we have one more that's
• 15:01
  gonna be a surprise feature on the song free Fall. That's gonna be probably
• 15:07
  our last. Like, yeah, that's gonna be the big single on the
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  album. I'm really excited about that one. I got back to my nights
• 15:13
  that I've got and I'm going to see you what it is. But I'm
• 15:16
  not gonna tell anyone. Yeah, yeah, good good. I'm glad.
• 15:20
  You know. I got to keep a secret for now. Yeah, secrets,
• 15:24
  it's just not just not my and everyone else is. I'm fine with
• 15:28
  my feel on that. So I would just say overall, bro, like
• 15:35
  I would to say that your sound has grown and changed over the course of
• 15:39
  your albums from Shelter three now, how has it changed? Mm hmm.
• 15:50
  I think we've come back a little bit to our our guitar riff roots.
• 15:56
  I think we got we we got a little experiment on the stories we tell
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  ourselves where we wanted to have a little less heavy guitar and more like single
• 16:07
  Coil. I don't know how to describe it, but putting more emphasis on
• 16:12
  like distorted bass rather than heavy guitars. We kind of just wanted to do
• 16:17
  something different than all the other bands in our genre. But now we're kind
• 16:21
  of coming back to the heavier side of like what we like, so leaning
• 16:26
  into the guitar riffs and the heavy breakdowns and the bridges. But I think
• 16:30
  that overall the evolution of our sound is we're also getting the vocals on this
• 16:38
  album. We're really putting them on top of everything, you know, Like
• 16:42
  the last album, Spirits, the album the vocals were cooked into the music
• 16:48
  a lot more, almost like a tool, is a great example where the
• 16:52
  vocal is almost just like another instrument in the mix. It's not real in
• 16:56
  your face. It's kind of more subdued. Where is this album The vocals
• 17:00
  are much more in your face? Are you happy about that? Aren't you?
• 17:06
  Yeah? Yeah? For selfish reasons, yeah, I noticed what I
• 17:11
  did. Have been research about you guys last night, and at the start
• 17:15
  of your career, you guys sort of struggled a little bit and finding representation.
• 17:18
  He's been independent for a hell of a long time, did a lot
• 17:22
  of stuff yourself, but now he's founding way to better noise music, mate,
• 17:25
  Like it's a pretty impressive growth. Like it's sort of isn't it easier
• 17:30
  in respect these days now you've got that big representation Or was it better when
• 17:33
  you just started in control of everything yourselves? It's Uh, I don't know.
• 17:42
  It really is like a double edged sword a lot of times, because
• 17:49
  there's moments when I think the label weighs in on stuff and brings certain wisdom
• 17:56
  to the table because they've gone through certain things with other bands, and they
• 18:00
  bring kind of a really methodical process to what we do in regards to how
• 18:06
  they want to roll out the album and how they want to do certain things.
• 18:08
  But then there's other times where it's really frustrating and difficult because they're so
• 18:15
  methodical and I would say maybe dogmatic about their process that we many times don't
• 18:22
  fit into that because every band's very different and every band's fan base is very
• 18:26
  different. So there's certain situations where we feel like we need to move faster
• 18:33
  or we need to pivot faster. But once the ship gets in motion with
• 18:37
  them, they just don't change course. And there's times when that's good,
• 18:41
  and there's times when that's bad where we should have probably changed course sooner.
• 18:48
  So I don't know, man, it's a mixed bag. I think that
• 18:52
  it's it really is just like a I don't know, you almost you know,
• 19:00
  we needed it when we were growing and like mini bands do, it
• 19:04
  helped us grow. But there's also I don't know, it's a mixed bag.
• 19:10
  But you know, everyone at the label we love and we're very happy.
• 19:12
  They're they're they're fighting. I'll say this, we're in a much better
• 19:15
  place now with the label than we were like two years ago. We were
• 19:19
  at odds and now we're back aligned again, so that's really good. You
• 19:25
  guys are understandably doing a pretty big run of shows later on you see,
• 19:30
  to close it out. But have you had many discussions to get into Australia
• 19:33
  yet? Is it gonna happen next year? You reckon, Yeah, we're
• 19:37
  we're really trying to make it happen next year. It's it really just comes
• 19:42
  down to the right timing and the right opportunity. But I'm I'm feeling pretty
• 19:49
  optimistic that something will happen for twenty twenty five. Fantastic, All right,
• 19:53
  Johnny, Well, thanks very much for you talking today might be I don't
• 19:56
  like it up early for anybody, but you've you might be small, so
• 20:00
  thank you. It's very great. Well, I appreciate you not hitting shoes
• 20:04
  on the alarm clock. There crash brown lies, last West lies. It's
• 20:30
  son track Swiss backs asn't a tracklcation going ship on the four songs calling up
• 20:41
  being bad time, franchise merchandise till one bill mouse so said, oh ring
• 20:52
  down one stand stars come and now I'm gonna have two face will stay and
• 21:02
  shay stop. Well yeah, I trun bracklized why long money just aside his
• 21:42
  son le set blow is an extragipation or leave ship for songs, card back
• 21:55
  rap size and brand shot orgognized for the last said oh bray say stop two
• 22:11
  phase boy stays sad as sp well, well, my son God I sad
• 22:48
  side outside stop side wide southside rat will house sat will laugh said wait he
• 23:23
  said stop two says they stays in the checkouts s scre scre spoaking in