THE HOLLOW

Heavy as fuck band from Newcastle, just put out an EP and are about to hit the road with Rise and Fall and Blkout.

I had the pleasure of touring with them last month and apart from being absolutely great dudes they definately made my head explode every night!

Check out what Mr Magin has to say.

First up, How did the hollow come about? who does what in the band?

Aaron and I had been playing in some bands together, and we decided we wanted to do something a bit heavier, with more a Cleveland metalcore sound. Aaron wrote some songs and we jammed with a few drummers before settling on Mitch who drummed on the demo and did our first few shows. Mitch left and Biggie took over on drums, and Shaun joined on second guitar and the line up has stayed the same since. Jesse singing, Aaron and Shaun on guitar, Biggie on drums, and myself on bass.

You guys just did a bunch of east coast dates with Homewrecker, how was that?

It was just like going on a road trip with some really good friends and playing a few shows in between. Plus kidnapping Penno and letting him wild was awesome.

Your EP came out just before that tour, hows the response been so far?

The response has been fairly positive so far. The tour was a good way to get the EP out there and play the new songs to new crowds.

You guys are pretty metallic, what bands would you say are the main influences on The Hollow?

Integrity, Tragedy, Rise and Fall etc etc.

The Newcastle scene seemed pretty dormant there for a while, what was the problem there?

It probably comes down to a few of the bigger bands like the Dead Walk breaking up and kids just losing interest. Around that same time bigger Australian and overseas touring bands seemed to stop coming through Newcastle so I think that had a bit of an effect on it too.

Any new bands i should check out from Newy?

I would have said The Rains, but you already know them and they went and broke up.(Motherfuckers!!- Ed)

I see that you guys are touring with Rise and Fall soon, how did that come about?

I'm honestly not entirely sure. I knew they were touring over here with Blkout and one night at work I got a phone call from Jesse just telling me we got offered to do a tour, I asked him who with, and he said Rise and Fall and that was that. We're all really stoked on it though and keen for the tour. Playing outside of Newcastle and Sydney is always heaps of fun and to have the chance to do it with a band that has alot of influence on us is pretty exciting.

Any plans to do a full length?

Yeah we've been talking about it and throwing some ideas around lately. We've written a song or two that we will hopefully put toward the full length. Hopefully we will get a chance to do some solid writing after the Rise and Fall tour and really begin working on it.

Whats your song writing process like?

One of us will usually come up with a few riffs and a bit of structure, show it to the rest of the band and then the rest of us will have some input around how we could bring it all together, and then we begin jamming it as a band. Jesse will then usually write some lyrics to it or fit some lyrics to it that he has already written.

With the amount of amazing bands Newcastle has produced (Arms reach, FMD, LLR etc.) and the records they have put out, do you think there is any kind of pressure to write records of the same calibre?

Yeah sure, Newcastle has a reputation for producing some great bands so there's always going to be a bit of pressure starting a new band here and writing a record. We try not to worry too much about that stuff though, we probably put more pressure on ourselves to write songs that we are happy with.

Last words/Shout outs?

Who dis?

Check them out on tour with Rise and Fall or here at:

www.myspace.com/thehollownc