Hella
Interview with Spencer Seim and Zach Hill
Words: Michael Spadoni
Photos: David B. Torch

There’s No 666 In Outer Space changed my life.  I don’t know if that is directly the fault of Hella, or if it was one of those right time /right album experiences.  Their most recent album is easily their most accessible and when it gets a hold of you, there is no turning back.  Nevertheless, if you’ve never heard of the band then you have to check them out on one of their stops through Florida.  If you have heard them before then you know exactly what I’m talking about.  I was fortunate enough to talk to the founding members of Hella, Spencer Seim and Zach Hill, and tried my best not to geek-out.  Here’s what you get.

REAX:  Hella has been known to go through drastic changes from one project to the next.  Is the current incarnation of the band going to stick, or will this evolve into something different by the time the next album is released?
Spencer Seim:  We brought some friends with us on tour in 2005 to perform stuff that Zach and I wrote, but this… with everyone writing and recording, is the new band.  It’s no longer Zach and I heading it anymore.  

REAX:  Would you consider this a prog-rock album, I mean not exactly Dream Theater territory… maybe more like early Magma or King Crimson?  Or, was that not your intention?
SS:  I don’t think so… I think that the record sounds the way it does because it’s what happens when we all get together and make music.  We didn’t have an idea of what our style was going to be when we started working on it.

REAX:  Do the unique Scott French custom guitars you’re playing now open up your creativity and playing style more or are you faced with the hurdle of learning a new way to plan an instrument?
SS:  I think it opens up possibilities, mainly with the recording aspect.  The main ways that I’ve used the nerdy electronics in music are for recording.  Some of it works in a live setting, but I have to play certain parts differently to get things to track right and to work because of the new technology I’m using.  So, I would say I have to learn new things with each new instrument, but it’s nothing drastic.

One of the guitars has nine outputs.  I can send a couple of the different pickups to a regular quarter inch output if it’s going into a regular mono amp.  I do need a breakout box so I can get a stereo output from the guitar.  I can set it so that the bottom three strings come out of the left side and the top three strings come out of the right side.  There is also an egg shaker inside and a bunch of different stuff that I can experiment with.  We did nine shows last year as a two piece and I experimented using the new guitars on the older songs.  It seems weird that I’m using guitars like that in a live setting because I’m basically making things more difficult for myself, but it is nice to have the options.

REAX:  The new Hella T-shirt design is amazing… the one with the horrible review you got in Spin printed on the front.  What is the story behind that and have you made lemonade from their lemons?
SS:  I think we thought it would be funny to have a bad review on our shirt.  First of all, the review is obviously uninformed and really not having anything to do with the music.  That person and the position they feel that they are in… in the music world and what strings they think they can pull…you know, it is what it is.  Anyone who is familiar with our music and has a brain would realize the same things that we did when we saw the review.  It’s funny the way it turned around.  Spin found out about it and write a little article about what we did which sent a ton of traffic to our T-shirt printer and actually sold us a bunch of shirts.  Basically the writer from Spin who wrote us a bad review on our new album really helped us out.

REAX:  What was the concept the artwork for “There’s No 666 In Outer Space”?
Zach Hill:  I prefer that people would take away what they would like to take away from it I would rather not give my personal assessment of it.  The artwork was done during the recording process so each one definitely affected the other.  It’s cohesive with what the album is about… which is perception, vanity, gluttony, etc..  There is nothing literal behind the artwork though, which is why we’re a little hesitant to give away the true meaning.  It’s more fun when we hear from other people what they think it means.