Harlott Completed interview by Keith Clement
Greetings from MHF Magazine! A pleasure to have Australia’s Thrash heroes “Harlott”. How are you guys doing?
A lot better after having been called ‘Thrash Heroes’! Things are good. Busy but that’s lifes I guess. Everything is falling into place and reception for what we’ve been teasing with over the last few weeks has been very positive so it’s a good time to be us.
Your third full length studio album “Extinction” is going to be released on the 7th of April, what are your thoughts on the outcome?
Well hopefully it sells because if it doesn’t the label will almost certainly drop us, and if that happens we might have to give back our free t-shirts which will suck. All signs so far would suggest we are on track to surpass the progress we made with album 2, and that’s all we can ask for at the end of day. To not be getting worse…
Harlott’s songwriting are more on the problems of humanity, like how we are wasting our lives on war, religion and finally end to humanity. Why did you chose this topic?
It’s a pretty easy topic to find good material on. We have to have angry words for our angry music, and the human condition is something that we find fascinating. We’ve advanced so far in so many ways, but the primitive stupidity of our species has yet to be weeded out, and the way things are run, it’s unlikely to be corrected before our extinction. May as well use all this glorious stimuli to put words to our tunes, and sit back and enjoy the fireworks.
Can you please tell us how it all began? What are the ups and downs you faced in the formation of the band?
We formed as part of a high school battle of the bands, and after absolutely butchering the show and embarrassing ourselves to the utter limit of our teenage self-esteems, we decided against all suggestions otherwise to keep things going. We’ve had several line-up changes and we quite proudly aren’t even that terrible anymore, but we are still, at heart, a bunch of kids just banging out tunes together on various platforms. That’s what its always been about, and that’s what it always will be: The love of music. It brings us our joy. We’ve been lucky enough that all the things we don’t enjoy about forming a band have been taken care of for us by the talented team at Metal Blade.
In 2015 you toured along with Annihilator– can you tell us how you felt about touring with them? Do you feel it was a successful one?
Coming from Australia, its hard not to consider any kind of overseas exposure a success. That’s the goal of any band down here: to make it to other countries and play some shows, because its so hard to do from here. The tour with Annihilator was great, and our suspicion that it was going to work out well was well founded and proven to be correct. They have a loyal fanbase of old school thrashers, and we managed to turn a fair few heads with our show, so we were pretty happy pretty much every night with how it went down. And Annihilator ended up being just great guys and heaps of fun, so it was a good time.
Harlott is known for its speed and aggressiveness, you have taken thrash metal into a new level. How is the reception of the band locally in Melbourne?
Really guys, you’re making us blush. we have a loyal following down here, but we’ve been at it long enough that pretty much every fan is a friend of the band, so playing shows to the hometown is always a of a piss up. And for the sake of translating that, a ‘piss up’ is any event in which the participants get horrendously drunk.
Since a new album is coming up, do you guys already have a plan for a worldwide tour? What are those lucky countries?
We wish we had better news for you other than ‘it’s in the works’. We’ve been talking to our contacts about getting overseas but everything is very tentatively lining up so we can’t confirm anything yet. But we also can’t deny anything.
Can you please share some of your experiences from the Europe tour? Did you have a good time, were you able to promote the band like you wanted it?
English food is horrible. Spanish crowds are mental. The swiss have money. Eastern European women are second to none. Germans know how to thrash. The Polish know how to drink. There’s some other countries that we haven’t mentioned there but the entire place is alive with metal. They are so enthusiastic and supportive and the really got into our stuff despite being the lowly opening act. Can’t wait to go back.
Harlott is in its early stage now– how do you look into the future, what are your plans for the future?
More metal! We’ve got a few tracks ready for album 4, and once we know what our touring plans will be, we can look at booking some studio time. We love what we get to do, and we just plan on putting everything we have into it, until we are too knackered to do it well.
A pleasure to have this opportunity to interview you– thanks for your time! Do you have any message for the fans around the world and for the readers?
Something we love to say down under… #howgoodisheavymetal?
Keith Clement / MHF Magazine
