We’re thrilled to have Canadian DIY indie-folk band The Burning Hell playing for us on Friday 12th September. These guys make beautiful tunes and are as thought-provoking as their name would have you believe, so we simply had to meet ’em…
Hey The Burning Hell! Who do we have with us? Could you introduce yourself to readers please?
This is Mathias here. I play guitar and sing songs in The Burning Hell. We’ve existed as a band in one form or another for many years, but the lineup changes from album to album – the only constants are me and my partner, Ariel Sharratt, who plays bass, woodwinds, drums, and whatever else she feels like playing. On this tour we’ll also have Maria Peddle on violin, Jon McKiel on drums, and Jay Crocker on guitar.
Wonderful! Well, thank you for joining us! You’re embarking on a nice big and juicy UK tour at the tail end of the summer, and you’re stopping off at our place along the way. Anywhere in particular you’re excited to revisit or anywhere you’ve never gigged before that you’re looking forward to visiting?
Well I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that we’re excited to play at The Bodega – we’ve always had a soft spot for Nottingham, but this will be our first time at your venue. We also love making our annual return to the Hebden Bridge Trades Club (the only socialist venue I’m a card-carrying member of). We also try to visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on every UK tour, so we’ll have to try and squeeze that in!
Not long ago, you released your new album, ‘Ghost Palace’. What is this album about? Does the album look similar to how you thought it would when you set out to start writing it?
Ghost Palace is about death. But, you know, in a fun way. Honestly, almost every Burning Hell record has something to do with the end of the world, and this one’s no exception. But it’s more focused on investigating and even celebrating what we might leave behind. We took our time over a few years making it, coming back to it now and then with the pandemic-induced laissez-faire approach we can’t seem to shake. So, in many ways it turned out nothing like how it started – not to mention we’ve added whole new human beings to the band since the beginning of this record.
I’m sure there is excitement in both recording an album and touring an album, and I’m sure both can be very rewarding in different ways. Which do you prefer though?
If I had to choose to do just one for the rest of my life, I’d say recording. It’s endlessly creatively rewarding, and in the best-case scenario, you get a huge amount of control over the process. But touring a new album is fun because it’s always a bit unpredictable how the songs will go over with audiences, and how they’ll develop as the tour goes on.
Can you tell us a little bit about the name of your band? ‘The Burning Hell’ might invoke an image in one’s head that is different to the kind of music you guys make. Is there a thrill in the ambiguity of it?
I named the band many years ago, after a religious nut handed me a pamphlet that said I was going to “the burning hell.” I had just finished a home-recording of some sad folk songs, and I didn’t want to use my own name, and The Burning Hell sounded like the opposite of the music I had made. I was young and thoughtless, but the name stuck. I think it fits, somehow.
What’s your dream rider? Go wild. No budget!
It’s always been funny for me to imagine a time when it was standard for bands to put outrageous things on their riders, because it’s just absolutely alien to the world of DIY touring I came up in. But I love all those stories about artists asking for “brown socks” (heroin), “white socks” (cocaine) and so on. I would honestly love actual brown socks on a rider, as long as they were nice: no lighter than chocolate brown, and a good wool blend. I would also like a case of proper tequila, an assortment of olives from every country in southern Europe, an array of comics and zines by local artists, an Icelandic pony that I could ride around the venue on, and a puppy to hang out with between soundcheck and the show.
We’ll see what we can do! Thank you so much Mathias for joining us for a chat. Tickets for The Burning Hell‘s Bodega show are on sale here
