The Hell have cultivated such a great online presence via social media, that you’d almost get a pass for not being that familiar with their music and thinking they’re nothing more than online provocateurs. That’d be a mistake. The band’s second album, Groovehammer, is a fun fusion of punk, metal and hardcore that complements their anonymous personalities. From breaking up for the sole purpose of announcing a reunion tour, to making fun of publicity stunts, the brattiness and brashness of their music is matched by their online persona. With that in mind, when we were given the opportunity to talk to the band’s frontman, Nails, we jumped at it. Needless to say, some of the language in this interview is NSFW.
Hey Nails, you ready to talk some shit?
Of course, it’s what I do.
It seems you do that best, and your band has a really good history of fucking with people and other bands, are you doing it for the attention, or are you all legitimately horrible people inside?
We’re really, really horrible people, all of us. We are, we genuinely hate everyone.
Well you recently had a run in with Satan, how did that turn out?
That was good, I mean, he was shit-talkin’ us in a bar, and you know, we ripped his head off. It was good though, it was a good laugh. He understood it.
I would hope so, do you typically kill anybody that starts a beef with you?
Yeah, anybody who’s tried we’ve either successfully killed, or we’re working on it because we’re all very, very tough. People tend to overstep their mark and we just have to kill ‘em, kind of make an example of them basically.
Well it doesn’t get more tough than killing Satan. Do you have any plans for starting any beefs in the near future?
Yeah, I mean we’ve kind of done bands now, I think we’re gonna start beef with any other public figure who, regardless of whether or not they know who we are, they will get involved and be killed eventually. So maybe Larry David, or I don’t know, maybe Mr. Bean.
Now were you all born assholes, or is this something you’ve been working on over the years?
Well, we’ve definitely honed our craft, but we were all born assholes, yeah, but we’ve been working on it ever since. Practicing our techniques, making sure we get it spot on. It’s an art some people say.
Speaking of art, you’ve been jumping into the culinary arts game with your unique style of blending PBR, mustard, and lemons. Do you have any plans to start up a restaurant in the future?
Yeah, but funnily enough I’ve already started one and it’s called the PBR Mustard Lemon Joint, and it’s quite small, we don’t get many customers at the moment, but people will latch on. We do the PBR Lemon Mustard burger, the Mustard Lemon PBR sandwich. What else do we do? This is embarrassing, because it’s my restaurant, but we do loads of stuff based on PBR, lemon, and mustard. It’s a very unique combination of flavors.
You recently all broke up, and announced your first reunion tour, do you plan on going on a farewell tour afterwards?
I think, yeah. After the reunion tour, we’ll break up and do a farewell tour, then reunite and do another reunion tour by the end of next year I think is the plan. I think they tend to sell better than any other normal tours, so we’ll just be doing farewell tours and then reunion tours sort of on and off for the rest of time.
The beautiful cycle of making money. Do you think you’ll get to a point in your career where you will have a Wikipedia page dedicated to you, and edited by everyone that hates you?
I hope so. That’s been a real dream of mine. Unfortunately though, because we’re so secret and secretive, people don’t really know what’s right. You wouldn’t be able to write that much just because nobody knows anything about us, do you know what I mean? With the bandanas and that.
Do you have any plans to bring your fuckery over the US in the foreseeable future?
Yes we do, it’s all top secret like our identities at the moment, but we’re coming. Don’t worry about that.
After you guys broke up, was your motivating factor to get back together based on the fact that people were excited that you were no longer a band?
Yeah that was the main thing; I think that the reaction of people to us breaking up was “brilliant, I’m so glad you guys are done.” We thought that was great because we could get back together and annoy all those people even more, again, and sort of perpetuate that cycle of irritation.
Now when you guys signed to Prosthetic Records, were they aware of the fuckery that your dicks were prone to engage in?
Well I think so, because as you may or may not know, we actually kidnapped E.J. (Johantgen) and that’s the only reason we got signed. So I think he knew what he was doing, and even if he didn’t, he had to learn.
According to your Facebook, the band is comprised of you, Nails, Black Mist, Nice Guy, Jackhammer, Early Man, ‘plus 30 or so other cunts.’ Who are these mysterious cunts, and what are their roles in the band?
You’ve got Crystal Death, he shouts. You got Bag Hound, and he shouts, and you got Silver Phantom, Honey Badger, they shout. They all shout, I think. Some of them drink our rider, and some of them drink our rider and shout, and some of them shout.
So a combination of drinking and shouting?
Yeah, drinking and shouting really. I suppose that’s what we, the main members do as well.
Now do you plan on changing and selling out once you get to a major label? Cutting your hair, taking off the bandannas?
Yeah, I actually spoke about this last night, we’ve decided that we’re basically gonna write a pop album as soon as we possibly can in order to sell out because there’s more money in selling out, really. We’re gonna have really Disney choruses, and sing-alongs, there’ll be a ballad, sort of Bon Jovi style, a power ballad, but the lyrics will remain the same regardless of the music being a little more Disney. We’ll still have the same lyrics, and that way people, although they’ll say we sold out, we’ve been writing lyrics like this since day 1, which is about a year ago. So I reckon we’ll sell out within the next twelve months on so.
Will the US tour be coming before, or after the sell out?
It will be during the sell-out. We’ll probably get way ahead of ourselves on that tour, develop some drug problems, and then decide that the only way to get ourselves out of the debt we’ve got ourselves in from being a credible underground hardcore band is basically to become an Avenged Sevenfold cover band, or maybe do some Motley Crue covers, or even go as far as to do Nickleback. We actually do a cover of ‘This is How You Remind Me.’
Do you think we will see you cover a full Nickleback album in the future?
A whole cover album, yeah, Silver Side Up? Brilliant album. We’ll probably cover that whole album and release that, again within the next 12 months.
What other plans do you have to take over the world?
What plans do we have to take over the world? I think we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing until people just submit and say ‘you can do whatever you want now, he’s the world, it is yours, you own the world.’ That is probably the endgame.
Since I’m from America, and quite frankly people over here find the way British people talk fascinating, will you say something very British to me?
A British thing? Let me think of something really, really British. So if you wanted to say ‘Can you stop doing that and grab me a hot beverage?’ I’d say ‘make just a sec, can you fuck right off and grab me a cup of tea please? That’s a quite British thing to say.
When deciding what sound you guys were going for musically, what bands were you NOT influenced by?
We were not influenced by Queen. We were not influenced by The Doobie Brothers. We were not influenced by Train, that band that did “Drops of Jupiter.” We were not influenced by Black Sabbath, who I believe did Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club. We weren’t influenced by Sugar Ray. We weren’t influenced by Unwritten Law, and we weren’t influenced by Blink-182, or Boxcar Racer, and we weren’t influenced by The Black Dahlia Murder. We weren’t influenced by them, and many more.
Do you have any parting words you would like to say to either me, or any of your fans?
Yeah, you’re all dickheads.
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment coming from you, but I appreciate the sentiment.
[Laughs] That is a compliment, trust me.
