hypergiant
Nov
23
5.20pm

HYPERGIANT // Supermassive Riff Lords


Sydney’s Hypergiant are aptly named, much like their stoner kindred spirits Mastodon or Bongzilla.

Big riffs, big muff, soon to be a really big deal. Releasing Father Sky this month, the heavy combo are set to meet that spirit above with a crushing blend of stoner, doom, metal, and psychedelia. Even their live shows incorporate a trippy visual element – ain’t that somethin’? We caught up with guitarist and vocalist Nathan Lee, with bassist Lachlan Davidson lurking somewhere in the aether. Well, perhaps not.

LISTEN: Hypergiant Takeover Hysteria Radio tonight at 7PM!

Hysteria: Let’s jump right in. Father Sky. Wow. Just reminds me of Sleep, a bit of Mastodon, High on Fire, that kind of thing. Tell us a little bit about putting all this one together. It goes for an hour, which is incredible considering how short albums are of late.

Nathan: Well, yeah, jeez. An hour long record. I mean, it was a long time coming. This album took us two years, really, of kind of intermittent work to put together. We’re glad it’s kind of got that sort of epic length kind of thing going on. LP pressing will be expensive, though.

Tell us a little bit about the sort of concept, talking a little about astrophysics and thermodynamics and all that kind of, you know, easy to understand stuff.

It’d be fraudulent of me to claim that I have a solid understanding of astrophysics, but I find all that stuff interesting just cause, I dunno, just a certain relation to our lives with all that stuff. We’re all living in this kind of physical universe and it holds sway over our lives, you know? Entropy, the idea that everything eventually kind of falls apart and rots, is something we all face. I mean death is, you know, death comes for us all in the end kind-of-thing. I don’t know, I mean, I guess talking about the universe, to me, it’s interesting because on one hand it’s such an incredible miracle, if I may use such term, that we’re all here and just the scale of everything. And the same time it’s brutal because ultimately it’s pretty desolate, pretty desolate place and nothing ultimately matters. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I was having a shit day before but you made it so much better.

[Laughs] The thing is, it’s ultimately a positive message. The album is … the narrative on the album isn’t necessarily optimistic. I mean, there is a narrative there, there’s a story there. It ends with no human beings left alive and not being any sort-of stars, well you know, not any consciousness remaining for the universe to experience itself, if I want to butcher some [Carl] Sagan there.

We’re just sort of stagnating and we get bogged down in the things that keep us from progressing and keep us from looking after each other. I mean, I guess that’s the point. It’s like, if everyone felt as if we had this place that we were going and it was going to benefit all of humanity, why would we continue fighting each other for resources and consuming shit? It wouldn’t make sense.
[NATHAN]

It’s interesting you reference Sagan there cause a lot of people, me included, have this sort of pessimism at the moment where we’re never going to get through the Great Filter. Space exploration is a non-issue. Do you feel that gloomy attitude towards space and the heavens?

I mean, it is true that we have a lot of problems, which are all seem more immediate. But I think when it comes to things like not just space exploration but a general sense of exploration, discovery, and pushing ourselves further is something we need to continue to aim for, because otherwise what are we doing if we’re not progressing forward? We’re just sort of stagnating and we get bogged down in the things that keep us from progressing and keep us from looking after each other. I mean, I guess that’s the point. It’s like, if everyone felt as if we had this place that we were going and it was going to benefit all of humanity, why would we continue fighting each other for resources and consuming shit? It wouldn’t make sense.

I think that’s the thing, it’s the whole idea, I think, about space exploration is that it’s inspiring us to move forward. Together, you know.



You guys hired Clayton Segelov to do mixing and Brad Boatright to do mastering, who has also worked with Sleep, High On Fire, Converge. Was that integral to how you guys wanted Father Sky to sound?

Yeah, Brad seemed like a natural choice. He makes great records. He seemed to me to be flexible. On one hand, he remastered Dopesmoker and on the other hand he also did Toxic Holocaust records, which are very, very different sounding. He also did stuff for Iron Reagan. That said, he was also pretty affordable. He ticked all the boxes. [Laughs]

Apparently if Australia has a doom scene, Melbourne’s where it’s at, if you want to make it “big.” Is there any truth to that?

Well, a doom band probably won’t be the next Metallica. I mean for those of us who listened to metal all our lives or punk or what-have-you any other form of music that is reasonably extreme, to us a lot of doom bands might not … We’re certainly on the lighter side of what doom or stoner or what-have-you kind of scenes, there are bands that are much, much heavier than us. But for the average person who haven’t acclimatised over years to heavy music, its pretty scary stuff to a lot of people. Most people can swallow Enter Sandman when they hear that on the radio. But that’s about it.

What’s next for Hypergiant? Is a tour on the cards?

We have some shows booked for January, we’re starting to put a few things together now. Also, we’re booked through February as well. Start of March, we’re gonna be, it looks like we’re gonna be going down to Melbourne. We’re gonna try and get a weekend of shows down there. We’re gonna start looking at heading up north towards Brisbane and what-have-you, and we’re just gonna keep booking shows from there, see how far we can get. I would like to get over to Perth though. A long way but definitely worth it.

If you had absolute control of everyone’s ears at every given time, how would you want people to experience Hypergiant first, so to speak?

I think I’d like people to listen to the record. On the other hand, we’ve put out a video Perseus Arm recently, the first track of the record and it utilised a bunch of projection visuals that we’ve been working so, all that stuff isn’t quite ready to go yet, it’s turned out to be a huge piece of work, creating visuals for an hour long record. It’s like coming together, everybody putting together a feature film. But we will be incorporating all of that stuff in our show in the future and that’s something I’m looking forward to people seeing. So, at the moment? Definitely want people listening to that record. Then we’re going to be wanting people to come out, to get the whole experience.

WATCH > Perseus Arm

 


Father Sky is out now.

HYPERGIANT TOUR DATES

Friday, November 24: Club Engadine
Friday, December 8: The Record Crate, Glebe
Saturday, February 10: Dicey Riley’s, Wollongong
Saturday, February 24: Valve Bar, Sydney


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