Interviews : “Let the music speak for itself” – An Interview With Alex Hofmann (Fallujah)

Alex Hofmann – Fallujah

Fallujah is one of the greatest bands of our time. Period. The death metallers from San Fracisco have been making waves in the metal world with their unique style of music. Ranging from atmospheric, ambient tones to heavy guitars and blast beats; then to haunting female vocals: there’s no shortage of creativity and unpredictibility when you listen to these lads. With three amazing full-length albums to their credit, and thousands of fans across the world, Fallujah is all set for their first ever shows in Australia which kick off next week alongside Killswitch Engage. Metal Obsession sat down with vocalist Alex Hofmann to have a chat about their latest album ‘Dreamless’.

“I’m doing really well, thanks,” Hofmann opens. “It’s great talking to you again. We’ve been travelling a lot, had the whole of January off and now we’re looking forward to coming down under for the first time!” Alex also shared his thoughts on what to expect considering this is the first time the band are touring in our country. “Well, I hope the fact that we’re playing with Killswitch Engage means it won’t suck; I mean, that’s my lowest level of expectation, we have so many friends down there, people kept telling us to come down there. Now that we’re finally coming, I would hope that in the opportunity that we have in playing such big shows, that the kids show up.” You heard the guy! Don’t miss this when it comes to your city!

Stylistically, Killswitch Engage and Fallujah are very different bands from one another, but are both definitely great bands to see together. “It’s awesome,” Hofmann enthuses. “We got an email and the offer was amazing. We’ve been trying to come down there for a really long time. Ultimately, this offer we got was ten times better than anything else we were offered. I know Meshuggah’s tour starts when ours ends and I know Thy Art got the opening slot for that one. I was like, ‘Fuck!‘ Those are two sweet ass tours happening at the same time. Originally I was going to stay for about a week in Melboure. Unfortunately, we’ll be starting our American tour then that’s two months long.

“I do my best to keep up; I can function on not much sleep. If I have to spend 30 hours on a plane, I’ll just pop one in and I’ll be fine. At this point I’m really used to it. Every tour is a new thing. The flight to Australia is so long: we fly from Philadelphia to Auckland and on the way back it’s from Perth to Indianapolis; so one middle-of-nowhere place to another middle-of-nowhere place.”

Fallujah has made a lasting impression over the last few years bringing to the fore music that is very different from what you would normally heat floating around the metal world. I asked him if it was overwhelming sometimes, as to the kind of attention the band receives? To which he replied, “No, not really. I’ve been in the front seat watching the growth of the band as well as financially, online buzz, etc. For every new development, I’m right there for it; so if you get overwhelmeed, you start slipping up. To me the momentum has been very gradual, which is kind of what I hoped for.”

‘Dreamless’, out now via Nuclear Blast Records

Their third full-length album, Dreamless, was released last year and definitely topped quite a few end-of-year lists for being a more focused record, with a magnificent atmosphere and diverse nature exhibiting the bands’ experimentation with new elements while keeping their signature sound. “You’re exactly right, it’s more focused and concise – more directed at making a cohesive record. That’s really what we meant to do. We approached it the exact same way, we write it with computers. Scott is the main writer and spends most of his time in his room, formulating riffs and composing. The approach was essentially the same. But really, it’s not so much the approach changing, it’s just that you get better at doing it.” Lyrically, while the previous album The Flesh Prevails centres around Alex’s own personal experiences, Dreamless has a very different but ingenious story behind it. “The main specific theme of all the songs is that it’s based off of a particular film or instances in a film or different characters. [It’s] a new thing I’ve been doing, stylistically anyway. Last summer when I was working on lyrics for the album, I was actually working in the film industry up in Vancouver. The whole point was that I wanted to take a lot of the powerful points of a film that I’d witnessed while working on it, and apply to my own favourite moments of film, as well as apply those emotions to the music as creatively as I can. The best part for me though, is that I don’t say which film coincides with which song. Some are obvious, but I’m not really revealing it to anyone. A lot of people have pretty much guessed some of the songs and what movies they relate to but even when they do, I don’t really tell them whether they’re right or wrong so it’s like my own freaky mind game that I play with people. I think you’ll be able to figure some of them out, but some of them are way too abstract.” There’s something to get your brain juices flowing!

The artwork (painted by artist Peter Mohrbacher) ties together the various sounds on the album and Alex feels it does justice to their new record. “I spent more time on the artwork than I did on anything else because all the searching, colouring, packaging is all handled by me. I try and find a piece that evokes the same emotions as the album does and when I looked at this artwork by Peter, it’s kind of aesthetic, isolated; while also, there’s a definite atmosphere: androgynous, genderless, so obscure exactly like the figure is. You know that it’s something emotional and I think we nailed it!”

Given the number of labels attached to the band, I found it important to get Alex’s view on being categorized so much under various genres. “People spend too much time labelling the music. They need to call it something, they need to have these sub-genres and get caught up in it because in a certain way, these sub genres are a huge part of their identity. ‘I’m a deathcore guy; a brutal slam guy’. It’s ridiculous the way people choose music to define their identity. It is a stupid idea even though we’re encouraged to do that. Put it on for them instead of talking about it and letting the music speak for itself. There’s so many kids who are so full of themselves, that if they hear a certain number of words or the dexcriptiion of a certain type of genre they’re just not interested. Even if they’re open minded, it’s because you say, ‘this is tech-death’, and in their minds, they say to themselves ‘I dont like this kind of music’, when in truth, they would have otherwise just listened to it had they not heard you say that it is tech-death. Their minds switch off almost instantly. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the scene. Metal is a very niche, tribal kind of scene.”

Fallujah kick off their tour with Killswitch Engage* next week (alongside a special one-night only headline show in Melbourne at the Workers Club on Monday, March 6th – *Killswitch Engage not appearing; instead joined by local acts, Hollow World and Dyssidia). Presented by Select Touring and Blue Murder, be sure to grab your tickets to these shows on the following dates!

www.selecttouring.com

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