I shot some footage at the Arthouse for the Amenta headline tour. They were spreading their particular brand of blackened death metal across the country on their national V01D tour, and I also captured some intense footage from French band Hypno5e. Again the quality isn’t stellar, although the vibe created by both bands is quite cool, they are indeed unique. Hypno5e have a really cool take on experimental metal, going from sample-drenched ambience one minute to shredding tech djent to the next. Amazing musicians.
The Amenta, looking suspiciously like Genocide Organ
Also, I recently wrote up a piece on live music for Funproject, which includes some of the footage I’ve posted here. Have a read here. It’s just basically talking about why seeing live music is a worthwhile and underrated pursuit.
The Arthouse footage:
Check them out online if you want to hear their recorded output instead of my shoddy video footage haha:
– The Amenta – www.myspace.com/theamenta
– Hypno5e – www.myspace.com/hypno5e
HvH in 09. Photo courtesy of the HvH 
Sam (L) and Chris (R) at our interview. – Are you planning to work with Brian to write songs together, or do you aim to have them all done? Chris: That’s the thing with a producer. Personally I’d rather just go and have the songs finished. But he’s such an established dude, and has worked on so many good records, that I think are good anyway. I’m sure he’d have some pretty cool ideas. I’m sure he’s chopped up many different bands recordings. So any ideas he has we’ll take into consideration, it’s just whether or not it suits with what we are trying to do. – How do you think the line-up changes have affected the band? Chris: I think it’s totally different. Dynamically, it’s different; it’s changed the dynamics. We don’t fuck around as much, we’re a bit older than we were around the time of the EP. It’s just freedom now man, to write how we want to. We’re all stoked. – Why did you choose to fly over to the US to record your debut? What are the advantages over recording in Aus? Chris: The way that we discussed it is that we think the production of the EP was pretty up there, we were pretty happy with how that sounds. We wanted to make sure that the debut was a step upwards production-wise. Obviously the ability to work with someone like Brian, who has worked on some of my favourite records is a privilege, something that you totally want to take advantage of, being possible. So when he said “Yeah I’m keen to do it”, we were like “Alright, fuck it, let’s do it.. lets go over.” It opens doors, you get to meet people, just from recording with someone who works in the US, an established producer. – Have you finalised the label for distribution of the LP? Chris: *laughs, looks at Sam* Sam: *nods head saying no* Chris: We’ve settled on two labels, but legally I don’t think we can discuss that, we are in a bind with our previous label so we can’t really talk about that. Come back on the first of November *laughs*. – Are you looking at Australian or overseas labels? Sam: Yeah, I think we can talk about that. Chris: Distribution here, a label here for distribution, and a label overseas as an actual label for the band. – I understand Chris2 (guitar) wrote Forfeiture, now Joey (keyboards) has started to write tracks for the LP, how is his style different? Chris: With the EP, Chris came to the band with the songs on the EP, 90% of what he wrote is on the EP, we still mucked around with structure and we all had our own little input writing the EP. When it comes to the album, Joey has probably written just over half of it, and Chris has written the rest of it. We definitely played around more in the band room, with stuff like structure, just trying to create the right vibe, get it sounding the way we want it to. It definitely had a different impact, writing differently. It’s all worked very well. And what was behind Joey starting to write tracks for the LP? Chris: That goes back. Myself, Joey, Chris and Ryan played in a band before HvH (Beyond Mine). We wrote a bunch of stuff and the direction started changing, so we dumped that name and got a new name and started writing everything else. Once we had done that Chris had already written five of the EP songs, we wanted to release something, record and play shows. Joey was writing that whole time. In Beyond Mine, Joey wrote some of the songs for that band as well. 
Sam and Chris feed the need for nicotine. – House has completed several national tours. Which band has been your favourite to share the stage and tour with? Chris: Mary Jane Kelly. I guess they are now an aggressive hardcore punk band. They’re just the best dudes though, we have the wildest times. I love that band *laughs*. Bullet for my Valentine we didn’t even see when we toured with them. We never even saw the dudes once, they were just backstage before the set. Sam: Naz Vow (Nazarite Vow) Chris: Naz vow was fun as well, they are a band from Adelaide. Sam: Good stage energy. Chris: They put on a good show for sure, that was a good tour – What was is like touring with (now defunct melodic hardcore band) Rex Banner? Chris: That was a ball. We’re still really good friends with one of their guitarists, Kelly. That band was heaps of fun. That tour was actually really good. We played with another band called A Secret Death, they broke up as well. Really fun tour. Actually every band, bar Bullet for my Valentine has been a bunch of sweet dudes. They were just rockstars, we never saw them *Sam and Chris laugh*. – House has management and books through Destroy All Lines now. What are the advantages of having agents do booking for you? Do you think using agents is necessary to organize the types of tours you do now? Chris: I don’t think it’s necessary, but it makes it a lot easier. Because obviously Cam, at Destroy All Lines books for us. He knows all the promoters, all the people who work at the venues, he deals with them regularly. If we want to play any specific venues we’ll be like “yo dude we’d like to play this venue” and he knows them straight away. He can hit them up the same day. It’s not essential but it makes life a lot easier when you don’t have to do everything yourself. Sam: It’s even easier because he’s a really good dude and helps us out heaps. Chris: He’s like a seventh member of our band, he’s just the best dude. He’s being working with us since day one. He books 50 people venues to the 800 people venues. It’s just been a pleasure full stop. Our management is US management, Destroy All Lines don’t actually manage us. We’re managed by Jerry Club, he lives in Los Angeles. He helped us get a foot in the door and start talking to US labels. He manages a band called Suicide Silence and a couple of other death metal bands like All Shall Perish. So he, again, same kind of deal he knows all the people we want to talk to. If we to talk to a specific label, he’s probably already has spoken to them previously. It makes it a whole lot easier to get going in terms of starting a conversation. – The trance and electronic elements in House has definitely made a lot of people notice the band. Is that side of the music going to be expanded on for the LP, or are you moving in a different direction? Sam: It’s still there. Chris: It’s definitely still there. I guess everything on the EP has just been expanded. The heavier parts are heavier, the poppy parts are poppier, the dancier bits are more dancy. I guess, it’s different… it is different, but I think it’s a natural progression, nothing dramatic I don’t think. – Having done several tours now, how has the crowd reaction changed? Are you getting a lot better response than the early tours? Chris: For sure, 100%. The recent shows.. we just played Perth for the first time, we’ve never been there before. Two of the three shows were sold out in ten minutes, the kids just knew all the words in all the sing-along parts. They sung along really loud, it’s amazing really, I’m still get taken aback by it, because I still remember the days when were playing to 25 people at Noise Bar in Brunswick. Now we play venues like Manning Bar, which we did on our Perth headline tour, there was like 750 people there, and everyone knew the words, and kids were going apeshit. It’s just amazing really. I still can’t get over it.
Melbourne Sound 