Band – Hail
Album – Transgression
Country of Origin – USA
Genre – Experimental/Industrial/Black Metal
Release Date – May 24, 2024
Label – Fiadh Productions
Author – Hayduke X
Review
Though this is meant to be a review of the EP “Transgression,” I’m going to start with some brief bonus coverage of the album “We Are Nothing,” which was released September 29, 2023 through Fiadh Productions. These two releases (“We Are Nothing” and “Transgression”) form the first two parts of a trilogy of releases by the PNW band Hail. To learn more about the upcoming third release, drop below the player for my interview with the band’s founder Carl Annala.
“We Are Nothing” is a dark and abrasive journey of near-tribal noise and power electronics. Hail have seemingly never been a project to rest on their laurels, running through a gamut of sounds and styles. A combination of logistics (in terms of who was available to contribute) and the bleak message being sent led to this rising demon of sound. Coming in at just under thirty minutes, spread across four tracks, this release is an obliteration of common musical tropes in raw rhythm and anger.
This particular release features the core duo of Carl Annala (vocals, guitar, noises, composition) and Set Sothis Nox La (vocals, guitar, noises), along with Lloyd Frank (bass, noises) and Bryan Sauder (drums, percussion, noises). Together they create an aural portrait of the insignificance of us “as individuals [in relation] to the whole.” (taken from the release page for this album of the Fiadh Productions Bandcamp found here) Annala adds:
The cover art features two mummies, a woman and a bound child, that I photographed at the San Diego Museum of man. These images function both as memento mori and as a reminder to my own difficult upbringing. This record, for me, stands defiantly against abuse everywhere.
“Transgression” continues the trilogy, diving more clearly into metal than the prior release, especially black metal. To be sure, this twenty-three or so minute EP is still experimental, with elements of noise, industrial, and more, but on “Transgression” the pendulum of the band does swing back towards metal. The same four musicians combined once again for this release.
Though the album is a mix of styles, and certainly has some quieter moments, overall it is aggressive and brutal, vicious and transgressive (which I believe is the point of the album, and the project generally). The title track includes some ominous spoken word at the beginning, over mournful strings, before exploding into a savage metal attack, as an example of the various contrasts.
It was through my contact with Fiadh Productions that I first discovered Hail. Originally founded in 1995 as a solo project by Annala, they have been around a long time and have a multitude of releases, covering a multitude of musical and anti-musical approaches. They remain one of the freshest boundary pushers on the edge of heavy music and are worth exploring. Have a listen, then jump below to read a comprehensive interview with Annala.
Interview
Hayduke X: Congratulations on the release of “Transgression.” I’m a big fan (in fact, I have my vinyl copy sitting beside me). Tell me how you’re feeling about it now that it’s out in the world.
Carl Annala: Releasing work on vinyl is always the goal and this one feels like winning! “Transgression” is the second of a trilogy of works recorded with Gabriel Espinoza at Winterbeast during the recent pandemic. The songs we recorded represent material we performed live over a ten year period. So, it’s a mix of old and new work. We were fortunate to record using grant funds that Gabriel acquired through the Regional Arts and Culture Council that gave us unlimited time. As we had this luxurious amount of time we took full advantage! In the end, we had either one very long album or two LP’s and one EP (Transgression being the EP). I think we are all tired of the double LP, three sided LP or the three LP releases, now so common in metal. It’s just too damn long to endure! Especially with noise included. I’d rather leave you wanting more than overwhelm you. All that said we are super proud of the “Transgression” EP and excited to hold that green record in our hands!
HX: Can you start by introducing yourself and your role in the band?
CA: Hi, my name is Carl Annala, my pronouns are he/him and I’ve been leading musicians into obscurity for the better part of the last 40 years!” I am Hail’s creator and artistic director although I do consider Set Sothis Nox Law as my co-bandleader.
I am a painter and former art instructor. My expressionist portraits of the forest are locally popular. I play music and have been a part of the Portland punk/metal/weird scene since the 1980’s. I’ve been in a big laundry list of bands, the highs and lows being The Hell Cows, Earth, Ape Grave, Plastic Horn Devil, Eggnapper, Mothra, Swamp Dick, Jagula and the Old Town Diamonds. I’ve shared the stage with the likes of Smegma, Sun City Girls, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, the Hickoids, Absu, Fauna, Morbid Congregation, Hell and so many more. Hail is my longest and most successful band. More recently I have been involved in dance, particularly the peculiar modern dance from Japan called Butoh. I am the artistic director of Ash Pillar Butoh and have danced solo internationally. I was raised by two classical musicians in a small Oregon town, McMinnville, a place where one might see bigfoot or a UFO.
HX: Take me back to the beginning. How and why did Hail come to be?
CA: I started Hail as a solo performance art project inspired by some disparate influences: first wave black metal and the antics of the Scandinavian scene, performance artists like Herman Nitsch, Joseph Beauys and Leigh Bowery, the film Begotten and butoh dance. When I started Hail, it was about being an iconoclast. My early performances were a pastiche of black metal involving elements of theater, drag, puppetry and pyrotechnics. I did solo performances at nightclubs and fetish cabarets, eventually growing Hail into a cast of seven actors that played the popular NXNW festival. We made huge messes, played a little black metal and got a little press. A few years later Set would move to Portland and we both wanted to play Black Metal in earnest. Unable to find a drummer we went with a drum machine. I had done time in the now legendary band Earth in 1990, so I was somewhat familiar with the drum machine. I was convinced that some Black Metal was so fast it had to be a machine, I was wrong, turns out. Set hooked us up with Tim Call (Weregoat etc.) who played drums with us for a little over a year. This was the late 90’s.
HX: For this release, Hail recorded as a quartet, but if I’m understanding correctly, the project is essentially a core duo with other musicians coming and going as needed. Do I have that correct? Tell me more about that.
CA: For the most part you are correct, however, it’s more about convenience than design. For instance I went to grad school in 2000 and took time off from Hail. This is when Set founded L’Acephale and Order of the Vulture. I might be wrong, but he could tell you. Great bands, right?! We had lost Tim to brighter horizons and started working on material as a duo, remotely. Set had moved to Corvallis and we sent tracks back and forth through the mail, recording in our own apartments, eventually creating about four releases. One of those was picked up by a label and released as a double vinyl album, “Frozen Grave.” During Set’s time in Corvallis he made friends with the Yob rhythm section of Isamu Sato (bass) and Travis Foster (drums), two of the nicest and most talented gentlemen in the scene. We held that line up for a few years, until the Yob star rose. Set and I would commute from Portland to Corvallis every Sunday morning! After that, we had recruited Nate Myers to play guitar so I could just “sing” but learning he played drums and we had just lost Travis… Nate is an incredible drummer. He is Mania, played drums in Mizmor and was the original bassist in Hell. We lost Nate to high tech employment in Seattle which led to Set and I making a pivot into Harsh Noise and Death Industrial for a good many years. Our current line up came out of a similar situation. We had recruited Bryan Sauder, Entrain, Malaise and others.., to be a noise trio but guess what? He is also an incredible drummer! Along with Lloyd Frank, bass and noise, formerly of Super Bad and Ritual Necromancy we now have a four piece that can flex between metal and noise. So it is more about using the strengths of the friends we collect like moss rather than a grand plan. The grand plan does have its place.
HX: What is your recording process?
CA: I don’t have much of a process, but I know what I want. I started with just a cassette four track, then used garageband on my mac. Most of the later releases are live sessions recorded on a Zoom. Only recently have we gone into a professional studio. In the studio, we record like any unprofessional rock band, scratch tracks and overdubs. For this trilogy with Fiadh, I wanted to use the studio as an artist tool, not just an accurate record of what we do live. So we did a lot of overdubs, all ideas welcome, lots of noise jam sessions and then edited the shit out of it. So what we are left with is better than what we can deliver in a club. I usually feel like my other records, previous bands and Hail releases, pale in comparison to the live experience. We Are Nothing, Transgression and the forthcoming Child of A Cursed Temple flip this equation for me. It makes me want to focus on recording.
HX: On your Bandcamp page, the following sentence appears: “This album is an expression of personal, sociopolitical and physical collapse.” What more can you tell me about what this means?
CA: This means exactly what you think, ideologically, metaphysically, metaphorically and physically: Collapse. Think of this EP as a place where Crass, SPK, Mayhem, Sartre, Orwell and MLK meet. We have been living in sociopolitical collapse our whole lives. I have personally experienced mental collapse episodes from childhood on. Depression and anxiety suck! Physical collapse generally refers to architecture and its failure or destruction. I love architecture. Modern and Concrete Brute especially. I also think demolition is beautiful. Einstruzende Neubauten has long been one of my favorite bands. The pieces on side B of Transgression are supposed to evoke the moments of earthquake and war, trapped within towers.
HX: What other themes are found on the album and throughout your discography?
CA: Satanism, paganism, mythology, horror, science fiction and power. We did write our longest Black Metal pieces around the mythological tales found in the Kalevala, the poetic edda of the Finnish people. Set and I are both part Finn and identify with the culture of Finland. It resonates. Finns are the underdog of the Scandinavians, no Vikings and no royalty, under the thumb of Sweden or Russia for hundreds of years. So punk.
HX: Tell me about the locked groove on the vinyl version of “Transgression.”
CA: It’s a great way to be artistically annoying.
HX: What can you tell me about the album’s artwork and more generally the band’s interactions with art and your artistic vision?
CA: For the most part I do all the art and design work on Hail releases. While I do use a computer and do my layouts using InDesign my source material is varied from photography to painting. The photographs are often mine but I have used fan photos ripped from the internet as well as the fine photography of Veleda Thorsson and Daniel Menche. The artwork of each record directly reflects the lyrical content of the release. “Transgression” features a photo of a mummified child on the front and a painting of a trepanned skull on the back. Death transgresses life and perhaps mummification is an attempt to lessen it. I can’t think of a greater transgression of the body than trepanation. The image of the trepanned skull is more than a metaphor for today’s man. It’s an actual index of physical collapse and survival (or redemption!)
I made physical stencils of the alphabet instead of using a font. This handmade look has more nuance and quality, as well as roughness. We will crave the hand made and imperfect as AI gets better and better. In truth, I had shown my design work to a friend who suggested I use a handmade letter set, and they were right on. This laborious process carries across all new Hail Fiadh releases.
Everyone in Hail is interested in art and its intersection with music so it’s an easy fit for my wild whims and artistic visions for the band. We all love sci-fi books and movies. We’re all well read and have common loves for Gene Wolf, Michael Morecock, Herbert, Dick, Tolkien, etc. Quite a bit of inspiration comes from films and we are all buffs. We did a piece about Solaris for example. If/when we tour, you’ll find us in a museum on our days off. For the Kalevala period of Hail we were very inspired by the art of Axeli Gallen Kallela who illustrated the stories of the Kalevala. Many beautiful and grim pictures.
When I get an idea for the band, I can usually see the whole package in my head. Maybe it’s more like a shopping list. But a complete vision. Then it’s a bit of a process to get it all together. In the past I have had costumes constructed for all members, often obscuring robes that limit our vision and create anonymity and thus mystery. Lately we strike a more contemporary pose than a Benedictine monk.
HX: The vinyl itself is a very cool translucent green. Why did you make that choice? Does it play into the album’s themes or art in some way?
CA: I intuitively picked that color. Now that you mention it, green is not a color that you want to see in your body, it would be an infection, a physical transgression. Perfect!
HX: I’m told that a Hail performance is something to behold. What can you tell me about the live Hail experience?
I really invest a lot of energy in the live performance, thinking that the live experience is obviously the most important aspect of any band. As I already mentioned I started this project as a performance art act and grew it. I think that Hail might be performance art disguised as music. We are invested in “metal theater” (is that a thing?) I believe that ancient shamanism rituals are the beginning of theater. And music. And magic. And puppetry. And horror.
The very first Hail show involved backing tracks, an eight foot cardboard puppet theater/church, a puppet show ending with me emerging and lighting the church on fire. The steeple had a bunch of fireworks I had stolen from a rival and when those started to go off, I threw the flaming mass into the audience, who promptly stomped it out. I guess they hated the church too. We start with this layer of art, theater and risk from the get go. Yes, I almost burnt down the club, no I didn’t get in trouble at Satyricon, there was little evidence that anything happened AND I had seen just as much risky behavior out of other performers there for years. I’m looking at you Jerry A.
So after a couple years doing fucked up cabaret acts as Hail, we had short period of orthodox satanic black metal. That was hard to sustain. A bit one dimensional. Set and I were fascinated by the film Begotten. The Fauna happened. A light went on. We had dirty burlap robes and wore butoh makeup, becoming these dirt trolls. Things still lit themselves on fire. The show might include a flaming fish used for necromantic fortune telling rituals, guts spilled on black leather. A book might be burnt. Roofing nail bracers.
Enter the black robes and the Kalevala. I was really interested in bees. I had read a book about a bee shaman cult and was fascinated by it. Not knowing how to add this interest to Hail, other than images of early beekeepers, which Sunn(o) album is that? I searched the Kalevala for tales with bees in them. That is how I came across the woeful tale of Lemminkeinen, a sort of Don Juan come Frankenstein of finnish mythology. The tale features Lem getting chopped to bits by his lover’s mother, who happens to rule Hell, and thrown in the river of death. So his mother rakes him out of the water, sews him up, and sends a bee to heaven for a special resurrection honey, thus bringing our hero back to life. During the period we used mythology, I would animate these banners I painted. For example, the Lem banner depicted his dismembered body, held together with red ribbons, that I could pull from behind to reanimate him. Of course I would have to put down my guitar for this! I painted several banners we displayed on tall stands onstage, each depicting a scene from the Kalevala. We wore these custom black robes that had cowles so long we couldn’t see anything. We were all hot about Portal at the time. We played very long songs at the time.
The Music Concrete/Death Industrial period was a ripe time for Hail. Our performances as a noise duo were brutal. Yes we had tables full of toys and effects but we also presented ourselves dramatically and had new banners featuring enormous trepanned skulls and stencils words, “transgression, anxiety, collapse”. Sonic anarchist was the look. Fires again were lit, tempers flared, we stalked each other with knives out and stacks of gear were toppled. We always ended the set with road flares, exiting through the audience.
We continue to wear the look transitioning to a four piece. We also added butoh dancers from my troupe, Ash Pillar, which harkens back to the beginnings of Hail. Especially if we did an all noise set, the dancers added a thick layer of weird to our harsh downer post collapse scifi vibe. It was common to end any set with a noise piece called Cut the Blood and everyone would eventually lie down on the floor, dancers and musicians, letting our sounds decay through loops and long delays, sometimes cycling around for minutes with us all lying dead. People don’t clap for that! That freaks people out, and if so, I’m in it for that. Set had a bell made of an oxygen tank with the top cut off. It stands about three feet tall. He has been ending the show banging that with a hatchet. I got it in my head that I should protect the bell with my body so we struggle over the bell before he hits it. After the show I reassuringly tell people that “no, everything’s cool, we are best friends in fact!”
HX: Two of the members of Hail, including yourself, are also in L’Acéphale, according to Metal Archives. Tell me about that?
CA: L’Acephale is Set’s band and I played third guitar in it for a bit. I’m on the last release, but only play a few solos. It was difficult music for me to master and actually impossible for me to play without Charlie Mumma, the drummer, to play along with.
HX: Recently, you’ve been working with Fiadh Productions to release your material, including some re-issues, but also “We Are Nothing” and now “Transgression.” How did you connect with the label and why is it a good fit for you?
CA: We were connected by Nate Myers (Eternal Warfare). It’s a great fit for us. We like the label and all that Bari is doing with it. Who doesn’t love a anti fascist, pet loving, woman owned metal label?
HX: What’s next for Hail? Do you have live shows coming up? Are you already working on new music?
CA: We are currently working up a new set for the Begotten Fest this summer. The pieces are Death Metal leaning and the subject matter is pretty much coming out of a DnD campaign Set and I are playing with friends. Super fun for a change! Don’t expect us to dress like wizards and warriors. I think this round will be more metal than art.
HX: What else should we know? Is there something I missed?
CA: We are staunchly anti-fascist, anti-nuke, anti-religious, pro-choice, pro-trans feminist men who are registered Democrat voters. We believe in science.
Biography: Hayduke X has been writing for MoshPitNation since June of 2016. He is also a contributor to The Metal Wanderlust. Prior to joining the MoshPitNation team, Hayduke published reviews on his own blog Rage and Frustration. In addition, he has DJ’ed an online metal radio show of the same name as his blog, written for TOmetal.com, done interviews for Metal Rules, and collaborated with The Art of B Productions to create video interviews with a wide variety of bands.
