Hereford based band Talons release their début album ‘Hollow Realm’ today (Nov 15th). We caught up with violinist Sam to talk about some of the songs from the release.
St Mary Will Be The Death Of Us All
First song of the album, and the first song we wrote for the album. We wanted to make an impact with the
opener for the album, it is quite different to songs we have written before. Some of the riffs are a lot slower
and this was definitely to date the heaviest song we had written. There is a really slow and sludgy riff that
kicks in after 2:19 min and that section is a personal fave of mine! Another good point about this song is that
I would say it is “headbangable”.
In The Shadows Of Our Stilted Homes
Whilst writing songs as a band we always tend to develop nicknames for the
different sounding sections and parts in the song.
In the shadows of our stilted homes contains:
– the flamenco section
– the nu metal section
– the James Bond section
– the saxophone section
– the Slint section
All the components for a great pop song.
Impala
In terms of sound this song is pretty different to anything we have written before. The start was written
as a more sparse area of the album. But ends with a section where we have used major chord
progressions something we rarely do as a band, and I quote “SOUNDS LIKE A METAL CARNIVAL”. I’m not
entirely sure what that means, but it must involve violins, guitars, bass and someone hitting a beer keg
with metal objects, which was something we also did in the recording process for the album
Great Railroads
This song took the longest to record in the studio, it started off as just violin then the other elements
were added in the recording process. This took ages and needed a number of trips up to Leeds to record in
our producer tom’s basement to get it finally finished off, but we’re all really happy with the result in
the end, after I think we were all of the opinion that it could go either way! this is probably the quietest
and most atmospheric song on the album, and also features a washing machine sample running through the start of it.
Hollow Depth
By far the most ambitious song we have ever written, we knew we wanted to write it as the closer to the album,
it is 10 minutes in length and was written as the the colossal finish to the album! This is a culmination of
many different ideas and hopefully this translates into awesomeness. At 5:41 is the most mind numbingly brutal chord which I know is a few of the other guys favourite bits on the album.
‘Hollow Realm’ is out on Big Scary Monsters now.
http://www.banquetrecords.com/talonshr
http://www.banquetrecords.com/talonshr
