Clashing Of Hordes …
CVLT Nation Interviews
Hazzard’s Cure

The Bay Area’s Hazzard’s Cure may defy labels, but I will label them as rad as fuck, and their new self-titled album proves just that! Today we are majorly stoked that we are running an interview with this wild bunch of stoners. Hazzard’s Cure’s music will only enhance the effects of your high – on that note, why don’t I turn it over to them. So after the jump, check out what these doom dealers have to say!

What up Hazzard’s Cure, how are things in your world?

Shane: Things are awesome as usual!! We just finished recording our first full length with Greg Wilkinson so we’ll be hitting the road real soon to get the new record out there in this crazy world.

Clint: Things are going rather awesome, which you may find surprising since all we seem to write songs about is execution, dying on mountainsides and bad drug trips. The sun has finally come out in the Bay Area and life is swell!

The Bay Area is special place…do you feel that the pace or rhythm of the Bay Area gets into your sound?

Clint: The Bay rules, because what we have is a great big metropolitan area with lots of musicians, without the media nexus environment that you have in a place like L.A. or New York. Bands here spend more time focusing on being good, trying to impress each other, rather than posing and trying to jump on whatever abominable trend is currently popping up. There are exceptions of course. If there is a rhythm to The Bay, I’d say it’s kind of a schizophrenic one, the weather is always changing so fast, it keeps you on your toes; things change and moods change very abruptly here. That seems to carry over into our songwriting as well.

Shane: The Bay Area is a very special place. It’s like Never never land. No one ever really grows up. No matter where you are you are going to be influenced by your surroundings and the Bay Area just happens to be where we shred. I love the Bay Area and that’s why I live here. It’s an amazing place to be a musican and there’s so much always going on that we can’t help but be influenced by it….and other things…..!

What kind of environment did you grow up in, & were you a part of the punk scene?

Shane: I grew up in what used to be a small town in Southern California and I was very much into and a part of the punk scene! I love punk rock and always will. The Misfits is what I used to teach myself to play guitar and drums. Angry Youth was my punk band growing up. We played with D.I. and U.K. Subs when I was 13. That was a good year!!

Clint: I grew up in rural California, in a town where there was no scene, punk or otherwise, period. I grew up listening first to my Dad’s classic rock and some metal, then taught my self how to play drums after I heard Led Zeppelin, because I had nothing else to do. I got into punk in Junior High School and tried to form bands, which didn’t get very far, because there were maybe three other people who wanted to play. Eventaully I moved to Oakland and gradually turned back into a metalhead again.

From an outsider looking in, it seems that the Bay Area has big community of liked-minded musicians. Do your peers inspire you?

Clint: I think our peers inspire us more than anyone else. The Bay Area’s local bands just happen to also be some of the best in the world. High On Fire, Ludicra, Brainoil, Badr Vogu… and all the great ones that have come and gone over the past few years, Asunder, Saros, Old Grandad… to name a few. We don’t just share the scene with these bands, we share space at the bar, drugs, venereal diseases…

Shane: There is so much good music in the Bay Area that you can’t help but be inspired!
All of the different people that we play music with inspire me personally. I’m really lucky to play with such awesome dudes!!!

Honestly, your music is very interesting to me, like the way you move from a doom heavy riff to a punk riff in the blink of a eye…why are those tempo changes a part of the way you play music?

Shane: It’s just the way we write music. I guess we all just have short attention spans. It’s also intentional. I hate when songs drag on too long. Just because your song is long, doesn’t mean it’s epic!!

If the Hazzard’s Cure sound was a time machine, where would you want to take the listener?

Clint: Picture this: Hazzard’s Cure just built you a time machine. It’s glass tube that shoots a highly concentrated dose of weed smoke into your lungs, allowing you to travel short distances into the past and future with relative ease. If you want to go back in time, which we don’t reccomend, you will end up lingering around the end of your last shitty relationship. If you go forward in time, you will find yourself at the fridge, making a sandwich.

Shane: I would charge the listener to come back in time with me. Ass, Grass, or Magic Cyrstals. No one travels time for free! I’ve always thought I would have made a good Viking so I’d probably go back in time to chop some heads off and conquer Maidens.

What are some of your biggest inspirations for what you write?

Clint: Shitty beer and good weed. Shitty weed also works. This is the third band that Leo and I have had together, and when we started it, we were listening to quite a lot of Carcass, too, if that makes any sense.

Shane: Drugs, Death, and Mountains. Somehow all of our songs end up being about one of the three. Or all three!!

What role does sweetleaf play in the way & what you create?

Shane: We’re not really a band. It’s more of a Drug Club. Very exclusive. Only four members.

Clint: Ahh, Sweetleaf. I like that song. Starts off with a super heavy riff, massive chorus, gets all weird and fast and crazy in the middle, and then falls out of the sky back into the HUGE riff. I think we’ve stolen that song structure a few times at least.

What is the jump off for a Hazzard’s Cure song? How does the creative process work ? Does each song start in a different way?

Shane: We didn’t write the song “Jump Off”. I believe it was Lil Kim. Do you really think I’m going to tell you all of our secrets? Nice try Buddy!

Clint: Usually Leo or Chris will bring in a new riff, sometimes Shane, and we’ll just start building a song around that at practice. No one ever brings in completed songs, we prefer to bounce ideas off each other and let the songs develop at their own pace. It takes a HELL of a lot longer to write that way, but I think the end result is superior.

If the bassline you play could speak, what would you want it to say to your listeners?

Shane: It would say…”How high are you? You really think I’m going to talk to you? I’m a fucking bass I can’t talk! What do you think this is Fantasia? Maybe you should go the hospital? You’re laying in a corner, naked, talking to a bass.”

How important is groove & melody to the songs you write?

Clint: In my opinion, what makes music really heavy is a sway and a swing to it, not just incessant pounding right on the beats! Playing a little ahead or behind the beat, swinging it, that’s what makes it sound really heavy, like an organic staggering beast, not a stomping robot. Black Sabbath had the heaviest riffs of all time, and their beats were funky as shit, jazzy at times. I try to always consider this.

Shane: Groove and Melody and very important to us in our songs. I hate Metal that is way to technical just for the sake of being technical. Songs should have some soul in them. Otherwise you’re just showing off, and no one likes a show off!

When I listen to Hazzard’s Cure, I hear this call & response that happens between the different instruments. Is that done intentionally or is it just organic in your music?

Clint: I think it’s pretty intentional, you might even say calculated. We’re trying to take full advantage of our lineup: two guitars, bass and drums, and all of these instruments have interplay. The two guitars never have to be playing the same thing, and the rhythm section can be laying it down, locking in or diverging paths however we see fit. For me it stems form a sense of disappointment in past bands that were not using instrumentation to their full advantage. Harmonies, polyrhythms, bring that shit!

Shane: We write what we write and that’s what we write.

CVLT Nation thanks Hazzard’s Cure for a profound interview!