In Hearts Wake And Northlane Team Up For EP

Sydney metalcore outfits In Hearts Wake and Northlane have written and recorded an EP together!

On-sale now at Uk.unfdcentral.com, The Equinox EP has three tracks written by and featuring all 10 musicians from both bands.

TRACK LIST

1. Refuge
2. Equinox
3. Hologram

We caught up with Northlane guitarist Josh Smith and In Hearts Wake guitarist Ben Nairne to get an insight into the making of it…

How did you come to the decision to record the EP, within your own individual bands?

Josh: “It wasn’t really a decision that needed to be discussed much at all, it just felt like a great idea. We cooked the idea up at a BBQ with In Hearts Wake, over a few beers on a day off on our North American Node tour.”

Ben: “It started off as a small idea, the more we thought about it and talked about how cool it would be the bigger the idea became. At first we were talking about just doing a collaboration on one song and releasing it as a single, we then decided to make the most of the opportunity and do an EP together. We’ve been friends with Northlane for a long time now, we’ve toured multiple times both in Australia and internationally, and have always loved hanging out with them so we knew we would work really well together.”

What was it like making creative decisions, like artwork and choosing the title, with a whole other band to take into account?

Josh: “It was more difficult than usual, as when make decisions on a collaborative project of this scale you’re looking to please 10 individuals, rather than just 5, and decisions need to have equal weighting. That can be a huge challenge and could’ve marred a few friendships. Thankfully we’re all pretty reasonable people and all that seemed to happen was us pushing each other creatively.”

Ben: “Well I’m usually more involved in writing the music and working in the studio, where as Jake handles most of our artwork and creative decisions outside of that. He would come to me with an idea of a title or a concept for the artwork, usually while we were at the beach, and ask what I thought of it before presenting it to the other members and Northlane. It’s hard enough getting everyone within our band to be 100% happy with a title or artwork let alone another band as well, there was a lot of emails going back and fourth with ideas until we came to a decision that all members of both bands were stoked with.”

Was it hard writing the actual music together, when each band has its own way of doing things?

Josh: “It was a challenge again, but what we came out with was a product of us allowing our normal songwriting methods from each band to sort of meld together, that way nobody was having their toes stepped on. This whole project was far more difficult than we anticipated but we couldn’t be happier with the result.”

Ben: “We were both in the middle of touring when the songs had to be written and we tried really hard to find some time where both bands were free so we could write together, but it wasn’t going to work. We decided it would be best if both bands wrote a song each with the time we had and then we would bring those songs to the studio to collaborate. It worked really well that way and meant we could focus more on the actual collaboration in the studio rather than feeling pressured to come up with enough material for two songs on the spot. It was a good experience working together and it made us feel a bit more free to have some fun with the songs and experiment with some styles that we normally wouldn’t.”