Interview: The Hex Waves

Doom-a-delic outfit The Hex Waves have an supernatural ability to enchant eardrums with their swirling guitars lines, heavy bass and hypnotic lyrics. It's no real surprise then that the enigmatic Christchurch trio was selected as local support when American stoner-doom act Windhand joins forces with our very own Beastwars for a show in the Garden City, as part of their four-date New Zealand tour. We thought we would pick the brains of The Hex Waves with Seven Quick Questions and try to peek behind the curtains of their musical sorcery...

Hi Hex Waves! Can you please tell us a little bit about yourselves?

We are three-piece from the quake ridden wastelands of Christchurch. We were sick of all the happy-clappy, earnestness coming out of Christchurch post-quake and decided instead to do something dark, cynical and pessimistic. And to wallow in how fucked life here actually is.

What is a hex wave?

Somewhat like a sound wave, a hex wave is the way a spell or a curse travels through space and time to its intended destination or recipient. Well that's what we thought anyway.

How would you describe the music you make, and what are the core inspirations to that sound?

We are heavily influenced by three specific albums and so the band might be understood as a sort of alchemical venn diagram of the following—The Cure's Pornography(1982), Chris Isaak's Wicked Game (1989), and Burzum's Filosofem (1996).

What is the first music you heard that made you go “this is what I wanna do”?

'Sleepwalk' by Santo & Johnny (1959).

You’ve got the Windhand show coming up, but what else is up your sleeve for the future?

We're a relatively new band so hopefully we have a way to go yet. We are still writing new songs and, to some extent, figuring out our sound. We are actively try to not play live too often, but we will play three or four shows over this coming summer. We are looking forward to trying to get some decent recordings down and we will certainly release something on vinyl, hopefully within the next year.

We heard you were recording an EP, how's that coming along?

Actually the demo on Bandcamp is just that. It's only one song, which we recorded in our band room (an industrial storage unit in Waltham) with Garageband and one microphone. We didn't really imagine many people would listen to it, and we thought we'd have better recordings up on there by now. We have started recording with a friend of ours, but he's often overseas for work so it's been slow going. Previous bands we've been in have tended to go for quick, live, lo-fi recordings, but we've decided to try and do something a bit more ambitious for this band. For now anyway.

When an out-of-town band comes to Christchurch, what’s the one thing they should definitely do?

We'd recommend they grab a couple of duty-free single malts and head straight to our band room, where we can fuck about complaining about life and the city, and maybe do burn outs on a motorcycle or two.

The Hex Waves are supporting Beastwars and Windhand at their Christchurch show on 8th October. Head over here for more details and to buy tickets.