An Evening With Himsa

By Fringe Staff

By Josh Pierson

Himsa is an unrenowned band, who, in my opinion, should not be ignored. Their most recent signing with Century Media Records should definitely bring them the recognition they deserve. After their recent release on Century Media “Summon In Thunder” they were asked to join long time metall’ers Amon Amarth for a full U.S. tour.

Hailing from Seattle, the band has played a few shows throughout Northern California.

They are a band that goes out on stage and gives their absolute 110 percent every night, and on Dec. 17, 2007 at the Boardwalk in Orangevale, that was no different. I’ve always had issue with the acoustics at this venue, but my issues were pushed aside on this occasion. The club was packed with fans and I believe there was no better venue in the Sacramento area that could have handled such an onslaught of metal. Prior to the show I was able to catch up with long- time Himsa bass player Derek Harn and talk some music, music politics, and some of the latest with the band.

FRINGE: The last album, “Hail Horror” was considered by many a ground breaking album for the metal community, but now the newest release ‘Summon in Thunder’ is being hailed as even better. How do you keep it fresh and new time and time again?

DEREK: “Hail Horror” was the predecessor to “Courting Tragedy and Disaster”, which is where our sound really came from, and launched our career. We worked our asses off and touring, we toured for about two years straight on that. With “”Hail Horror”", it didn’t get a lot of support from the label because it was the last album that we put out on Prosthetic and Prosthetic didn’t want to support it. We had a lot of problems with member changes around that album, too, that was really kind of hard thing. But now having Sammi [Curr] come back for “Summon In Thunder” and having his kind of rock & roll influence was really great, he’s really great at arrangements for songs, also having Century Media behind us for this first album has been really good for us, we kind of have a fresh outlook on it.

FRINGE: How does it feel having a larger label such as Century Media backing you now compared to a smaller label such as Prosthetic?

DEREK: There’s only so much a label can do to back you and get behind you so for us Century Media’s perfect. When we were looking for labels that we could grow with, at the time Prosthetic was a perfect choice for us and we talked with Century Media at the time, but it just didn’t feel right. I don’t have any regrets going with Prosthetic, I mean things could have been a lot different at this point if we hadn’t. It’s already come a lot further than any of us had really ever expected or even thought we could do. When I was a kid watching Headbangers Ball I would have never thought in a million years that my punk band that I started in some garage would end up at the point that I’ve got videos on the TV. And doing interviews just like this, and not only have we earned, but we’ve been lucky to get this far.

FRINGE: Tue Madsen produced “”Hail Horror”" was he there on the new album?

DEREK: Yeah, he did all of “Hail Horror”, and actually he mixed and mastered “Summon In Thunder.” We kind of stumbled across him through a reference for “Hail Horror”, we planned on recording that album in L.A., but the guy that was going to do it, he actually ended up becoming kind of Ill and couldn’t do it. He recommended Tue. We ended up flying over to Denmark for a month and hung out with him and his family. He put us up in his house and we recorded in his garage. He was a great dude. He just pushed us every day, we had to walk like a mile every day to like go to the store. We really liked what he had done with “Hail Horror”, one of his strengths is mixing, he’s done like The Haunted, and a bunch of Soilwork stuff. We wanted to use him on this next album, but having him come over here didn’t quite work out as we were hoping it would. We ended up going to Steve Carter, he had worked on all the previous albums before “Hail Horror”, he’s actually come a long way in his production, and he’s not afraid to speak his mind to us, he’ll just tell us straight how it really is, and really push us.

FRINGE: I heard that Devin Townsend was used on the new record. How was the experience of working with him?

DEREK: Devin Townsend and [John] Pettibone did all the vocal instruction together. Pettibone drove up to Vancouver and did like a week with him, stayed at a hotel, and every day would get up to work on the next song. They actually got along really well. I’ve never seen Pettibone smiling in the studio or anything like that, he’s usually pretty miserable in the studio when it comes to recording. But having that one-on-one connection and having Devin really pushing him to pronounce and sing the words clearly . Having him hold out different screams and yells, the amount of layering and the fact that we used something totally different for this album, is all because of Devin.

FRINGE: The video for “Big Timber” was one of the more odd videos I’ve ever seen, and then on the last album, the video for “Unleash Carnage” where you guys are playing tennis was just as odd. Do the ideas come from you guys or from the director?

DEREK: “Unleash Carnage” was all our idea. Our guitar player Cirby plays tennis, and then we were in the car and my girlfriend suggested that we should do a tennis video, and we all thought it was a good idea, we just put a lot of effort into it one day and shot it all in one day. The “Big Timber” video with all the puppets and the monsters, all the director, I’ve actually known the guy since I was a teenager, we re-connected, and we just kind of handed everything over to him. He came up with the whole idea, and we were talking about Sasquatch and how we always wanted to do a Bigfoot video, and we just let him run with it and he took it in a totally different direction, so we’re really happy with the work that he did, and that video is actually nominated for like Headbangers Ball video of the year, so we’re hoping we can get to work with him again in the future.

FRINGE: Matt Wicklund left the band before “Hail Horror” and he claims that he did do some of the recording and some of the writing on it, but didn’t get credit for it.

DEREK: Matt’s name is not on the album, he definitely does get credit for writing it, a lot of the publishing’s in his name. The way that that whole thing was handled was just gross, and still makes us sick today because we wanted to handle things with him personally and we couldn’t do that. We had to go through all these legal means to get things settled. We never tell people he didn’t write on the album, he did do some writing on the album but he gets credited for the songs that he helped with, and actually some songs he didn’t help with but it just seems like this weird trail of crappiness that follows us with him and it just seems like it never stops, so we really just try to stay away from that because we’ve gotten in trouble with it before, just try and put it behind us and keep moving.

FRINGE: The tour started a few weeks ago, how has the response been so far?

DEREK: It’s funny, I was a little nervous about going on this tour at first, because these guys are like a legitimate metal band and I didn’t know how our thrasher style was going to go over with these people. With the exception of one show in New York City, every show’s been amazing, people come to see Among Earth and only Among Earth and you can tell they’re only here to see them because they’re chanting Amon Amarth before we even go on. But by the time we’re done playing everyone’s giving us horns in the air and you can see how we’re winning fans over and that feels really good as a band that we know no one came here to see.

FRINGE: What were some of your guys’ influences going into this band, more specifically for this sound?

DEREK: Our sound really comes from Sammi and Cirby’s influences, Sammi definitely really has more of a rock background, and Cirby has that early thrash going for him like Slayer and Testament, they both cross over, I really credit those two for the sound we have now. It’s very guitar driven, lots of harmonies between the guitars and lots of solos, almost every song. Pettibone’s definitely comes from a hardcore background, he’s just a growler and singer and he’s really come a long way with that, he’s really been able to push it and turn it into something that really fits this band well.

FRINGE: Besides your new album, any new albums that you guys are really stoked on.

DEREK: I’ve been listening to a lot of the new Agony Scene, and it’s not because we’re going on tour with them after this. I really like the new A Life Once Lost, there’s a band on Metal Blade called Aeon that’s super thrashy and awesome, total throwback to the early 90’s so I’m really into it. Derek was great to chat with and hopefully this will turn some of my readers on to Himsa, so go get out there, download, burn, buy or whatever it is you do and listen to these guys. Get out to see a show next time they come around, guaranteed they will blow your little metal mind.