HALESTORM Frontwoman On 'Vicious': 'We Started With Nothing And Ended Up Building Up This Amazing Record'

Cameron Buchholtz and Allison Chainz of the Rock 100.5 The KATT radio station conducted an interview with singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale and drummer Arejay Hale of HALESTORM at this year's Rocklahoma festival, which was held last month in Pryor, Oklahoma. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the criticism HALESTORM received for the pop overtones of the band's last album, 2015's "Into The Wild Life":

Lzzy: "In all honesty, we never saw it that way. But the great thing about that starting to happen is that people care now. It used to, like, you put out whatever record and you have your followers that are, like, 'Yeah, it's great.' But I love it that we're starting to get people that don't even really pay attention to our music that really care enough to kind of hate on it on Blabbermouth and all that stuff."

Arejay: "Maybe sonically it may have had some of the sounds of that 'cause it was produced and mixed by a country producer, so it's possible that some of the flavor may have bled into the the way it sounded sonically. So this time around [for the follow-up record], we decided to go with someone that could just bring out the good rawness and all the personalities out of all of us."

On HALESTORM's upcoming album, "Vicious":

Lzzy: "We went in with Nick Raskulinecz, who is ALICE IN CHAINS' producer, he did the FOO FIGHTERS, RUSH, DEFTONES, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE… the list goes on. KORN, he brought back KORN to life — that kind of thing. And he's just such a fan of the band that we were kind of forced to be kind of unapologetically ourselves to the point that he's, like, 'No. That doesn't rock enough. We have to push the envelope.' So we started in the studio with him with nothing and ended up building up this amazing record. I don't know if Arejay will agree with me, but I think it's gonna be our most HALESTORM record to date. 'Cause you can really hear what everybody brings to the table, hear what we do live and what we do in front of people."

Arejay: "I think it's probably the least processed and probably the most organically produced record that we've done. That's kind of his style. He wanted to not only bring out the greatness in her voice and the greatness in all the songs that we wrote together, but he's very much in the trenches of everything, of all the sounds — everything that we're all playing together. So I think you'll get the most complete package out of this one. Every producer that I've worked with has always been, to me, 'Okay. Dumb it down. Dumb it down. Play it really simple.' He actually wanted me to bring some personality and kind of capture… 'Cause that's kind of how we are live — live, it's kind of this crazy, derailed train, but it kind of works. I think what Nick wanted to do was finally… With every record, we tried to capture that on record, and we got close, but I think this is the closest that we've ever gotten."

"Vicious" will be released on July 27 via Atlantic.

Recorded last year at Nashville, Tennesse's Rock Falcon recording studio with Raskulinecz, "Vicious" is available for pre-order at all DSPs and streaming services. All pre-orders are joined by an instant download of the first single, "Uncomfortable".

Deluxe album packages are available for pre-order exclusively at the band's official webstore, including the new album on standard vinyl, plus a limited-edition opaque purple colored double vinyl with enhanced cover art and bonus tracks, limited to 1500 units worldwide. Also exclusively available at the webstore are a limited edition t-shirt, dog tag necklace, autographed poster, and a free album cover magnet with physical album purchase while supplies last.