Hostile Groove

Not all rap-metal has to suck.

When did Hostile Groove get started?

I’d say the name is about ten years old, although we’ve gone through a couple of lineups from back in Massachusetts, which is where we’re from originally. Then in late ‘99 Dan our drummer, and I moved away to California to attend the Musicians Institute and pursued the career even harder.

How?

I think I just kind of started troubleshooting everything on my own, trying to teach myself how to promote everything with very little money. I was still in high school, not really having any idea of what to do and we basically did it all on foot. We posted our own flyers, gathered our own mailing list, rented halls locally in town and just started throwing on our own shows.

What would you claim your hometown to be?

We originated in Uxbridge Massachusetts, but now we’re based out of L.A.

Where did you come up with the name Hostile Groove?

I thought of the name back in English class in ninth grade. I think Hostile Groove just describes our music exactly. It’s very brutal, it’s very raw, but at the same time we have a very open logic towards metal music. We like to incorporate a lot of staccato rhyme styles as well as brutal death metal screams. We like to incorporate it all and I don’t think Hostile Groove doesn’t put any limits on us musically.

For those who don’t know, give yourselves a label and tell me what you sound like.

I guess I’d answer that question with the statement the everyone has their own definition of metal nowadays so I think it’s safe to just call it metal. Everyone’s definition of metal today, in 2002, is completely different. When somebody says metal it could mean anything form 80’s cock rock to Cannibal Corpse, so I think we’re safe just leaving it at that.

If you had to name some bands that you might compare yourselves to that other people might know in order to turn them onto your band, who would they be?

I’d say it’s a really good cross between Pantera and Rage Against the Machine.

Is Unleash the Massattack your first record?

Unleash the Massattack is our first official full length album. We recorded and produced it on our own. We’ve also done many demos and have even done a garage recording full length back home, and all of really helped us figure out what we wanted to do for Unleash the Massattack. It really helped us figure out what kind of tones we where looking for. It’s a good thing we had the experience or we would have wasted a lot of time and money in the studio.

Why did you choose to do the album on your own label?

We decide to release this album underneath our own business name , which is Masstattack Records, because we really believe that if we’re going to sign with a label that we should really get a foundation going for ourselves first. If we were to get signed before this album came out, in my opinion, we’d basically be getting signed out of the garage and we wouldn’t really have too much pull into what was put into our contract. We believe that if we can get a fan base established and sell some units that it a record label were to come along and offer us a good deal we’d get a little more creative control than if we just got signed out of a garage.

Has everything been going as expected?

Everything’s been working beautiful. You’re able to order the album online and get it at our shows. We’ve got a few consignment deals going with some stores. We booked our first US tour all on our own through personal connections, favors and family, which went very well. Right now we’re concentrating on our home video DVD that’ll be coming out early next year. We’ve got a couple of music videos that we just shot and we’ve got tons of footage from on tour and from the past, so our next project is going to be putting out that DVD. We really think that in order to keep up with today’s times you have to get the whole visual aspect going. Things are definitely going well on our own and I think the experience is worth more than the exposure.

Tell me about this first tour of yours that you just finished (?)

It was basically a full US tour only we didn’t hit the northwest. We went from California to Colorado to Illinois to Michigan to Massachusetts to North Carolina to Texas. Some of the tour we met up with a couple of bands and did some shows as a supporting act and when we were on the East Coast we were definitely the headlining band because it was our home area. The rest of the shows were pretty in between. A couple of shows were just bar gigs, setting up and jamming, and a couple of them were just buddies hooking us up and letting us play in front of their crowds. I’d say our biggest crowd was about 400 people and our smallest crowd was probably 40 people.

What does the future hold for Hostile Groove?

We’ve got two music videos shot already and we’re looking to shoot two more before the DVD comes out. We’re actually going into the studio again real quick just to do some radio edits. Then we’re going to buckle down and start writing the new album this fall and winter and hopefully get that out sometime early next year.