Adelaide alternative metal quartet Heartline recently announced their upcoming EP, Pink Lemonade – out Friday, August 16 – and shared the genre-bending title track. The fresh new single is the second to be pulled from the EP after Lovers dropped in May ahead of Australian tours with Banks Arcade and Windwaker respectively.
The new single Pink Lemonade is ultimately about the realisation that opportunity follows hard work and dedication and is produced by Sam Trott (Rogue Half) with a mix and master by Nick Sjogren (Thornhill). The track is a digital fusion of pop and metal, weaving in and out of expansive EDM soundscapes and soaring chorus’ before unleashing a wave of grinding guitar and bass, showcasing Heartline’s musicality as a unit. The quartet’s latest two releases see the band explore new creative ground, to be heard across their forthcoming Pink Lemonade EP.
HEAVY caught up with vocalist Luke Taylor to chat about Heartline’s new music, standing out and what’s to come.
HEAVY: Congrats on your new track Pink Lemonade, and the announcement of your August EP! How did the EP come together? Who did you work with?
LUKE: Thank you! We’re super proud of this one and can’t wait to finally have it out! The EP came together, at least for the first half of the process, quite the same as our previous releases. Our former guitarist Fraser would do writing sessions with our go-to producer Sam Trott (Rogue Half), in which the first demos of our songs would be created. We used to do pre-production and extra writing with Sam for our individual parts, but for this EP we worked more so amongst ourselves after the instrumental demos were complete. I think this is the reason we feel a much deeper connection to these songs than we ever have before, putting so much more of ourselves into our contributions to the songs and learning to trust our writing as musicians. This is also the first time we did all our recording with our trusty live sound tech Matt Cooper of Treetop Studios, which was an incredibly fun process that we will definitely revisit again.
H: Was there a sound or feel you specifically set out trying to nail with this one?
L: I don’t think there was a specific sound intended, just that we wanted to push ourselves and not get too focused on typical styles – and honestly we liked the idea of dialing back on the heaviness overall to really explore more melodically where we hadn’t ventured very far before.
H: You’ve been touring and playing shows around Australia with the likes of Windwaker and Banks Arcade most recently, what kind of decisions go into putting together a Heartline setlist?
L: We actually had a solid 45 minute zoom call recently purely for this purpose hahaha, we’ve just announced a headline run of shows and we needed to choose a setlist. We love a solid opener and a solid closing song, that’s where we typically start. And then we really try to build the rest to create a full experience for the audience every single set, with lots of moments of high energy but also stripping it back to let the people breathe (and us hahaha).
H: What, in your opinion, does it take for bands to stand out in an ever-growing scene of alternative bands in Australia?
L: I can’t really speak for everyone as ‘standing out’ can be such a subjective thing, but for me image and innovation are powerful things. Bands like Northlane and Thornhill keep pushing the boundaries on what we know heavy music to be, blending styles in a way that I haven’t heard before. Both of those bands are great examples of image too, but also Ocean Grove – their style is insane.
H: Heartline sonically tends to lean and meld into electronic passages with heavy roots, is this a sound that comes naturally for you? Who would you say your main influences are?
L: We all love a lot of pop music as well as electronic styles – me personally having a phase when I was younger of being absolutely obsessed with dubstep metalcore – so it’s just a matter of writing music that we actually like and would listen to. As for influences, that varies a lot across the band as we all have different elements that we get inspiration from and that stretches too far and wide to pinpoint a select few.
H: As a band coming out of Adelaide, has that impacted your creativity at all, and does it affect the ability to more easily connect with other acts and tour?
L: Being based in Adelaide definitely has its challenges. Not so much from a creative point of view as, going off what I said before, we’re driven to write music we’d like to listen to. For touring and playing with other acts it gets tough sometimes, as the scene is much smaller than it is in Melbourne for example, so it’s harder to get in front of as many eyes and ears as a band based in Melbourne. That being said, since Adelaide’s scene is much smaller it creates room to shine more, and right now I feel is the most exciting time for the Adelaide scene. Obviously Alt. are crushing which is great to see, but there are a lot of other bands dropping music that is so good and bands putting on insanely good live shows. I wanna give a few of them a shout out here because people should be keeping an eye out – Signals, KIN, Connections and Lumens are just a few that are simmering just below the surface and will burst out the gates very soon!
H: What can we expect from Heartline for the rest of the year?
L: The EP drop, the run of shows right after release, and then we’d love to get another support slot on a bigger run of shows before the end of the year because we just wanna travel and play in other cities more and more and grow our relationship with these other scenes. We may also have more new music in the works that may or may not also reach people before the end of the year but that’s all I’ll say about that hehe. Come to Heartline shows xoxo
