HARA KIRI // Welcome To The Scene // Albury NSW

I am very excited to announce Albury 4 piece Hara Kiri to the scene! It's been a long time coming for these lads, after a few minor setbacks their debut single has finally come to fruition and will be dropping on Wednesday the 13th of December. The only real teaser we've had, for perhaps the most anticipated local scene release it what looks to just be the release date stylized with roman numerals.

I got to catch up with guitarist, Jason Groenveld and we had a quick chat about everything YOU need to know about these new kids on the scene! Check back on Wednesday for the exclusive stream of their debut single and music video "Fact & Fiction"

Hey Jason thanks for talking to me today, could you tell me the backstory behind yourself and Hara Kiri?

This band has sort of carried over from an old band that I was in with Jesse, our bassist, I felt I could salvage the tracks and so I set about building a new band from the ground up around these tracks, I was always surrounded by music growing up, my mother would always put on Disney movies or be playing music, but the single most influential band in my development was Linkin Park, I was given a walkman with Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water by Limp Bizkit and hearing Chester and Mikes vocals really blew me away and made me fall in love with Nu Metal

We all know naming a band is hard, so can you tell more more about the origin of the name Hara Kiri and a brief history of the band?

The name is actually a bit of a tongue in cheek joke about how painful it felt to continue trying after my band had fallen apart for the 3rd time and no progress had been made, but it still felt like moving forward was my only choice, I would joke with my friends about how it felt like I was about to commit Hara Kiri. "ritual suicide by disembowelment with a sword, formerly practised in Japan by samurai as an honourable alternative to disgrace or execution" Since then we've had our current lineup for almost a year and spent the last 6 months honing and refining both our music and our live show, our first single will be dropping later this week, with an EP to follow in early 2018

I know it's very early on in the piece but I've gotta ask, who inspires you to make music now?

These days I consider myself incredibly fortunate to consider my biggest inspirations some of my closest friends. The boys from Windwaker really exemplify all the traits that I feel are necessary to make it in the modern industry as well having one hell of a unique sound another big inspiration would be Maximum The Hormone, no matter what they do, its always on their own terms

In the past year how much have you grown as a band, what could you work on?

I feel like when we started we were lacking direction and experience, over the past year we've learned a lot about what it takes to become a touring band and while we're still

a little behind our contemporaries in terms of experience, I feel like we're no longer a "hobby" band and are ready to take this seriously and hopefully be taken seriously in turn haha

So you've got a sick riff in your head, how do you turn that into a song? Can you outline your processes?

Well, usually I'll just play random riffs until I find one that sticks out to me and then I form the rest of the song around it, I show it to the other guys and they tear it apart so I rewrite sections, then we go into pre-production and our producer tears it apart again so I rewrite it again in the studio.

We spend about a day on each song during pre-production, reworking each song to reach its full potential, at this stage weak material is weeded out and we sometimes write full new songs in the studio, we then break for a few weeks so we can focus on getting the new sections memorized and Ralph and I can figure out some basic vocals, we then return to the studio, spend one day per song tracking guitars and tweaking the programmed drums and then one day per song recording all of the vocals.

What does this release mean to you?

This release is everything to me, its consumed my life over the past several years and to finally be here at the precipice, with the release in sight is cathartic beyond belief.

What does the scene mean to you, If you could change one thing what would it be?

The scene is an amazing supportive place, almost all my friends I've met through the music scene and I've seen some incredible bands come and go through the local scene although I would love for more people to give the local bands a chance and actually turn up to a show rather than going to the clubs. Seriously just support other bands in your scene, no one will want to play shows with you or attend your shows if you're never at theirs

How important is it to network with other bands?

Networking is everything, with no releases to our name the only way we've been able to get opportunities so far is through networking and you never know who you might meet or what doors they could open.

#Windwaker #HaraKiri