QR Music Interview - The Hunna: "We always had that in us and wanted to let it out."
With their sophomore album release around the corner, The Hunna are touring tirelessly across the US, UK and Europe. Two years since their debut 100, their second full-length, the brashly-titled Dare, will bring a darker, fuller sound.
"We wanted to make an album that each song showed a different side to us, and that we weren’t going to do the same thing over and over. We listen to a lot of different styles of music, so we wanted to show that we can do stuff that’s heavier than what we’ve done before, and that we can do slower, kind of more groovy songs," says vocalist/guitarist Ryan Potter.
The desire to show their range as musicians flowed naturally during the writing process. Inspired by their own tastes, the album is "just a real eclectic mix of what we were feeling."
Having cited influences such as Kings Of Leon and Queen, the band's grittier sound comes from slightly more surprising sources on the forthcoming release. "Some of our favourite bands are Fightstar, Slipknot, so we’ve always had that influence. On the first album we kind of touched on that, but it was a lot less heavy. We always had that in us and wanted to let it out, but we wanted to save some stuff for the second album to show people we’ve got a lot more to come."
Peppering Dare's track list is a mixture of new material, written on the road or between tours, and older, unreleased tracks that pre-date the first album. "There’s a few songs on the second album, one called 'Mother', one called 'Lover' [laughs], and a few others that we’ve had for quite a few years that we’ve been holding onto because we felt they were a better fit for the second."
Touring as much as they do, the writing process takes a very organic form; one that stems from the band's origins back in 2015, when The Hunna comprised just Ryan and Dan (guitar), before the addition of Jack Metcalfe (Drums) and Cynet Angin (Bass).
"We were writing together just in our rooms on guitars for years, since we were teenagers. We’re very used to writing with each other. A lot of it comes from Dan; I might have a lyric or a melody, and just kind of take it to him and see what we can come up with on guitar, and vice versa. We also try to get into the rehearsal room, all four of us, and just jam it out – even when we’re on tour sound-checking, we always just have a little jam around an idea. We'll Voicenote it on an iPhone to remember it later on, when we can go back to it. Logic and stuff came second to us – we weren’t really used to it at first, but we’ve adapted to it."
Crucial to the sound of the record, the band decided to continue working with producer Duncan Mills (The Vaccines, Jake Bugg) who had produced their first album, which "came out exactly how we’d imagined it," says Ryan. On production the second time round, he continues, "He really gets what we want to get our of our music. We didn’t want to kind of spiral off; while showing people we could do different things, we also wanted to keep the trademark Hunna sound."
Signed to independent label High Time Records, the band recognise the strong community atmosphere between artists, one that fosters the already flourishing creative environment, as a hugely positive influence on where they are today.
"We got signed three or four years ago, and took two years behind the scenes, constantly writing and getting better at songwriting, preparing for when we did get released. But then little things that have happened, like people we’ve met, and other songwriters we’ve been able to get in contact with and learnt stuff from them, building relationships with people like that – it does make a huge difference. You learn a lot; we’re still learning. It’s still quite new to us, but the opportunities we’ve had have been amazing."
Among those relationships are friendships, born out of relentless touring and festival slots alongside artists on the same bills. Ryan recalls the band's experience at Community Festival in the summer of last year: "We were backstage with the [Nothing But] Thieves boys, andAnteros. We love those guys, they’re amazing. We have a lot of stories, but normally we’re the ones that everyone tells stories about – we'd have to behave ourselves to remember the things other people do!
At Reading and Leeds with OTHERKIN, we met them when we headlined and had a few drinks. We told them to- well, they wanted to watch from the side of stage, so we told them to come onstage and security grabbed them and kicked them out of the whole festival. [Laughs] I feel quite bad about that one."
The Hunna's forthcoming album Dare comes out May 25th. Catch them on tour here.
By Addison Paterson