New CD to release on Saturday

Kent band Hate Dies Hard releases its new CD this weekend. PHOTO COURTESY OF HATE DIES HARD

Credit: Carl Schierhorn

Not many lead singers of rock bands step aside to play drums, but Sean Barringer of Kent-based rock band Hate Dies Hard did just that.

Hate Dies Hard – which is influenced by Tool, A Perfect Circle and Jane’s Addiction – will release its fourth album, Neverending Sundown, with new lead singer Lili Roquelin Saturday at a CD release party at Fat Jimmy’s.

The band members decided to audition new singers after producer Bill Korecky (Mushroomhead) told them what they needed to do in order to record in his studio, Mars Studio in Cleveland.

“He knows what the fundamentals of a good record are,” Barringer said. “He’s about time and tuning.”

Korecky challenged Hate Dies Hard to put more into its songs and its performances.

“The voice needed to be 100 percent,” Barringer said. “We knew that it wasn’t right enough to change it.”

For more than a year Hate Dies Hard auditioned both men and women to find a singer before finding Roquelin, whose voice has a similar sound to Barringer’s.

“Singing in the higher range gives me goose bumps,” he said. “We were very careful that the new voice was in that higher range.”

Barringer is still a part of the creative process of the band, and he said he felt that it was more important for him to play drums, which he has always done for Hate Dies Hard recordings.

On Hate Dies Hard’s first three recordings, Barringer sang and played drums, and Blankenship played guitar and bass.

Hate Dies Hard released the self-produced EP Denial in 1996. Hate Dies Hard’s first full-length album, Further, came out in 1999, and the band released a self-titled four-song demo in 2003. All of Hate Dies Hard’s albums – except Denial – are on Barringer and Blankenship’s Mirror Mortal record label.

After Roquelin joined the band in 2004, she, Barringer and Blankenship began to record the new album, Neverending Sundown.

“It’s 10 tracks of quality music,” Barringer said. “Every second of the record has been thought out.”

The album has a theme, Barringer said, but he would not say what the story was in literal terms. Barringer and Roquelin write vague lyrics and use metaphors, so the lyrics mean different things to different people. The two said they want to provoke thought and pull listeners in and take them on a journey.

For the CD release show Hate Dies Hard will only be playing a couple of the band’s old songs.

“I don’t wanna feel obligated to play those,” Barringer said. “Every artist wants to be working on their current piece.

“Our whole set is thought out from start to finish,” Barringer said. “It’s not just a grouping of songs.”

Contact ALL reporter Gabe Gott [email protected].