Jan. 17, 2013 - Issue #900: The ongoing musical evolution of Hannah Georgas
Hidden Towers
» Hard work pays off
The inception of Hidden Towers has been over a decade in the making, its founding members enduring incessant lineup changes and obstacles from side obligations delayings its progress.
"I guess I just really believed in what we were doing and had a strong passion towards it and didn't want to see the songs that we were working on go to waste," says Chris Cantrell—who co-founded the group with fellow Alberta expat Ben Holland—of his determination to see the project through, despite consistently having to teach new members the songs as Hidden Towers morphed from a three-piece to a four-piece to a five-piece and finally back to a trio, with drummer Jakub Svoboda rounding out the group.
Now the Vancouver-based band is launching its first full-length LP, Olympus Mons, a disc forged of influences in '90s metal and psychedelic rock. Throughout the thundering disc, which delivers a sonic palette far larger and more diverse than something three people should be able to pull off, is an over-arching theme of exploring the unknown.
"All of the songs except for the last song seemed to deal with death in the subject matter in some way or another, and then the last song, well, I grew up Mormom and it was about being baptized. It's called 'Drowining in a Baptismal Font' and it's about rebirth through Christian pageantry," Cantrell explains with a slight chuckle.
As far as death is concerned, Hidden Towers explores both the hypothetical and real, drawing on past experiences such as Cantrell and Holland stumbling across a dead body outside a campsite outside Gainsford, AB, which became the moniker for the track.
"Some of them come from how I would deal with a hypothetical situation," Cantrell adds. "If you've ever laid awake at night and thought about how you would feel if you lost a loved one or if you lost everything you own in a fire or these really traumatic experiences."
Sat, Jan 19 (9 pm)
With Claw, Gary Debussy
Wunderbar
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