Lzzy Hale, frontwoman of rock band Halestorm, was in conversation with rock icon Linda Perry when Perry shared a sage piece of wisdom that spoke to Hale on a deep level. “If you are rock and roll, you don’t need to try,” Perry proclaimed. “You just need to exist.”
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These powerful words helped inform Halestorm’s new album, Everest, a culmination of their 20+ years as a band with the same four original members: Hale, her brother and drummer Arejay Hale, guitarist Joe Hottinger, and bassist Josh Smith. The Hale siblings started in the band in 1997, growing from their humble roots in their native Pennsylvania to an established band in the rock scene.
In 2012, they made history as the first female-fronted band to win the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance for their hit “Love Bites…(So Do I).” Operating mainly as a live band, Halestorm was signed to Atlantic Records in 2005 (they showcased their electric stage presence on their five-song 2006 live EP, One and Done and didn’t release their self-titled debut album until four years later.
Everest marks their sixth studio effort, a project that captures the complex emotions that come with being in the music industry for nearly 30 years. “All of these songs started as either conversations or poetry,” Hale says. “We wanted to share all of the things, all of the hardship, the journeys, leave more questions than answers. It’s just our truth. I think that there’s a beauty in where we’re at in our career right now, where we’re no longer fighting to be a part of the ranks.
“This is us existing in ourselves and being content with who we are, being confident, and being okay with our messy selves too,” she continues. “This is us being comfortable with just existing.”
The title track was co-written by Hale and Grammy-winning British songwriter Amy Wadge (known for her frequent songwriting collaborations with Ed Sheeran) during a conversation at Wadge’s apartment about their respective journeys and how they’ve built successful careers in such a trying industry. Hale says they became friends “instantaneously” and that “Everest” marks the first song she and Wadge wrote together.
“We were trying to solve the mystery of the big ‘why’ we do this,” Hale explains of the song’s origins. “We were likening it to people who want to climb Mount Everest. There are bodies along the way. There’s no guarantee of success. You could die doing it. Talking about this slow but steady climb from nothing to being able to call this our career,” she continues, of the conversation about these “unfathomable dreams” they had as children that are now their reality. “But we knew that we don’t fail as long as we keep trying. Sometimes you slide back and you have to pick it up again and trust each other and move forward.”
The album is produced by renowned Nashville producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell) and finds Halestorm stepping out of their comfort zone in the creation process. Making a habit out of always coming to the studio prepared with riffs, songs they’ve written that didn’t make it onto past records, incomplete demos, and more, Cobb threw the band a curveball when he announced that he doesn’t work with demos, rather preferring to work on the fly.
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“‘We’re going to write a song today, and as we are writing it, as it is unfolding in front of us, we are going to be recording it in real time. That’s how we’re going to make this record,’” Hale recalls Cobb affirming at the start of the process. “We’d break for dinner, and we’d have these deep conversations about music and about playing live and about friendship and about being a band and a gang.
“As I’m a chronic insomniac,” she continues, “I would then, at night after everybody’s snoring, sit at my desk and write my poetry, which is always a very important part of my process. Once they become a song, it’s like I’m giving away, I’m releasing that weight from my shoulders.”
The result was an exhilarating experience for the band that Hale describes as both terrifying and exciting, commending Cobb for his “amazing instincts” and “connected” creative intuition, comparing him to a “spirit guide” throughout the process.
“As you’re listening to all of the songs on this album, you are hearing us learning the song for the first time, writing it for the first time. I’m changing lyrics as we go because it sounds better. My brother’s figuring out the groove as we’re doing it. It’s unapologetically raw. That’s what makes it different than every other record,” she observes. “We have to keep ourselves a little terrified to keep things moving and joyous for us because then you have that accomplishment when the record’s done and you’re like, ‘We did this.’ We got to come back to the beginning with that and just be creative with each other.”
Everest follows a story arc that begins with loss and pain, followed by anger and fury before ending with reflection, rebuilding, and closure. The band doesn’t hide their struggles along the way, particularly with the thoughtful “Darkness Always Wins,” which was the last phrase Hale wrote in her notebook the day before they left for Savannah, Georgia, to work with Cobb.
“We were talking about the heaviness of the world and ‘why does evil always prevail? Why do the good ones go first? What’s wrong with us? We’re trying so hard to be good people,’” she recalls.
That’s when Hottinger spouted out the question, “Why does darkness always win?” which sparked the track that blends piano and heavy guitar riffs as Hale soulfully sings in the chorus, We’re all fighters, holding up our lighters / Chasing off the monsters, drowning in our sins / With every last breath, try to stop the sunset / Running with the shadows, darkness always wins.
Then there’s the rage-filled “Rain Your Blood on Me” that, like many of the songs on the album, was written as a poem by Hale at four in the morning at Cobb’s studio in Savannah. The singer pulled an all-nighter to write the song that channels years of fury into the fiery, guitar-heavy track that holds no punches as it opens with such ferocious lyrics as, Bitches burning in the flames / Wicked women take the blame / Devil’s daughters made for pain / Scarlett letters bare the shame.
“As a woman who has always loved loud music and wanted to be loud, I was taught from a young age, ‘girls are seen and not heard’ and ‘you need to be nice. You need to find a man. You better serve your man, or he’s going to leave you’ and all of these things that were taught from such an early age that we have to unlearn,” she says. “You talk about the struggle, you talk about the blame, the shame that we women are put into. This was me finally saying exactly what I wanted to say, and I thought, ‘I finally have written a real woman’s anthem.’ It’s empowering.”
On August 9, the day after Everest was released, the band celebrated its 28th anniversary. The album serves as a celebration of all they’ve accomplished as much as it is a reflection of how they see the world and their journey as a band. Hale says that making the album reminded her of the early days of the band when they were trying to make it, traveling around in their RV in 2005 just before they had a mainstream breakthrough. She calls that time in their lives “debacherous and beautiful.”
The music was a “life raft” for all four members growing up, and compares being in a band to a marriage. “They have saved my life more than once from myself. I owe my band so much because I would not be the woman that I am today without them. We’re allies every night on stage, it’s like we’re jumping off a cliff together,” she praises her bandmates, revealing that they all have rings they gave to each other at the beginning of their careers, and she has worn hers for two decades. “Inherently, we all trust each other, and everything is a democracy. Trust is love, love is trust—and we have a lot of trust.”
Everest sets the stage for the band to continue building their trust and legacy. “It’s not an album of despair, and it’s not really an album of hope either,” Hale says. “There’s hope peppered into it, but it’s reality. It’s our lives as we see it, as we experience it, the world we’re living in, the people we interact with, the struggle internally and externally just to be human and to be our truest selves at all costs. To have fun, to find our joy. These are things that, as a band that’s been around for 28 years, starting from the very bottom of our mountain, we have a lot of stories to tell and we have a lot of things to say about it.
“Every time I listen to this album in its entirety, I discover something new about myself. It’s almost like the music was giving me a message that I haven’t really seen until it’s laid out in front of me. I hope that our fans see themselves reflected in it.”
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