HALESTORM

As the Pennsylvania rockers return, Lzzy Hale tells us about cult guitars, her identity crisis, the darkness behind new album, Back From The Dead – and the drinking session that sparked her purist-baiting signature Gibson Explorerbird

- Henry Yates

Like all the best brainwaves, Lzzy Hale's new signature model started with a drinking session. It was NAMM 2020, and while the apocalypse rumbled in Eastern Asia, at the Anaheim Convention Center, the Halestorm guitarist was throwing back a few with the Gibson team.

Today, Hale insists her Explorerbird pitch was just the beer talking. "But you have to be careful what you say with my Gibson family. We'll be having a pint and you'll turn to someone and say, 'You know what'd be cool? An Explorer body with a Firebird headstock. And then, a month later, something shows up at my door and it's like, 'Oh Jesus, I guess we're doing this, then?"

They were, and while Covid shunted the Explorerbird down Gibson's itinerary, this inspired cut-and-shut of the luthier's two cult heroes was ready in time for the Pennsylvania hard-rockers' aptly titled fifth album, Back From The Dead. "I feel like whatever your poison is, this guitar can handle it," Hale tells us. "Especially considering the way we beat on our guitars."

Is that album title referring to the band or the human race as a whole?

"I think you can't help but feel the weight of the world nowadays. Back From The Dead started out as a very personal record, but now it's out in the world it seems more universal. I mean, for heaven's sake, there are already people that have the lyrics tattooed on them. It's like, 'Guys, the record just came out, maybe live with it a bit before you ink it?' But it's just a beautiful lesson that we were all going through those feelings. So Back From The Dead is this kind of rallying war cry. Like, You can't hold us down!"

You've said that writing this music helped you get out of a "dark spot"...