“We get the chance— the freedom— to sit back and enjoy ourselves, and have fun with it. If you’re having fun, then everyone’s having fun: that’s what it’s all about.” Hot on the heels of their explosive performance at Nottingham’s Metal To The Masses final, we got to talking with Hrönn guitarists Billy Law-Bregan and Thomas Osborne about their debut EP, and what lies ahead for the stoner metal four-piece.

As the duo were keen to note, Hrönn, as a project, is a relative newcomer to their local metal scene: nonetheless, the band’s debut release ‘One EP’ has been making a bit of a splash. As Law-Bregan detailed, “just from seeing our online streams, it’s going really well! We’re getting a lot of people that are giving us feedback, saying it’s a genuine enjoyable album. We have a quite unique sound: we tried to capture that as best we can.” Osborne was keen to point out, however, that the group don’t actively strive to reach a wider audience— “we’re not trying to push for success: we’re just enjoying our music.” As he would go on to joke, “we’re too old to try all that!”

Despite the guitarists’ happy-go-lucky attitude, the making of ‘One EP’ brought its fair share of challenges. As Osborne explained, “it’s not enough to just be a musician anymore— you have to have another skill, whether that’s videography (so you can make your own music videos) or production (so you can record your own stuff). Everything’s expensive.” The band’s debut release was self-produced by Osborne, who sought to capture an old-school thrash sound with the project. Diving deeper into the process, the guitarist commented that “experience has brought me to the point where we can do our own stuff, with me sat on Pro Tools doing the nerdy bits. Everyone else has got amazing ears: they all chip in.” The work seems to have paid off: as Law-Bregan went on to say, “it’s a wall of sound— it’s exactly what you’d want, really.” The pair were also keen to shout-out Martyn Bewick and Scott Nairn at Playing Aloud Studios, who’s help with live drum recording was instrumental to the project.

As for how the EP was written, the duo explained that Law-Bregan is behind all the band’s riffs— a hundred a day, as Osborne joked— which the four members then assemble together. As the guitarist himself explained, “I don’t like complete songs: I go ‘here’s some noises’ and then I have to take it to everybody else. They do all the magic and a song comes from it.” Law-Bregan cited a number of musical influences, ranging all the way from roaring metal acts like Crowbar, Mastodon and Baroness to, oddly enough, Sonic Youth. In terms of putting those ideas together into complete songs, the band shared how smooth the process tends to be for Hrönn. “We just try everything until it’s completely obvious that there’s the right way and the wrong way— we just try all the options, and when it’s the right one, everyone knows. I don’t think we’ve ever not had a unanimous decision.” Law-Bregan agreed, adding “we’re lucky because we get on so well: we have such a good time that we know where it’s going to go. We let the song take us— we all knows how to get there.”

For a band as well-oiled as this, it seems that the greatest challenge for Hrönn was choosing which songs would make the cut for the EP. As Osborne would say on ‘All The Voices,’ ‘The Warden’ and ‘Sacrosanct,’ “they show a few sides of us. We’re quite conscious of writing quite different-sounding songs: one will be leaning well into the stoner thing, one will be leaning well into a metal thing. Those three were the first that we thought, ‘that’s enough of a demonstration of what we can do.” As the duo went on to note though, ‘One EP’ is really only the beginning for the band’s studio output. “We hardly even call it an EP: it’s almost more of our demo. They’re almost three extremes of what we do. It’s a little dip: that’s who we are.” The guitarists found the choice of a favourite out of the three tracks agonising, with Law-Bregan eventually settling on ‘Sacrosanct’— “there’s so much energy involved: we really go for it”— and Osborne on ‘All The Voices’— “that was the first of our tracks where we really started to do the three vocals thing, and we’ve been playing it long enough now that it’s second nature.” 

Touching on the band’s lyrics as well, Osborne shared where the band tend to look for inspiration. “If we’re hanging out, there’s a good chance we’re probably talking about myths and legends. A lot of it’s just started from the idea of a myth, and I’ve tended to use personal struggles to flesh out that myth in an allegorical way. That’s my favourite thing to do.” Despite the carefree persona that often surrounds Hrönn, the guitarist went on to detail how important and personal lyrics can be for him, with ‘Sacrosanct,’ in particular, dealing with his divorce— “I don’t think you’re doing your job as a musician if you aren’t singing lyrics that tell your audience something about you. Your lyrics are your opportunity to communicate, and the people I look up to most do that brilliantly.”

Switching gears, we had to discuss the band’s electrifying stage presence, which was on full display at the final of Nottingham's Metal To The Masses competition— as you might expect, most of the band’s antics are off the cuff. “We’ve been round the block too many times to feel any pressure. The talking bits, we plan: we know roughly who’s going to say what. The physical moments— jumping around, climbing stuff— that’s all spontaneous.” Law-Bregan cited the group’s experience as a key factor in the shows they get to play, saying “we’ve been around the scene for a while, so we’ve built up that network— they know we’re going to offer a certain standard music, so we’re lucky that way.” With Hrönn often straddling the line between genres, Osborne went on to detail how varied the shows they can be booked for tend to be. “It is a little difficult to know what bill we should end up on— that is something we’re running into. We’re somewhere between the metal sound and the stoner sound, but that’s nothing that can’t be overcome by turning up anyway.” The band are booked to support Froglord in November.

Looking forward, Osborne was keen to confirm what fans have surely been hoping for. “Album is step one. We’re going to knuckle down on a bunch more writing now— that’s priority one. Give it six months and it’ll be underway.” Law-Bregan shared a similar enthusiasm for the band’s upcoming output. “The songs we’re writing have matured a lot, and so I’m excited for people to hear the new stuff. We let the songs go where they need to go— the songs will tell us where they need to be, and we follow along.” The guitarists also teased some elements to be expected from their forthcoming work, including a greater focus on vocal harmonies, and some experimentation with Mastodon-style drop tunings.

To round things out, we had to know if the duo had any favourite albums they were keen to shout-out. For Osborne, power metal came to mind. “First one off the top of my head would be ‘High Country’ by The Sword. I think if I could have written one album, that’s what it would be.” Law-Bregan’s choice, conversely, was leaning into the classics with Queen’s ‘News Of The World.’ “This is one that influenced me when I was a little boy. Absolutely fantastic album: really, really good. I’m often going back and just listening to it.”