Hull Write Screenplays, Not Songs

"My eyes snap open as I feel my body jerk and realize I stand in the field just outside the cave that once splintered this mount before me." Those aren't lyrics for a Hull song. They're part of the story – found in the liner notes – surrounding the lyrics in one of the movements of the band's recently released debut full-length 'Sole Lord.'

While Hull is a new band, they've been collecting praise for their thundering live show and epic songs – though epic is a modest term, considering how much goes into the stoner metal opuses that routinely break the 10 minute mark. "We are trying to pick the ideas of past generations and civilizations and put that to song," says Sean Bryant Dunn of Hull, when talking to Noisecreep about the band's in-depth writing process.

"With each song, we try to look at it visually in a storyboard sense as if we are writing a screenplay." Dunn, who also does vocals along with every other member of Hull, explains their creative process, "How it works is when we are working on stuff, jamming or whatever, someone will say, 'hey this remind me of a sun rising over a pyramid' and from there we go with a story."

The visuals for 'Sole Lord' began just like that, and the band started researching Egyptian history. What they found was a story for the album about "religious beliefs," "reincarnation" and "the huge religious gulf of gods that surrounds Egyptian culture." According to Dunn, the end product is "a linear story of a character going from a mortal being to then transcending into immortality and then into the council of heavens thought the story." Dunn admits, "We put a lot of thought into this. Maybe too much."

With a debut album meant to be played from start to finish, Hull had to create a set list that focused only on specific parts of the story. But on CD release night they played the whole story, even recreating the swelling tides of feedback of the instrumental track 'Wrath of the Sands,' which Dunn says, "was an impromptu thing we did in the studio."

"Here we are drenched in sweat, and our necks killing and everyone is screaming for more," Dunn says about the tail end of the show. "The only thing left was the song 'Viking Funeral,' which is a sixteen minute song, so we basically did an hour long set."