Interview: Hell City Kings

By Omar Afra Photo by Aubrey McCoy

It’s been a minute or 2 since I last saw the Hell City Kings perform their personal blend of scumfuck-garage-punk-rock. Last time was at Westheimer Block Party at about 2PP with sun blazing over their heads outside Numbers. Turns out their lead singer woke up mere minutes before their performance with a stiff hangover and subsequently puked immediately after playing. Definitely bad scheduling on our part. Anyways, HCK have recently put out a new record, have some great shows slated, and are drinking more cheap Lone Star than ever. Christian and Bill tell us all about the Garage-y goodness.

Hell City Kings go hard live. Were you ever afraid you would not be able to capture this energy on a record?

Christian Bakka: We figured the best way to capture the energy was to DO IT LIVE!!! We actually knocked out 17 songs in one day.

Bill Fool: Recording for us is easy. We do the same things we do at a live show. We drink, bring something just in case we get a little tired, turn up loud and just fucking go for it. I think we pulled it off as best as we possibly could.

Who recorded and produced the record?

Christian Bakka: We recorded with Chris Ryan at Dead City Sound. Chris was really easy to work with and we are going into the studio with him again soon. As far as producers go, we don't need anyone to fuck with the songs we write.

Bill Fool: Nobody really uses a producer you know. I don't think most Houston bands need one. Just play the the song the way you wrote and hope you have someone like Chris to record it. He knows exactly what most bands here in Houston are going for. He can pretty much set a band up to sound great without all the fancy shit some knownothing producer would want to use. Producers are for pussy bands like Blue October. Fuck that shit.
Now that you have captured your seminal garage sound, will HCK move on to exploratory jazz or cutesy indie-pop?

Bill Fool: Those sound like fun ideas but I think we will leave that for the rich Indie bands here in town. We are a typical drunk rock n roll band. No use changing up the formula. Maybe tweak it up a bit but nothing too extreme. Look at the Ramones or AC/DC, those bands stuck with the same sound for their whole careers just adding a little bit here and there. They are/were the best and I love them even more for it.

Christian Bakka: Maybe one day we will have to restort to cutesy pop to get laid, but I dont see it happening anytime soon. Besides who ever heard of the cutesy indie pop band that was wasted on Lonestar and Jager. We would have better luck trying folk/reggae/gospel.

You have the scariest vocalist in town. Tell us a fun story about him.

Bill Fool: I've got tons but I guess 1 should suffice. So one time in L.A. we went to see The Dictators at the Troubadour. GFN had a shit load of drinks and was in a great mood. We leave the show and start heading to some chicks place so the boys in our band can maybe get lucky with some of the girls we just met and add some more booze to the liver. Well on the way to the house GFN starts taking is clothes off. We get to a light and he thinks it's time for Chinese fire drill, you know when you get out of the car and run around it real quick and jump back in just before the light turns green, well he does this with nothing on except his sock on a very busy Hollywood blvd. We are all laughing our asses off when someone notices that right behind our car was a cop car. The cop just shook his head in amazement. I mean you need to ask yourself what the fuck would you do if you saw a 6'-2" naked bald guy covered head-to-toe with tattoos, drunk and running circles around a car? Just look the other way is the advice I would give.

Will ya'll PLEASE play the November Block Party?

Bill Fool: Only if we can get a non hangover time slot. It's hard for 5 guys who don't go to bed until the wee hours to actually wake up before noon on the weekend. Just sayin'.

Christian Bakka: Hell Yeah, just let us play in Mangos again so we don't have to burn to death in the Numbers parking lot again.


Hell City Kings play Rudyard’s with Birds of Avalon September 25th.