The Hara exploded onto the rock scene and keep getting bigger and better with no end in sight. With their recent trip across to the States and the new album ready to burst into the universe we caught up with Josh Taylor (frontman), Zack Breen (guitar) and Jack Kennedy (drums) them to talk all things rock.
The last 12 months have been nothing but non-stop for this fearless trio, they’ve played most of the UK’s biggest festivals, from the main stage at Reading and Leeds, to Download and 2000Trees just to name a few.
“Download we always say that’s the massive pinnacle moment for us, especially in terms of getting our fan base to what it is now, there’s a real sort of change in the wind when we played that you know, you look at our tour, our shows we did before the festivals and now the audiences are completely evolved which is so cool to see,” says Josh.
No matter the size of the festival or venue Josh, Jack and Zack give it everything, it’s something everyone should witness; according to them even their haters should catch a show. Josh and Jack reveal “I reckon our message to the haters [is] come to a show you’ll change your mind, and you know what if not, thank you for the hate. We love you; we appreciate all of it because actually, it’s making us into a better band. It’s just fuel on the fire.”
They also had some wise advice for any of their fans struggling with negative thoughts. “Fuck the haters, and if you’ve got haters, you’re probably doing something right, you know, I think that’s a good thing and I think use that hate to make something good, you know what I mean, channel it you know, just be yourself man because life’s too short to worry about the opinions of other people,” says Josh.
The Hara’s sound has been described as “genre fluid” which translates into each of their individual music influences. Now there’s a lot of bands you might expect to see them influenced by with the likes of Bring Me The Horizon, Sleep Token and Queen in the mix. However, there’s a few surprising ones you might not have expected them to rave about. “You love a bit of George Michael don’t you, Josh,” says Zach, who later also says states “Wham are amazing.”
Music and playing in a band have always been in their sights, but it’s a funny yet crazy story that brought these guys together, involving a Zoo and a PlayBoy collaboration Frank Sinatra T-Shirt. We’ll let them explain:
“It’s actually a funny story, I’ll do the short form version” Jack starts, “Basically I used to work in a zoo, I was looking after the animals there, I think I was on er elephants duty you call it, I was just going around their enclosure or whatever and I see this dude literally trying to climb over the barriers *Josh puts his hand up* at the side and I was like, no way is this guy trying to do this.”
“I was quite young”, chimes Josh.
“3 or 4 elephants in here, I went running over and I was like dude get back over there now and then this guy had also seen him *points to Zack* and you was on the job as well weren’t ya, so Jack was a janitor at the zoo as well,” recalls Jack.
“you didn’t get on though” states Josh, as Jack responds telling us “there was like rivalry kinda thing, Zack came running over at the same time and we both noticed Josh’s t-shirt…a Frank Sinatra, but was a playboy collaboration Frank Sinatra T-shirt, frontal spread.”
Josh jokes how the t-shirt would probably be worth a fortune now, but how Josh and Zack laughed at him at the time, before asking him if he wanted to join a band.
“Zack kinda said that’s a bold t-shirt man do you wanna join a band and that was it,” recalls Jack. Josh lets us know that it wasn’t quite a simple as that “we obviously got talking afterwards and figured out, we all liked music and then we just jammed”. Jack quit his job at the zoo, but Zack still works there.
There are often misconceptions about being in a band especially within the rock scene. A lot of the time it can all look like drinking, smashing things up and partying, but Josh explains there’s more than meets the eye to the rockstar lifestyle. “I think it’s a lot harder than it looks, you know, I think obviously there’s some awesome sick moments of being in a band. When you do get them big moments of playing on them big stages and stuff like that, that makes it all worth it but you know, a lot of the stuff that is required to be a successful band is really hard and I think with anything it’s hard if you want it enough, but yeah a lot of sacrifices have to be made and have to sell yourself to the devil.”
Fresh out of the studio the trio have created their intoxicating debut album Survival Mode, which is due to be released on 7th April. They worked closely with, in Josh’s words, “Legend” Jason Perry on this punchy powerful masterpiece.
“The first time we played download in 2021 is when we met Jason, so he came saw our set was blown away. He was like who are these guys, got to work with them, we was like, we love you lets work together. Then we had a few different writing sessions since that time. He came to our studio; we went to his studio. It was end of 2021 when we decided to sit down and record the full album, so we had like an intensive two weeks in a little cottage studio in the countryside, with Jason and us and a couple of other people, and we got down and dirty. You know we made sonic madness. We melded our brains of creativity to make the album which is survival mode.”
The highly anticipated debut album is well worth the wait. The early album teasers ROCKSTAR challenges what’s perceived to being in stardom and Talk To The Manager shows the fakery within the music industry – there’s no stopping them and why would you want them to.
THE HARA will release their debut album Survival Mode on 7th April, pre-order it now via the official band website.
Survival Mode Tracklisting
1. Autobiography
2. Rockstar
3. Died In My Twenties
4. Circles
5. Play My Game
6. Talk To The Manager
7. Faking It
8. Fix Me Again
9. Fire
10. Okay That’s Me
11. Jesus
12. Off This Train
This is one band you must see live! Catch them on the road at one of these dates:
7th April – O2 Academy 2, Sheffield
8th April – Cathouse, Glasgow
9th April – The Cluny, Newcastle
12th April – The Fleece, Bristol
13th April – The Garage, London
14th April – O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
15th April – Academy 2, Manchester
25th April – Dynamo Basement, Eindhoven
26th April – Headcrash, Hamburg
27th April – Cassiopeia, Berlin
28th April – Cafe v Lese, Prague
30th April – Strom, Munich
1st May – MTC Club, Cologne
