Fresh from announcing Corporation P.O.P, Hot Milk invite us into the studio to talk timeless albums, channelling Rage Against The Machine, and, um, “fiddling with knobs…”
Somehow, Hot Milk have found time in their packed schedule to make album number two. Han Mee and Jim Shaw say it’s involved getting experimental in LA, reaching for the heaviness, and finally using a politics degree for lyrical inspo…
Han: “We went to LA to do it. We were in a compound thing where we’d work all day, then go back to where we were staying, keep working at night, then back to the studio the next day.”
Jim: “Then our drummer [Harry] Deller did his parts in the UK, once we had it written. It was a real polar opposite, because in America we were in this sunny, beautiful palm tree area, and then we were in Sheffield in December, driving over Snake Pass in the rain. It’s definitely a multi-seasonal album.”
Jim: “Our first album [A CALL TO THE VOID] was done in our studio box we have in Manchester, all digital, using plugins and guitar simulators. But a lot of the timeless albums that you hear, they have that character of real-life stuff. So we were like, ‘Okay, let’s go and twiddle some fucking knobs. Let’s go and flick some switches.’”
Han: “‘Let’s make stuff tangible again. Go back to basics.’ I think we had, like, nine amp heads we could pick from, and we could switch between them, fiddling with the knobs, spending ages going, ‘That’s not right, that’s not right…’ We wanted it all to be as analogue as possible. We were writing in this compound with all these synths and loads of different amps and sounds. We didn’t want any of it to be digital. We got there and went pedal shopping for two days.”
Jim: “I think the only thing that Han and I had spoken about going into it was timeless albums by bands like blink-182 and Green Day and My Chemical Romance, where they were trying to write a whole cohesive record. We wanted something like that, where it had all been written at the same time.”
Han: “It’s definitely heavier than the last record. There’s a lot more screams, a lot more energy. It doesn’t feel as produced as past Hot Milk records. It feels more live, which we like. And there’s interludes, like drum’n’bass stuff. There’s everything that we like, all jammed together.”
Jim: “Right from the start we had a solid track order. We bought this fucking big old whiteboard, and we split it up, and we were like, ‘Okay, first song, what do you want? Okay, something that’s going to punch someone in the face. Tick. Next one, a big sing-along. Tick.’”
Jim: “Coming into this album, we only really had a title, so I think that helped steer it. There’s a Rage Against The Machine vibe, because… well, what else are you going to write about?! It’s either going to be the two of us moaning that we’re tired, or it’s going to be another stupid love song that you’ve heard 100 million times.”
Han: “No-one needs to hear that. Who cares? Stop moaning. Get over it! I’m using my politics degree that I spent thousands of pounds on and then never saw the light of day ever again. It’s me being very, very pissed off. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, like, positive nihilism: ‘Everything’s fucking shit. The gaff’s on fire, it’s too far gone. What are we gonna do? We might as well just smile our way through the demise.’ There’s a few shots fired at America. I’m sure we’ll lose some American fans over it, which I’m fucking fine with.”
Han: “We were in LA with Zach Jones [Scene Queen] and KJ Strock [Machine Gun Kelly]. They’re not super-big producers, but we just liked them as people, and we liked some of the riffs that they had written previously. Honestly, we took a bit of a punt, but they understood our vision. Well, the minute vision that we had at that point.”
Jim: “They were massive nerds as well. During the month leading up to going to LA, we kept texting each other, like, ‘Have you seen this bit of gear?’ I think they wanted the same thing out of it as we did. And they loved playing around with stuff, so I was in heaven.”
Corporation P.O.P is released on June 27 via Music For Nations. The band play Slam Dunk Festival in May – get your tickets now.
This interview originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Kerrang!.
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