HOT ROD

Almost twenty years is an unusually long road toward a debut album, but Hot Rod have never been particularly concerned with taking the conventional route.
Formed in 2006, the Italian Glam Metal band have had enough time to watch musical fashions disappear, return and reinvent themselves while continuing to develop their own combination of Eighties excess, big hooks, Hard Rock attitude and the dirtier edge of the early Nineties.
‘Harder Faster Glitter’ therefore represents both a beginning and the result of a history that existed long before the record finally arrived.
Behind the glitter, however, Hot Rod are considerably less interested in reconstructing the past than their visual identity might suggest.
Songs that no longer represent the band are discarded, influences are absorbed and reshaped rather than reproduced, and the theatrical personalities seen beneath the stage lights are amplified versions of people who do not take themselves too seriously.
In this interview by Fok ‘bs‘, Christian Balsamo and Mirko Di Bella, guitars with Italian Glam Metal band Hot Rod, talk about surviving outside musical fashion, the ruthless selection behind ‘Harder Faster Glitter’, emotion beneath the spectacle, the importance of irony, the difference between inspiration and imitation, and why anyone searching beneath the layers of glitter may discover considerably more than a recreation of the Eighties.
Hot Rod formed in 2006, yet ‘Harder Faster Glitter’ only arrived as your debut album almost twenty years later.
Does that long road make the album feel like a beginning, or does it actually feel more like the document of a band that already lived an entire chapter before making its first record?
Mirko: “Both, really. We tried to crystallize on this record a journey through older and more recent songs, representing the different sides and periods of Hot Rod. At the same time, it is an important step forward that encourages us to look to the future with a positive and proactive attitude.”
You describe ‘Harder Faster Glitter’ as a sonic kaleidoscope, moving through different shades of the 1980s and into the rougher early 1990s.
Was there ever a point where you had to reject a song because it sounded too faithful to a particular era and not enough like Hot Rod?
Mirko: “Absolutely. Many of our songs that used to be part of our repertoire were eventually left behind because they were not sufficiently in line with the sonic direction of the project. For the same reason, both Christian and I have songbooks full of complete songs that, most likely, nobody will ever hear. We tend to be quite demanding of ourselves. What actually reaches the public is therefore the result of a ruthless process of natural selection, after which only the ‘best’ songs – or at least the most suitable ones – survive.”
Christian: “From my point of view, each song I write is like a picture taken in that exact moment, and for a while you can show it to others and say ‘yeah, that’s me’. But, as time goes by, things change and that picture looks less and less alike so you have to take a new one.”
Glam metal has one of the most immediately recognizable visual identities in rock, which can be both an advantage and a trap. How do you make sure people hear what Hot Rod are doing musically before deciding they already understand the band simply from the way you look?
Mirko: “Clearing up that kind of misunderstanding has never really been a concern for us. If someone has prejudices or doubts because of the visual and theatrical side of the band, they are perfectly free to go elsewhere and enjoy whatever they think is better.”
The title ‘Harder Faster Glitter’ puts heaviness, speed and flamboyance together in three words.
If you had to remove one of those three ingredients from Hot Rod, which loss would fundamentally destroy the band’s identity?
Mirko: “That’s a very difficult question. I’d take a gamble and say ‘Glitter’. Without that element, we would just be a hard ’n’ heavy band.”
Christian: “Yeah, I’d pick the same element. I’d say that the glitter was and is the thing that makes us stand out when people see us: it’s quite funny seeing that people still react in a certain way when they see us in our full blown attires!”
There is an interesting contradiction in glam metal:
beneath all the excess, color and larger than life attitude, some of its strongest songs have always dealt with vulnerability, loneliness and insecurity.
Is that contrast between spectacle and genuine emotion something you consciously explore in your own songwriting?
Christian: “I remember an interview where Paul Stanley said something like ‘you can’t be ‘rock and roll all night and party every day’ all the time, because the people would immediately understand that it’s fake’, and I agree with him. We’re human beings, and as such, we experience the whole spectrum of human emotions. I don’t think that Hot Rod have some deep spiritual/philosophical message to spread to the masses, but in our small way we like to explore that kind of emotions too.”
You formed at a time when openly playing glam metal was hardly the safest route to being taken seriously by the wider metal world.
Did being unfashionable actually give Hot Rod more freedom, because there was never any reason to chase whatever happened to be popular at the time?
Mirko: “Paradoxically, being an entity that was already considered ‘unfashionable’ gave us the advantage of never really going out of fashion.”
Christian: “We never cared that much about what was popular when we started playing as a band. I mean, we’re firmly grounded in a musical style that was popular almost fifty years ago! We give ourselves the luxury to write and play what we want.”
Your music connects the colorful excess of the 1980s with the harder and more streetwise character that followed in the early 1990s.
Which side comes more naturally to Hot Rod, the celebration or the dirt underneath it?
Mirko: “The compass definitely points more strongly towards the Eighties. Celebration, excess, big hooks and that larger-than-life sense of fun are probably the most natural elements in our DNA. But we also like the dirt underneath the glitter: the harder edge, the streetwise attitude and the rougher feel that came into hard rock in the early Nineties. I think the combination of those two sides is part of what makes Hot Rod what it is, even if our heart probably beats a little faster for the Eighties.”
After playing together for so many years before making your debut album, you had something most young bands do not have:
a very long period in which to discover what does not work.
What is something Hot Rod believed about its own music ten or fifteen years ago that you no longer believe today?
Christian: “Personally I think that we became more aware of the dedication it takes to keep a band like us alive, so our approach is generally more rational and less impulsive. As for the music we write and play, I still believe that it has the same potential, the same naivete if you want, that it had ten or fifteen years ago.”
‘Wild Wheels’ gives listeners a very immediate introduction to the band’s attitude.
When choosing a song to represent Hot Rod visually as well as musically, were you looking for the track that best represents the album, or the one that best represents what happens when Hot Rod walk onto a stage?
Christian: “I’d say that Hot Rod lives and breathes especially on stage, so the songs that represent us best on the album are also the same songs that can give the listener a good idea of what happens when we jump on the stage.”
Glam metal has always blurred the boundary between musician and character.
When you perform as Hot Rod, are we seeing amplified versions of your real personalities, or are there elements of the band that only exist once the lights come on and you step onto the stage?
Mirko: “In real life, we are actually quite mild-mannered people, although we are also very inclined towards joking around and not taking ourselves too seriously. So that sense of fun naturally comes out on stage. Obviously, the show is not real life. Just like an actor stepping onto a stage, a musician can play a role which, at times, becomes larger than life. I think the Hot Rod side of us is real, but amplified: louder, more colorful and probably a little more outrageous than the people we are when we are simply sitting at home.”
Christian: “The element that really blurs the line between our day to day and our stage personas is the irony: we’re very ironic, sarcastic, and maybe a little nipping in our normal life, and often during our shows we take the time to throw some jokes at the crowd. Other than that, I’d say that when we are under the spotlight we inflate our egos a little bit and we let ourselves go for a couple of hours.”
Italy has produced important heavy metal and hard rock bands, but it is not usually the first country people associate with glam metal.
Has that distance from Los Angeles and the traditional centres of the genre helped you develop an interpretation of glam that feels less bound by its original rules?
Mirko: “Perhaps, yes. But I don’t think it is only a matter of geographical distance; it is even more a matter of temporal distance. We are looking at the whole phenomenon from the perspective of external observers, from another place and another time. That gives us the freedom to embrace it, absorb it, synthesize its different elements, interpret them and reshape them in our own way.”
Christian: “The way I see it, even we don’t follow the ‘glam metal rules’ that strictly! But it’s all a matter of time: time blurs everything, and we’re not archeologists that try to reconstruct something exactly as it was in the past.”
A younger listener discovering glam today may have no personal memory of the 1980s at all.
Do you think that can actually be an advantage, because they can judge the music without the cultural baggage, clichés and arguments that have followed the genre for decades?
Mirko: “I think younger listeners probably have their own idea of what the Eighties were, and that idea is not necessarily disconnected from the present. Just look at the Stranger Things phenomenon: for many young people, the Eighties have become a kind of shared imaginary world, even for those who were obviously not there to experience them firsthand. That can actually be an advantage. They are free to approach the music through their own perspective, rather than through nostalgia or personal memories. Of course, what they perceive as ‘the Eighties’ may sometimes be a modern reinterpretation of the decade, but that is perfectly fine.”
Christian: “A young listener may not have the cultural baggage and clichés that revolved around the glam metal scene at the time, but he may have those that revolve around it now, in the present. Provided that nowadays you can find all the informations you want about anything online, so you can freely choose from which perspective a genre can be judged.”
After almost twenty years together, ‘Harder Faster Glitter’ finally gives Hot Rod a proper debut album.
If this record introduces someone to the band for the first time, what would you most hate for them to misunderstand about who Hot Rod are?
Mirko: “As I said before, if someone misunderstands something about us or our music, they can simply take it or leave it. That said, I’m not even sure a glam band can still carry the same stigma it once did. These days, the metal scene is overflowing with gimmick bands wearing costumes that would make even the most dedicated cosplayers proud. Compared to some of them, Hot Rod probably come across as serious and restrained as members of the Vienna Philharmonic. So, honestly, I’m not particularly worried about being misunderstood. We are what we are, and the music is there for anyone who wants to listen to it. Those who get it, get it. Those who don’t, can simply move on.”
Christian: “I don’t mind being misunderstood as long as you’re willing to take some time and dig a little deeper, beneath all the layers of glitter.”
‘Harder Faster Glitter’ may finally put a debut album beside the Hot Rod name, but little about the conversation with Christian Balsamo and Mirko Di Bella suggests a band interested in treating the record as the culmination of its past.
Almost twenty years have instead given Hot Rod the opportunity to decide what belongs in their music and, equally importantly, what does not.
Songs have been abandoned, attitudes have matured and the commitment required to keep the band alive has become clearer, while the enthusiasm that originally drew them toward this music remains.
The glitter is still essential, but it is not an attempt to preserve the Eighties behind glass.
Hot Rod look at Glam Metal from another country, another generation and another moment in time, allowing them to take what inspires them and reshape it according to their own instincts.
Their stage personas may be louder, more colorful and more outrageous than their everyday selves, but the irony, humor and music underneath them are real.
Whether everybody understands that distinction appears to matter considerably less to the band than continuing to make the music they actually want to make.
by Fok ‘bs‘