HotWax embrace chaos and catharsis on debut album ‘Hot Shock’

WRITTEN BY Justice Petersen

With a hard-hitting musicality that is equal parts healing and heavy, English rock outfit HotWax are continuing to cement themselves as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most exciting new acts. After dropping two EPs in 2023 — A Thousand Times and Invite me, kindly — HotWax has relentlessly toured around the world, racking up a total of over 150 shows, including sets at Download Festival and England’s Reading and Leeds Festivals, as well as tours supporting Royal Blood and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. Additionally, the rising stars have also gained support from the likes of Courtney Love, Elton John and Beck, proving them to be one of the most thrilling groups of this year.

Composed of Tallulah Sim-Savage (vocals and guitars), Lola Sam (bass) and Alfie Sayers (drums), the Hastings, England natives’ debut album serves as a diverse body of work. Along with the band’s grungy musicality is an ever-present honesty and raw vulnerability.

Now, HotWax is gearing up to release their debut full-length album Hot Shock on March 7 through Marathon Artists. Having released three highly energetic singles ahead of the record, the world has already gotten a taste of the eclectic artistry that HotWax will soon share in full with the release of the LP. Co-produced by Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Wolf Alice) and Steph Marziano (Picture Parlour, Cassandra Jenkins), Hot Shock was written in moments while touring the United States, the U.K. and Europe. Once the band returned from touring, they had little time to record the album.

“We were kind of in this weird, frantic head space that was fun and very adrenaline-fueled,” SimSavage says. “It was quite spur-of-the-moment, but exciting. And then it all just came together quite nicely because the whole thing was quite mad. All the songs are about that [excitement] really, and the experiences and the way we were feeling. It was a hot shock, which is what we named it after.”

As they blend influences of indie, punk and rock, HotWax are able to reach a wide audience, helping them to stand out in a thriving music scene. “I think that we can kind of appeal to different audiences with our music, mostly because of our influences and just how we’ve grown up playing,” Sam says.

Following the release of Hot Shock, the band will embark on an in-store tour in the U.K., playing the album in full for fans in local record stores across the country. “Meeting people that listen to our music and want to buy our album [is] going to be really nice,” Sam says. “We’ve never really done that and I want to hear what people say about the album and their thoughts on it.”

HotWax first began to take shape when SimSavage and Sam met in secondary school. The two began making music together and eventually met Sayers at a music college, forming HotWax in 2021. The trio have spoken about the special relationship they share, and how all three of them are able to work so well together within HotWax. During the making of their debut LP, the band says they were able to grow together even further.

“This was sort of the first time where we didn’t have any back catalog before we had to write the album,” Sim-Savage says. “So we just would try loads of different ways of writing all in a room together or on Lola’s laptop and stuff like that. I think it’s given us more of an understanding of how we work and sort of how to approach the next thing now.”

Ahead of the album’s release, HotWax has released three singles, including “She’s Got A Problem,” “Wanna Be A Doll” and “One More Reason.” Throughout the record, it is evident that each member shines in their own way, creating a final product that is multi-layered and intentional. “My favorite [song] by far is ‘Wanna Be A Doll,’” Sayers says. “I just like the way that everything flows together. Not just what I’m playing, but also how we all flow between the sections in that song. It all just feels right. That was one of the earlier ones that we’d written and we’d had in 2023 actually, which went through loads of different versions, but I’m glad it got to the point where it is now.”

While HotWax is renowned for their sonic heaviness, the band experiments more with softness on Hot Shock. The album’s closing number “Pharmacy” is an acoustic track that SimSavage was happy to get featured on the album. “I love all the songs,” she says, “but I’m glad that I got to get ‘Pharmacy’ on there because I always write these very acoustic songs that I just kind of have for myself and sing in my room. It feels like a nice comfort at the end [of the album].”

Though Sam and Sim-Savage admit that they hope to one day release an entire 20-song acoustic album, heavier music is undoubtedly the band’s ultimate means of catharsis.“Heavy music makes us feel really good and there’s nothing quite like watching a live heavy band,” Sim-Savage says. “It’s just the best thing in my opinion. But I do love softer music and I listen to it a lot and I think as well, lyrically, a lot of the time it’s more emotional.”

The band’s latest single to be released ahead of the album, “One More Reason,” is an adrenalinefueled track with lyrics that dance along the edge between love and hate. A fearless and poetic anthem, the song opens with an addicting bassline and spirals into something ferocious as Sim-Savage delivers the lyrics, “I hate our love, hate my love. Give me one more reason to love you, give me one more reason to hate.”

“It’s so relentless and the bass just keeps going and keeps going,” Sim-Savage says. “ It’s quite intense and gets sort of weird — jarring, but in a cool way. I guess that’s kind of the way I feel about love and hate.”

Several songs off Hot Shock address love, relationships and the role we play in loving another person. While exploring these emotional concepts, the band’s main goal was to be as honest as possible. “I used writing these songs almost like therapy,” Sim-Savage admits. “Just to say things as I really thought, and then I get to sing them every night and that’s very satisfying. But I guess it was like moving out of being a teenager and coming into our twenties and sort of having that shift of becoming a woman and your brain just feeling a bit more in the room and you know that you want more.”

Throughout the record, HotWax’s undying honesty burns just as bright as their sonic fury. Ultimately, Hot Shock served as a means for the band to contemplate the vulnerability they have come to face with their success and journey up to this point. “[When] we started touring and we got signed, me and Lola were 18,” Sim-Savage says. “We were very vulnerable, we went on these big tours and went to America and now I look back and it has just been this crazy whirlwind. We weren’t prepared — we’re still not prepared — but we’re going with it and just trying not to overthink anything too much.”

Ultimately, it’s this optimism and fearlessness on Hot Shock that the band hopes stands out to listeners. HotWax decided to record the album live in an effort to add to the grittiness and passionate energy already contained in the studio-recorded LP itself. “I just kind of want them to feel how we felt making it,” Sim-Savage says. “It was a very exciting, exhilarating, sweaty, mad time.”

“We want them to feel like they’re in a gig, really, and for people to listen multiple times and hear new things,” Sam says. “Because though it was quite chaotic, we spent a lot of time with all the parts, and each bass drum and each extra sound and everything is there for a reason. I hope people can also listen back and hear the effort we put in.”