In this episode we talk to Zack Breen of The HARA.
We talk about his early musical influences and his search for the “right” guitar and amplifier combination to get a signature sound.
As the only stringed instrument player in the band, Zack takes on all guitar and bass duties, and explains the dynamics between using stems to enhance the live sound whilst maintaining the excitement of a live band, and keeping room for improvisation.
Simon
Today we are lucky enough to have Zack Breen from The HARA. So welcome, Zack.
Zack
Hi, hi, man. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Simon
Well, it’s great that you are, especially as you’re just back off of tour, I think final gig on Saturday?
Zack
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, the show was on Saturday and as you say final show and that’s an interesting one because it felt almost like the sending off of the old era, if you will, and it feels like we’re ushering in the new stuff that we’re about to start to focus on and release and drip feed into the world after being basically dormant on the music front for about a year or over a year.
It’s over a year since the last stuff that we released. So it was good. It was very, it was really good. It felt good.
Simon
So it was a fun tour. You enjoyed it?
Zack
Yeah, man. Yeah, it was really fun. We played, it was just one show in Southampton, but we were away for, I mean, this week was quite, I don’t even know what it is!
It was one of those. It was like a real short one, an intense run, but it was like peppered with things like the start of the week was we went to the heavy music awards in London, which was great. So, you know, that was the big party. That was really fun.
And yeah, just then Southampton at the end of it, which was great.
Simon
I wish I had known in time actually, because I’m pretty close to Southampton, but get you next time.
So I’ve got a whole list of questions to ask you. And I’ve got to ask you first of all, your live sound and versus your studio. I mean, your sound is absolutely massive. However do you do that on the stage?
Zack
Good question. Yeah. I mean, through a lot of trial and error, I think. Yeah, like, you know, when the band first started, I toured with a Cornford. I still have it literally just off camera. A Cornford Roadhouse 30 watt amp head, which to this day, I think it’s still one of my favourite amps of all time, the Cornford. I didn’t say I had. Yes, I’ve got my Cornford. I was on with my Cornford, 1×12 Black Star cab . And you know, that’s that kept me going through. And you know, maybe longer than I care to admit, but I needed more being the one guitarist.
The only guitarist of the band, the only string player in the band. I felt like we needed more. And it was my sound tech at the time who said, have you ever thought about doing a dual rig?
You know, it’s just an A and B pedal and I thought, no, but that sounds awesome. And I started to experiment with dual rigs after that. I got myself a Switchblade, A/B pedal. And I, yeah, I just hooked up to the Cornford and I bought myself a Mesa Boogie single rectifier, which is just the sound, isn’t it?
The sound – and A and B those and immediately just, I mean, two is better than one! And that gave me just like the stage sound more, more for our front of house to play with and just different tonal options. And that really spawned a obsession with trying to experiment with lots of different dual rigs.
You know, now I run, after seven years of trial and error, I run the Laney Iron Heart Head. Who, Laney is such an amazing company who endorsed me and are so helpful in so many different ways. But I run yet a full Laney rig now.
So I have my Iron Heart head. And then I have a Iron Heart SLS, which is like a monoblock . It’s like a small tube. It’s almost like a fly rig, but it’s amazing what a tone it punches. And with the whole kind of focus on other companies going smaller, you know, more digital modelers, floor models and stuff. Laney’s had a really good answer for it. And they’ve just built on that even more so with things like the loud pedal and the boundary pedals and stuff, which I’ve also used for fly rigs.
But my main rig would be a dual combo of the SLS and the Iron Heart head. And I found for that, that together, both DI and then a cab mic, it’s just huge. It’s a real, a real huge sound for me.
Simon
And you use that in the studio as well?
Zack
So all the new music that we’ve just recorded over the past year was for sure the main sound at all came from the iron heart mixture of the SLS. There was a little Mango amp in the studio. I love like when you go to studios and there’s random like bits of stuff. Just, like, what is this? And it’s called some freaky name that you’ve never heard of. And you’re like, I’m going to use it. I’m going to use it and I’m going to make it sound sick.
So there’s a couple of different random things. But the main sound for sure is still, is still the Iron Heart. And I think there was, I think we use this. Like it was a Laney product again, but it’s like a studio head that I’m not too sure of what the make specifically is. But it was this great unit that just sits on your desk and you can basically just program whatever sound you want into it. So it’s like a hybrid of tubes and digital. I honestly don’t know what it was, but it was very, very fun.
So yeah, still Laney though pushing the sound.
Simon
I also must ask you, and I should know the answer to this, but I don’t. You said you’re the only string player in the band. How do you get the bass sound, you know, that’s going on alongside with it? I I guess there’s some sort of octave going on?
Zack
Yeah, good question. Again, trial and error over the years. We we run live stems that our sound tech mixes live all individual live stems. And there is the sub, you know, there’s running live alongside the instruments on stage. There is stuff, you know, like keys, pad sounds, synths, sub bass, real bass, extra guitar, all of which any of the strings that you hear either recorded or obviously live. I’ve played. I love to play. I’m the bassist of the band, but it’s just that I just don’t play live and I enjoy that because I love to play bass as well. But it is a delicate balance for sure.
It’s getting the live and the stems just mixed right so it feels it feels natural. It sounds natural. And yet the where the frequencies of everything sits is important. Yeah. So one is an over like, you know, the sub bass is overpowering the real bass and the real bass sits really nicely with my guitar and etc. So, it is. Yeah, it’s a bit of like an ecosystem. But it is that we do play with stems. And we play to a click, you know, everything’s in a session. We’ve got a timecode in a lot of looping and an automation and stuff. And it’s a real big thing. But I I found that our rig now feels like the most proficient and ordually pleasing that I’ve heard. One thing that we need to do going forward with all the new stuff that we’ve just done is just kind of do what we’ve done to the previous stuff and just make sure it all sits really nicely with the live stuff because, you know, when it’s soon as you record something new, it’s just it’s just making sure that it all sounds similar-ish. If that makes any sense without the new sound being too loud or too clean. So that is this month’s job is to make all these things really well.
Simon
I guess you must need a lot of discipline in that? I guess there’s no room for improv.
Zack
Well, so you’d think that. But as a player who absolutely adores improvisation. And so does my drummer Jack. He loves to improv and we both jam off each other at loads. I love players like Guthrie Govan and Rick Graham. I love a lot of fusion players and I’ve been always enamoured by their approach to improvisation. And so with the live set, I never wanted to lose that. But neither did the other guys, but I was adamant that I didn’t want to lose it and we have left room either side of the track. Sometimes we’ll extend sections and we’ll make it. I mean, it is, of course, live, but we do want those pockets to play around and nothing is ever played the same once either or twice, because even in the sections that are more structured, I’ll still mess with them. We’ll still jam over them. And I think I like to kind of do that because it’s fresh for me. It’s and I just love the fact that I’m going to pick up my guitar and and I know the structure and I know what I’ve got to play with. But we’ll still find time to to mess to mess around with it to improvise and jam. And in the elongated sections, I’ll always change it up, you know, we’ll place stuff. And we always we always wanted to and we will always keep that hugely into into that side of stuff.
Simon
That sounds absolutely fascinating. Yeah. I wonder maybe if we could chat a little bit to find out about what got you into music and, you know, what do you remember was the thing when you said, “I’ve got to be the guy with the guitar”.
Zack
Yeah, of course. I think a lot of it was. I think it hit music hit me a really good time. I just started high school. And I was like, try just started to form a put like your personality, if you will, you know, get into stuff. And I met some of my friends in those years who are still my dear close friends who introduced me to bands like a Avenged Sevenfold and Dream Theatre and early 2000s and new metal and metal in general. But then, on the other side of that I got into films and film soundtracks films like I mean a lot of the Tarantino films at the time I remember I had like a Pulp Fiction soundtrack CD and I loved all of the Cool and the Gang.
And just, yeah, just kind of started a fascination with genres, you know, the film soundtracks are so varied as well. And video games won’t lie. I got into like guitar hero and stuff like that and it on all these and Kerrang – I remember I started to watch Kerrang a lot. And it was all these little things that kind of like pushed me towards this this identity, this personality and fascination with like music and and what I guess it would could easily be kind of described as like the alternative culture, I guess.
And yeah, it’s kind of centred around people, the guitarists of these bands, I thought were just super cool and I had, yeah, a real fascination with the guitar pretty much immediately after I after I kind of all of these things started to enclose on me.
And, honestly, I just I asked my mom to if if I could have a go, and and my uncle had a black and white strat, which was like just like a cheap brand and a tiny little Crate practice amp and he’s like you can borrow these for a bit and see if you if you like it if you want – and and I did. And here I am. I liked it a lot. I liked it so much I based my entire life on it!
Yeah, but it was just like an amalgamation of getting into loads of different things. Now just that right age meeting really nice people who, you know, push me to these cool places and introduce me to these new sounds and new bands. And this like how they looked as well they were all in tattoos and they’re all just in black and they’re all shredding and it just blew my mind to think that people could do this.
And that’s and that’s how it started that’s and that’s how it’s still going.
Do you remember, after the Encore strat, are you thinking “yeah okay I really need a real strat”? Do you remember the first guitar that you saved up and bought after the strat?
Zack
Yes good question.
I tried a Les Paul actually I tried a Les Paul. It was an Epiphone Special. I think it was like an all black one.
It didn’t last that long I remember just because I didn’t like the action at the time. I didn’t really know what was going on but it was it was things like the action was too high. I needed a bit more refinement almost and that’s when I traded that and I got myself an Ibanez.
And that was when I was like okay I see I see what the kind of vibe is. I got just an Ibanez really cheap Ibanez RG was like a white one with a pearloid pickguard and I and had a Floyd Rose on I had no idea what was going on and you know these locking tuners – I was like oh my god this is crazy. And that was yeah that was a real interesting point because to that point I had only played guitars which you know are relatively standard issue.
If you know what I mean the Ibanez was my first real kind of step up and experience with like a you know a floating trim and locking tuners which are now standards to me. And yeah that was the that was the first real kind of experience with that level up and then after that, I tried a few different things and I think I really do enjoy just playing guitars just the loads of different guitars and I don’t know about you but like just anything I love it all and I tried a PRS.
It was a Paul Allender model based on it was like we use the guitarist from Cradle of Filth which was pretty cool. Had some bat inlays which I remember being very sick. It was like an emerald green. It looked awesome sounded good but I didn’t like the fact that it had like a plastic varnish neck. I liked the natural – it felt like my hand was sticking too much so I tried a few different things and that eventually kind of pushed me into well funnily enough it actually made me go back to the strat.
So it went I kind of tried all these different things and then I thought I want to get a proper strat.
I mean there’s a reason why yeah they are as good, they’ve lasted as long as they have. I’ve still got it to this day And that was it for like – it just stuck. It was the guitar that I brought on tour with me with the band for years it was my primary guitar or open till I got my Charvel.
Which was like everything I wanted – is a super strat, basically with it having the Goto hardware on with the locking tuners at the back. And this great kind of bridge which was somewhere between like a you know floating bridge of fixed bridges. Amazing and again I love my Charvel so much. And then from then on I kind of knew what I wanted.
I’ve always been into drop tuning and I’ve always been into extended range guitars and I wanted to experiment more with that on the new stuff that we’ve been doing. So this past year and last year I got in contact with Strandberg and became a Strandberg artist – and started to play Strandberg.
I feel like Strandberg encapsulates everything that I’ve always wanted to do. In terms of playability, tone, style. I like the fact that it’s quite controversial in a way being a headless instrument, a headless guitar. You know I think they’re almost like pieces of art in and of itself. But the ergonomics of it and how they can handle like everything I throw at it combined with the fact that I play seven strings and six strings.
There’s no question I think it’s like the best playing guitar I’ve ever played. It’s inspiring how you can like pick it up and just do something that. And it’s hard to explain like it’s just really, really magical like and I remember picking it up and being like felt like I did when I first played like my strat when I was 16 or so.
You know the Ibanez when it was like 12 or something like that it was one of those moments and I thought wow. I need to. I need to find out more I need to play this more and see what happens and. And then a whole a whole record of the HARA stuff was written. So it definitely worked for what I wanted to try and do explore find a new sound you know and and I love that because the tools are the end of the day guitars are tools and I’m so and I’m really into like using them to push your boundary and try and inspire you to play differently or think differently.
Yeah, and that’s what I love about the Strandbergs. They make you. They encourage you to try different things for sure
Simon
And that’s your go to guitar now?
Zack
Yeah the Strandbergs are – I have a six and a seven. So they’ve both got you know like the floating systems on. And they’re the same model the same model just different colour and one extra string and one less string so they’re but they are amazing for sure that they are so handy.
The ergonomics are a big part of the marketing but you really don’t appreciate it until you play it for more than like 20 minutes or something like that like. The more you play it the more you discover and that’s what I find the inspiring thing about it because it like it does encourage you to play and it does encourage you to like try different things.
The neck profile for example being more like these trapezoids put together as opposed to the rounded radius of a standard neck. All of it just encourages you to try different things and as much as I love my strat and my charvel and Fender as a company, they – It’s like they don’t give you as much unbridled freedom.
I think that’s really important you know not just as a guitar player which I absolutely am and I am a humongous guitar nerd but, my mission in my adult life is more creative.
Simon
That’s amazing and I really ought to ask you about pedals – So what’s on the floor?
Zack
Yeah dude well. Why. To be honest with you, my boards are relatively simple compared to what I’ve seen my peers and some friends build, but a lot of Black Country custom pedals which is another Laney kind of twin companies.
I have the A and B – so I’ve got my A and B panel. Which is essential for the dual rig. Then. I’ve got a Oceanverb. I’m saying this – I should probably remember these. Yeah I’ve got like an Oceanverb digital delay and Sentry noise gate.
Yeah with just different kind of Black Country custom. Everything from distortion, overdrive, chorus. I do have an octave pedal, you’re right, for some of those single note riffs that do need some extra live bass sure.
That’s basically it – then the tuner of course yeah and that’s basically it. It’s relatively standard I would say. But the Black Country custom stuff is awesome the the monolith distortion’s probably my favorite.
I have tried various distortion pedals over my time. I like the MXR I used up until the monolith I used MXR badass super distortion pedal. Which was really really cool because I thought at the time it sounded great with my the Mesa and Cornford combo. The MXR just gave it – It was a bit sludgy but like it made it sound huge just like the Cornford. And then this MXR just kind of engulfed it all with this huge kind of fuzziness.
It was really cool but then when I went to Laney. I just felt like the MXR didn’t really compliment it as well. And so when they were – well I kind of told them I need some pedals and stuff – like you should probably try the monoliths and it made obvious sense because of the fact that it’s the same company so.
And it does sound insane yeah the the options the different voice options for your distortion are fantastic. There’s a great like kind of classic saturated distortion. There’s more of like a where it cuts out a lot of it basically and kind of reinforces the the signal of the amp so you get more of like a kind of clear, natural distortion from the amp and then and then quite a modern one, where it’s very feels very airy very open.
I found that the the Black Country Custom pedals are great to use both live and then in the studio because there is a lot of options with them. And so yeah I’m definitely a big big believer in those guys and, yeah,excited to see what they kind of do. They seem to be bringing out new products quite frequently so every time that they do I’m like please send me one. It looks awesome please give me.
Simon
It’s interesting I noticed that your guitar sound has got heavier and bigger as time has gone on basically. I think, from my ears, there was a point around 2020, or at least the recordings that were released around then ,you seems to go from a rocky sound to a thicker, slightly more compressed metal type of sound. Does that coincide with the the Laney coming on board?
Zack
Absolutely man yeah. Yeah I joined Laney in about any 2021. I think 2020 is when I started to experiment with the Mesa. And then joined Laney in 21.
Around that time and, it was definitely a natural thing I think. But it was also a combination of a few different things like the production getting better, me understanding more about recording, and about me as a guitar player. And also just the direction of the band, you know, like the sound of the band.
And which is funny, for what you said, because of all the stuff that’s going to be coming out very very soon and in the future with how all of that sounds. The comment you made is absolutely appropriate because that’s where we’ve taken it now. Definitely a kind of like flag in the ground.
Because for me, I wanted to cement a sound so it’s always been important for me to try and find what that sound is. And just like with my guitars, trying to find what that perfect balance is. To find that sound, you know, these tools and and try to understand what it takes to get what I want and be the guitar player I want to be.
It took some time, it took some recording sessions. Yeah and I feel like now with the new stuff yeah it’s definitely how the sound is.
Big is basically the word. It’s big because we wanted it. We felt like, with the previous stuff -which I love dearly – but the guitar sound feels it wasn’t as big as it is live. We always pride ourselves on the live shows. We think it’s really good. And, I wanted and we all wanted, the records to be a great reflection of what the live sound is. Because we feel like that’s where we’re at our best.
So this new stuff going forward was a big. That was a big focus. The big goal was like listen to the song and then where that would sit live in terms of the frequencies the mix. Yeah how it makes you feel. And just the tone, the style, yeah just having an identifiable style and tone was was massive going forward.
And so to build on what you said about more of a compressed metal sound yeah. 100%. We’ve gone bigger, we’ve gone bolder, we’ve gone angrier. We’ve gone more aggressive, but then there’s of course those pockets where it is softer and more somber and, yeah, shade and dynamics. But we’ve really tried to forge a sound with this both in production and tonality as well.
So, I’d be excited to see what you think of the new stuff. I’m really looking forward to it.
Simon
I’ve been doing a bit of research and, like all bands, I guess when you started the first recordings were probably self produced, and then you brought in different producers like Brad Mair, and I think recently Jason Perry.
Zack
Yeah we did we did the first album with with Jason. Yeah what a guy legend lots of funny stories.
Simon
Did that help you form the guitar sound that you were looking for?
Zack
Well. I think a mix of different things. So Brad Mair is our like our long term producer / friend / he’s just an amazing amazing guy. And he helped do the first EP and the maybe the second and maybe the third. He’s kind of always been with us in some way with everything we’ve done.
And that’s why on the on the new stuff that we’ve just been doing, we we wanted Brad and then we also wanted Pete Hutchins. Who has recently done like the Royal Blood Record. This last round of recording was a big step up but from the lessons I’ve learned previously, until working with say Paul Whally. It was hard to get the the guitar sound that I wanted.
We did a lot of stuff just DI basically you know just digital. Which – obviously nothing wrong with that especially when you’re trying to just get stuff out there. You know in the early years and still to this day – digital modelers and software plugins being a real big thing right now and the quality is absolutely that’s great.
But Brad’s not a guitar player so it was hard to find that sound. And then working with Paul Whally, he is a guitar player so we recorded live tube amps there by the time we start to work with Paul. And so I kind of started to understand a bit more of this and you know. The differences between a digital and recording tubes and and the production. And to make it sound awesome essentially, and kind of took those lessons into the Jason sessions.
And Jason, again, is really knowledgeable in terms of production and sounds. And so it was really interesting reamping. Actually I found that to be an interesting thing. We reamped everything through various little things, just to make a quite thick sound basically. And, yeah doing the survival mode album was my first proper kind of opportunity to really get into the nitty gritty of everything.
But it was on this recent round of recording where I felt like all those lessons were culminated into what has been done. Working with Brad and working with Pete, because Pete Hutchins is he’s like an audio genius.
He has this great space called Chapel Lane Studios and me and the lads and Brad and Pete – we all just stayed in a tiny little residency and we just knocked it out, just knocked out as much as we could. And and it was there because Pete was Pete, he is a guitarist – like he’s fully fledged. I could have conversations with him and reference people and players and sounds and tones and ears and and albums. And he’d be like oh yeah I know. I love this really cool. And I could have a real conversation with him as the only string player in the band.
I was working intensely with him quite a while every day, doing all the guitars all the tones all the bass. And so me and Pete worked really intensely together and it was because of that kind of friendship and common understanding, that I think we managed to get the sound get the sound out that I feel like I’ve always kind of wanted basically.
Yeah. So I feel like now now it’s it’s finally happened. It’s finally happened. It took time. But yeah I’m really happy with with how the sound is now.
Simon
Yeah I’m not surprised it’s it’s brilliant. It’s really exciting.
Zack
Thanks man. Cheers dude. Yeah. Super excited. Excellent.
Simon
So what does the future hold – immediately and maybe in the slightly longer term.
Zack
So yeah the future holds some pretty exciting stuff. We are announcing something pretty soon. And once that happens we aren’t going to take our foot off the gas pedal.
So music in essence it’s going to be a lot of new music and a lot of new visuals. The new era if you will. And of course we’re planning some interesting really cool live shows. But really immediately what we want to do is just start to get this new world, this new music out there into the open and start building on that because it’s been a hard second since we’ve done anything, since we’ve released any music. April last year is when survival mode came out.
And I am just dying to get something out there. And it’s all really really cool as well. So and I know a lot of people are waiting for it. So I’m just yeah I’m like – Oh man it’s this close man, were this close from something real juicy happening.
Simon
I won’t press you but will definitely keep an eye out.
Zack
Yeah I would heavily advise. I won’t say too much but yeah we’ve planned. This is how professional we are. We’ve got a spreadsheet and we’ve got everything, every day basically planned out up until the next year. Assets and everything that we’ve been doing for the past year, and year and a bit, just making sure so when we get to the campaign or when the campaign starts, it is it is just like this is what’s happening and this and this is and this is when it’s going out and this is what’s going out and it’s just constantly. So yes it’s going to be really exciting. And it will be a good time combination of about a year and a bit – all starting pretty soon.
Simon
Fantastic, well Zack thanks so much for chatting this morning. It’s been brilliant and I’m much better informed now about how a guitarist makes a massive sound. So thank you.
Zack
Yeah thanks – thanks for having me man it’s been a pleasure to meet you and talk some gear and guitars.
With thanks to @samathajguess for the photo
