Christopher hall stabbing westward biography of michaels

  • Stabbing Westward is an American

    • Stabbing Westward

    For the band's self-titled album, see Stabbing Westward (album).

    "Bobby Amaro" redirects here. For the similarly named vocalist, see Saliva (band).

    American industrial rock band

    Stabbing Westward is an American industrial rock/alternative rock band. Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus formed the band in 1985 in Macomb, Illinois. The band released an extended play in 1992, followed by four studio albums: Ungod (1994), Wither Blister Burn & Peel (1996), Darkest Days (1998), and Stabbing Westward (2001). The band announced a dissolution in February 2002. Two compilation albums were later released in 2003. Stabbing Westward reunited in 2016 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its formation and continued to perform live shows. The band's first new album in 21 years, Chasing Ghosts, was released in 2022.

    History

    Early years (1985–1992)

    Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus formed the band Stabbing Westward when they were in college. They came up with the name while working at the college radio station WIUS-FM. It was allegedly from a 1950s speech regarding political fears of Communism "stabbing westward". During an interview in 1996, Hall stated, "Since we went to Western Illinois University, [the name] Stabbing Westward had a certain 'kill everybody in the school' vibe to it! The school's way out in farm country and the country is really close minded. I was walking around like Robert Smith with real big hair, big baggy black clothes, black fingernail polish and eye makeup. They just didn't get it. We hated the town."

    Moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1985, the original lineup for Stabbing Westward consisted of Hall on bass and lead vocals, Flakus on keyboards, and Jim Clanin on guitars. Clanin would briefly be replaced on guitars by Andrew Hunter, and bassist Jim Sellers was added on as well. Angelo Negrette was also added as a live drummer.[7&

    Stabbing Westward’s Christopher Hall Offers Insight on Band’s 2002 Break Up

    Stabbing Westward are back with Chasing Ghosts, their brand new album, which is out today (March 18), and is their first since 2001. To commemorate the album's release, frontman Christopher Hall joined Loudwire Nights host Toni Gonzalez for a chat, and he elaborated on why the band originally broke up back in 2002.

    "I think that a bunch of simultaneous things happened. The music industry was crumbling, it was right — 2000 is right when Napster and musical downloads were just at an all-time high, and record labels were hemorrhaging money. They weren't selling. For a while they had a monopoly on the $15 CD, so they were making money hand over first, and then when people discovered MP3s, they were like, 'Oh, we can get every song ever recorded for free if I wanna just spend 72 hours straight drinking Mountain Dew and downloading songs,'" Hall recalled.

    As a result of the lack of income the labels were pulling in, they started dropping bands, and Stabbing Westward were one of the victims dropped by Columbia. They discovered the news prior to the release of their fourth album, which Hall admitted put a lot of stress on himself and his bandmates.

    Nevertheless, the band persisted, and landed another record deal on an indie label, which the vocalist pinpoints as when the dynamic within the band really started to get messy.

    "There's people outside the band that were kind of whispering in our ears, saying things like, 'If you guys changed your sound, you could be much bigger than you are now. You should've been way bigger than you are.' People in the band were kind of buying into that, so there was a lot of pressure to try and reinvent the band, and then a couple of us were like, 'No, we think that we should just be who we are, we have a good, solid fanbase. Let's just hang onto them, not want more,

  • Frontman Christopher Hall joined Loudwire

    • Stabbing Westward Planning to Release Multiple EPs During 2020

    Just last week, industrial rock vets Stabbing Westward made their long awaited return with the Dead and Gone EP, marking their first significant release since 2001's self-titled fourth studio album. But according to singer Christopher Hall, the three brand new songs on the set are just the start of plenty more to come.

    Speaking with KCAL 96.7's Wired in the Empire host RadioActive Mike Z, Hall revealed that a series of EPs are in the works for the remainder of 2020. “The idea is to do three EPs, three songs each, do some remixes and have some cool cuts or bonus material on each and then at the end of the year we’re gonna release all three EPs and a fourth EP worth of material and make a finished album and do like a cool colored vinyl release of some sort,” explains Hall.

    The seeds of bringing back Stabbing Westward were sewn back in 2016 when Hall and Stabbing Westward keyboardist Walter Flakus carried over working together in The Dreaming to doing some Stabbing Westward dates to mark the group's 30th anniversary. The two were inspired to start writing material and felt the desire to do so outside of the construct of The Dreaming.

    But, as Hall reveals, it's been more of a DIY operation and that combined with the life responsibilities of each of the members has made the turnaround more time consuming.

    “With Walter running a radio station in Seattle, he just moved from Chicago and he just got that going and I’ve got two kids and a dog and a house and a family and Carlton is on tour with either Orgy or Berlin all the time and our drummer is running a drum school for kids out in La Habra. So everyone is just busy with life and it’s not like the old days where our full time job was to just go into the studio and write music. Just getting it finished was the hard part, so we just decided to put out the EP, so then we just h

  • Christopher Hall recently sat down with

    • Stabbing Westward – Dead and Gone
    (Drugstore Records)

    Stabbing Westward have long been one of the most influential bands in my life, for so many reasons.  1998’s Darkest Days helped me through the death of a childhood friend, “I Remember,” from 2001’s self-titled record, still makes me cry to this day, and I could go on and on. And I’m sure I’m not the only person whose music this band has touched. Well, it may have taken 20 years, but Christopher Hall finally put the band back together to give us Dead & Gone, Stabbing Westward’s first proper release since 2001 and first in a trio of EP’s the band has promised this year.

    The opening title track serves as a perfect reintroduction for both lapsed Stabbing Westward and The Dreaming fans alike with powerful industrial beats, churning riffs and Christopher Hall’s trademark chops. This singular track makes it hard to fathom that it has been nearly two decades between Stabbing Westward releases, because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. “Cold” continues with pounding, steadfast industrial vibes, sounding like a track that could have appeared on 1996’s SW classic Wither Blister Burn & Peel just as easily as TD’s 2008 debut Etched in Blood. “Crawl” then slows things to a, well, crawl, with something Stabbing Westward made their hay on throughout their career – an emotional ballad (‘I would give up eternity if I could only come home to you / But your garden is empty / All your flowers are dead / I tried to keep it growing but there’s no light left,’ Hall sings). Even the inclusion of a pair of remixes – “Dead and Gone” (Stoneburner Remix) and “Cold” (StabWalts 12” Dance Mix) – is warranted here. It’s so on brand and such a Stabbing Westward thing to do, not to mention that they are both pretty killer mixes in their own right.

    It may have taken 20 years, but Stabbing Westward is finally back, and we are all truly better off because of it. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – the point of

  • Stabbing Westward singer Christopher Hall has