Interview: 17th February 2025
Ahead of their two acoustic gigs in London later this week, Hotel Hobbies spent some time with Empyre vocalist Henrik Steenholdt discussing the band’s music, his journey as a vocalist and what the future might hold.
Hotel Hobbies:: First of all, how are you? I suppose recently you have been rehearsing for the acoustic shows.
Henrik Steenholdt:: (laughing) Mildly stressed in terms of preparing, because with these shows, we're doing them without a promoter involved. We're organising it all ourselves along with the people who do the organisation of events at St. Pancras Old Church. Our lead guitarist literally just left with a whole load of lighting that we're taking for Thursday and Friday. We have to take care of our own sound engineer, our own lighting engineer and our own lights for the most part. Then there's the practising on top that you mentioned and making sure that we're prepared from a performance perspective. So it has been quite a lot to organise.
Hotel Hobbies:: Has it been going well with rehearsals?
Henrik Steenholdt: Oh, yeah, absolutely. If we weren't so used to doing some of the acoustic stuff, then maybe a little bit more concerned, but we're quite comfortable doing that normally.
Hotel Hobbies: The acoustic element to the band’s music has been a good way of show-wise and also release-wise of having things in between the new music.
Henrik Steenholdt: Yeah, it has in some ways. It started because when COVID hit back in 2020, we were wondering what we could do. We obviously couldn't gig or certainly couldn't gig as much. I think we managed to do three gigs. I really can't remember now whether we had – I think we had - already discussed at least an acoustic EP at that stage. We may have even decided to do the album. So just got lucky. We then thought that we could do six tracks. A lot of our music is written on an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar, so it wasn't really too hard to do things. I think we'd already started playing around with a piano version of Only Way Out and then Did (Empyre guitarist) was keen to do a piano version of My Bad. So it just grew from there. We were able to do minimal work within COVID to actually produce a whole album. We could send out CDs and release online. It also worked out for Live and Unplugged which we released physically last year and comes out digitally on Friday. So it is a nice way of filling some gaps and we also see it as something that adds an additional string to our bow in terms of gig opportunities and festival opportunities. At a few festivals, we've managed to play an acoustic set and an electric set.
Hotel Hobbies: I have a particular love for the Live and Unplugged album because Kettering (note: Live and Unplugged was recorded at St. Andrew’s Church in Kettering) is my hometown. My Dad still lives there and it’s a good chance to see him and see you when you play there. Those concerts always feel special to me.
Henrik Steenholdt: That is a nice connection and it's a great place to play. They keep on improving that place. They put in a brand new floor and are trying to use it as an event space for all different sorts of events. They're very friendly; we really like playing there. I think Elliott was born in Kettering and that's pretty much Did's hometown. It is nice that it's part of our home as well.
Hotel Hobbies: Your acoustic gigs on Thursday and Friday in London also take place in a church.
Henrik Steenholdt: Yeah, and they've certainly had some well known acts there. An early Sleep Token gig took place there and I think there's some footage, which I went looking for on YouTube. I haven't been to the venue so I’m not quite sure how it will compare. I've seen pictures and a bit of video but you never quite know until you go there as to what it's going to be like. I can’t remember the names of the different parts of churches. Is it the nave where you've got this, the seating and then the gap? As I understand it, with St. Pancras Old church, there's either sixty seats and ninety standing or sixty seats and ninety standing. It's not as big as Saint Andrew's, so I'm kind of wondering how that's going to work, but that's the capacity they've given us. We will see how it goes!
Hotel Hobbies: I think you've got an amazingly distinctive and powerful voice. Where and how did your journey as a vocalist begin? Who are the vocalists you looked up to when you were growing up and how did you discover you were actually good at it yourself?
Henrik Steenholdt: Back in the early days, my first musical memories were listening to ABBA as probably a two to three-year old. That's not to say that I had ambitions of sounding like them (smiling). When I started to discover rock singers, it would have with Guns n’ Roses or Bon Jovi, or even Mark Knopfler. I guess you can sing along with Mark because he does talk singing for the most part. He's not really a singer singer but still manages to get the melody. Then once I discovered grunge and Eddie Vedder, that was that. My voice was not as low as it is now back at that time and I don't really know how I had that kind of gratey sound. It's just something I've pretty much always had to some extent. Although, I think my voice has got lower in register and darker over time, but those are the sorts of things I was singing along to. At school, although people played guitar, nobody else really sang. If there was nobody who sang, there wasn't anybody to compare to, really. So I thought, okay, I'm just going give it a go. I don't think I was very good (laughing).
Hotel Hobbies: Empyre has its foundations in a history that stretches back before you were known as Empyre. For those people who don’t know about that, can you give a short version of how you got to where you are now?
Henrik Steenholdt: Yes. Did and I met when he put an advertisement on a website called Northampton Band. I had been in a couple bands before but had a bit of a break and was eager to get back into something and properly. At least six months to 12 months before that, I'd looked at a few bands and they'd been interested, but for whatever reason, I didn’t want to join any of them. I can't remember why. I think they were all original bands rather than doing covers.
Did and I got on and eventually we thought why don’t we start our own more rock orientated covers band, doing more grungy stuff? Our first gig was in Kettering. We did one gig and we were offered a bi-weekly residency basically at this bar. So we started playing there and then we got poached by another bar to come and be their house band. It went really well and then people started asking us to do weddings and stuff like that. We never really wanted to do that. Do you really want us to be playing Pearl Jam Alive, Plush by Stone Temple Pilots and Slither by Velvet Revolver? To some people we said yes but we got pretty tired of it because we had to then throw in other stuff like Sweet Home Alabama, Sex on Fire, Mr Brightside and those sorts of things.
We probably moved too far from what we really wanted to play. It was about five years of doing that when we started to vaguely write little bits of what would become Empyre material. Then, it took another three or four years to get it recorded. As soon as we started recording stuff and spoke to the other guys, they said they would do the first EP but did not want to do Empyre long term. They wanted to earn the money from the covers band work. It was probably late 2016 when we did our first proper Empyre gig in Corby. We’ve never looked back since.
Hotel Hobbies: Considering the origins and evolution of the band and with the two albums you have released, you must be pleased and proud of what you've achieved so far.
Henrik Steenholdt: Oh yeah. I mean, we're really happy with Self Aware and probably even more so with Relentless. We're writing now for the next album, which we would call album three, even though we've had The Other Side and Live and Unplugged (note: both acoustic releases) in between. Nothing's quite as simple as it was back when we were making Self Aware. Even that had its trials and tribulations.
Hotel Hobbies: Are there particular tracks you look back at and are particularly proud of?
Henrik Steenholdt: I don’t know which is my favourite from Self Aware. I like Stone a lot and I am proud of how Only Way Out has grown to be a real fan favourite when we play it live. It competes with New Republic. From Relentless, I would say Hit and Run and Forget Me. It's nice to know that's the kind of a song we might not be able to drop in a set these days. There’s normally something in almost every single song, and certainly from Relentless it’s like, oh, I really like that bit and it'll be the bit that I'm waiting for in a song. It's not necessarily something that I did, like Stone. I'm always waiting for Did’s solo and I like the chorus.
Hotel Hobbies: Thinking of Hit and Run and Forget Me, the style of those songs is quite different but both unmistakeably Empyre. The band has the feeling of being powerful and defiant but also vulnerable at some points as well, particularly lyrically. There is a dark honesty to your music. Was that always there?
Henrik Steenholdt: I think that's just something that comes naturally to us. We're not really afraid to tackle dark subjects and we embrace the melancholy. When I go to see bands, in most cases I am waiting for them to play one of the big - not necessarily ballads - but emotional tracks. When I saw Guns n’ Roses in 1993, I was waiting for November Rain. When I first saw Alter Bridge, it was Broken Wings and In Loving Memory. I love that sense that sense of melancholy, but it can still be uplifting. And that's what we tried to do with Forget Me, to make this really, really, really sad song that has a kind of euphoric ending.
Hotel Hobbies: Comparing the studio versions to live performance, is there a balance or difference in how you enjoy particular songs?
Henrik Steenholdt: Oh, gosh, there's so much that could be said on that. I will use Forget Me again. It's quite exposed for me at the beginning because I'm playing the acoustic guitar part and I am okay at guitar, but I'm not brilliant. You'll hardly ever hear me play it 100% clean. So that does worry me as does the first solo in Only Way Out. I wish Did would play it but he doesn’t. Maybe that's one reason why I quite enjoy doing the acoustic version of Only Way Out. He feels as anxious about doing the piano bit as I do about doing the guitar solo, because you're just out there, whereas he's quite happy to do guitar solo. He's used to that. It's difficult in one way. I can separate the songs that's from the recorded version of like.
When I'm listening to Forget Me - if I happen to listen to it for some reason – I am not necessarily thinking about picking the acoustic intro or something like that. I know I do something specific in this little bit and that bit is maybe not quite as I wanted it, but there are too many songs that I could be that picky about because we've been so picky about producing. When we're performing, I'm thinking about a big note coming up. I need to make sure I've got the breathing right to hit this or something else is happening and you're kind of planning ahead in your head, whilst trying not to concentrate on that too much because then you lose the focus on what you're doing (laughing). It's a weird juggling act.
Hotel Hobbies: One of the things that I mean that's certainly developed over those years since Empyre started is the great relationship with the fans.
Henrik Steenholdt: I hope so, yeah.
Hotel Hobbies: You're very generous with your time and you have this brilliant self-deprecating sense of humour. That must make it feel special. Obviously, you value the fans enormously.
Henrik Steenholdt: Yeah, and what we've tried to do just like the acoustic gigs and we will be doing for the tour as well is trying to let people know stage time as early as we can. Basically, we've put out an e-mail and there's a social media post going out this evening which tells everybody the provisional times the doors have already been announced. It will say what time our support act Harry Payne goes on and what time we plan to go on and that we plan to finish by about 10:15. You know, that might end up being 10:30, but we're certainly trying to keep it within a range where people who are travelling can travel more easily and think about how the times affect them having working in the morning and so on. Plus, we want to meet as many people as possible. We are not doing paid meet and greets, we are not doing Patreon and we are trying to give as much as we can at the moment, knowing that if things progress and we get bigger, we won't be able to do that, but we'll try and do it whilst we can. That's the general message we're trying to give out.
Everyone who comes on Thursday and Friday will be given an A4 card with the poster for the evening on the front and a message from us on the back. If they want it signed, they can come and get it signed from us at the end. We will be at the merch table. As soon we put our guitars or drumsticks down, then we'll be heading for merch so we can meet everybody, say hello, have pictures and sign stuff. No doubt we'll be giving away free lyric sheets as well, which is another thing we tried to do. It is so you feel as if you're getting something a little bit extra from coming to an to an Empyre gig and our way of saying thanks for coming out on what is probably going to be cold or rainy, or both February evening.
With the humour side of things well, we like melancholy and dark music but with the humour we’re quite happy with people doing that at our expense. You know, in a good humoured way. You may have experienced people booing at us. We like playing the pantomime villain. You know, there's nothing, nothing I enjoy more than having the crowd chant, “You’re shit and you know are” at us, which has happened and we all find it hilarious. We love it, but some people take offence to it including some who are not in the band, which I find odd.
Hotel Hobbies: You mentioned you recently started on the very early stages of album number three. How does the song writing process tend to work?
Henrik Steenholdt: Normally it starts with Did or I or us together. We might be inspired by a few words, a line, a title or an idea that we've written on piano or guitar. Then we will try and form a kind of verse, chorus, verse, chorus or in some instances, the whole song. Again Forget Me and Hit and Run are easy examples. On Hit and Run, I knew I wanted this eighties sounding thing and I couldn’t get it quite right. Then Did came round and I played him what I had and we were trying to find the right kind of guitar parts for him to play. We didn't have the outro. We didn't have the guitar solos, but basically we thought, we'll reuse the same chords. I left Did to come up with the guitar solo. Then, normally in the practice room, three of us go to the other one, whatever you did there, do that again, play that part. That sort of thing happened with Parasites and Elliot's drum pattern. Did gave him some ideas but then Elliot came up with something and we were like, whatever you just did there, that's what you're playing on the track. Just like that. That's it.
Some start with me and Did and then we put demos on our shared drive and ask the others to do what you do with drums and do what you do with bass. We'll listen to it and try and pick the best stuff, you know, whatever we think works best for the song.
Hotel Hobbies: Is it music first, then lyrics? Or do you have a lyrical theme and that leads you to something musically?
Henrik Steenholdt: Lyrics and melody are normally harder. I think I could write music all day. I couldn't write lyrics all day. I find that kind of tricky sometimes. Sometimes things come more easily than others. We are quite critical of ourselves when it comes to lyrics. Why are we trying to write these insightful, introspective, deep songs? Maybe we're over complicated. I would say normally, it's music then lyrics, although it may be an idea that inspires the general part of the song, and then we'll go off on one in the music and then have to fill in the lyrical gaps.
Hotel Hobbies: You have the acoustic gigs, some festival gigs, your electric headline tour and a support slot for Ricky Warwick in Milton Keynes coming up. You must be looking forward to this year?
Henrik Steenholdt: Yes, it’s nice to start with two sold out gigs this coming Thursday and Friday. Later in the year, Bristol is sold out and I know that Nottingham is very close. Hopefully we can sell out one or more of the other dates on tour. That would be good to do that. But regardless, we know we're going to have a great time. Ticket sales for most of the other dates are doing pretty well as well. And then we have the festivals. We have Maid of Stone Festival and also Chepstow Castle with Terrovision, Scarlet Rebels and The Hot One Two. That should be great; four bands in a nice outdoor castle setting. Then we will be at the NWOCR Livefest September. We've done it a couple of times before, but it's KK’s Steel Mill where we did our album release party for Relentless. It’s one of our favourite stages to play because it feels a little bit like an arena. They've got a ten metre video wall and it's a big stage and big sound. It will be strange after focusing so much on the acoustic stuff to actually do the Ricky Warwick gig in a couple of weeks time. We are not in the space of playing some of the electric back catalogue. So we've got a bit of practise to do to get back up to speed for the Ricky Warwick gig.
Hotel Hobbies: How much does the influences of the band and their own love of music vary between the different members?
Henrik Steenholdt: I'm kind of pop, rock and most of what I listen to these days is probably more pop orientated than rock. With Did, a lot of it is pop rock and country. Elliot is more country orientated and perhaps a bit of like modern rock and also more punk orientated rock, Green Day type of stuff. Although, I think Elliot's last concert was Sleep Token, I quite like some Sleep Token as well. Grant is quite prog orientated so most of his favourite bands are on our record label by coincidence. They’re bands and artists that I had no awareness of whatsoever before meeting Grant. He was already excited by Porcupine Tree and The Pineapple Thief and Steven Wilson. Before we were in any discussion with KScope, he'd play that sort of thing in the car when we were travelling to gigs. He also likes some pop and synth wave stuff. I think he's pretty into bands like Ghost Ship, one which again, I quite like as well. I also like soundtracks and classical music. Most of the orchestration on our albums is done by me. I like writing stuff that. So it is quite broad across the band. It means that something that I have an idea for or I don't have an idea for, one of the other guys could come up with something I'd never think of because it's just not in my influence range.
Hotel Hobbies: Earlier, you briefly mentioned a wish for the future path of the band. You've got an amazing collection of songs that really deserve to be heard by a larger audience. How to you take that next step?
Henrik Steenholdt: How is the big question. What we're trying to do at the moment is demonstrate that we can sell out shows. That is our approach presently because we're hoping that we will get offers in. If we back track a little, the main aims of Empyre from day one were to play the major rock festivals of Europe. So far we're failing miserably. Also, we would like to get to the arenas and ideally go on tour and get support tour opportunities with some of the bands that we know. So we are failing on all three goals at the moment! To get there, we need more listeners. But because we are not easily genre definable – genre fluid as we like to call it - it means that we don't often get a lot of support from radio because we're not quite rock enough, we're not quite prog enough, we’re not quite metal enough or our songs are too long or whatever. Again, same thing happens with Spotify and streaming services. We’re not getting automatically put onto playlists, so therefore getting the word out, radio and streaming wise is pretty hard. So I'll to come back to what I was saying, our technique at the moment is to try to get attention from selling out as many gigs as we possibly and show that we can pull a crowd. You know we could pay for thousands of streams and make it look as if we're ten times bigger than we are but we don’t want to do that. However, you can’t bullshit on ticket sales because that is something that you can prove. Here's the ticket receipts and I didn't buy them all myself! With the festival slots, it will hopefully mean that larger acts coming through the UK or Europe might consider for us to go with them. That's what we want to do and that's the way we're approaching it.
It's pretty hard. There's a lot of competition. We're not really metal enough for Bloodstock. We're not cool enough these days for Download because they have been shifting. The usual suspects get onto the mainstage. The only one of us as I would call it who played Download of late would be Those Damn Crows. Obviously they are doing really well. Massive Wagons have done it once or twice and Florence Black did it but you'd be hard pushed to mention too many other people who would be seen to be in our sphere. A few others have done it, over the course of the last few years, but have been generally low down on the bill and I don’t think they’re putting on what would be could NWOCR acts. We have a foot in that camp but we aren’t NWCOR. We are on a proggy label but we aren’t prog either. We like the fact that it's hard for you to define what genre.
Hotel Hobbies: One festival I attend every year where I thought you would go down well is Stonedead.
Henrik Steenholdt: As far as we understand, they’re aware that we would be very happy to play. I suppose their problem is that they have a essentially a one day festival with one stage. We had the opportunity to do the opening band poll but I'm not interested in a popularity contest. I'd like to be picked on merit. Yeah, you could say popularity contest is picked on merit. We've played that game in the early days with Download and the Great Escape Festival. It never really worked out for us; in that we didn't get through even though we had a hell of a lot of support for us being there. Now we say, if you want us to come then book us. I would very much like to play Stonedead.
Hotel Hobbies: My last question was with all the festivals and other places you play, which relatively newer bands do you enjoy yourself?
Henrik Steenholdt: That's a tricky question because I hear quite a few of the bands but I am often hearing them from backstage or while doing an interview. There's been plenty of times where I've turned to one of the guys, maybe during an interview or whilst we are preparing to go on stage and ask who is on the stage at that moment. So it's difficult for me to say who else at the moment. I think band that we're taking on tour, Ethyrfield, is a group of young, really talented musicians. They will keep us on our toes. They’re like a young Rush.
Hotel Hobbies: High praise!
Henrik Steenholdt: Yeah, they know what they're doing. They are kind of proggy, which makes for a slightly different evening and introduce some people to something new from them. I don’t mean to be rude to any other bands but they it’s not just generic or full pelt rock.
Hotel Hobbies: Thank you so much for your time. It's been very enjoyable and I will hopefully be able to say hello to you on Thursday at the first of the acoustic gigs.
Henrik Steenholdt: Thank you and you’re very welcome. Come and say hi!
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