MUSIC :: MAY 26, 2004

Legendary front man lights another Holy Fire

By FABIAN HALABOU

There was once a time in my life when keeping tabs on Detroit’s rock elite meant everything to me. Just knowing who played with whom, which musicians from which band started a new project or how a musician’s sound evolved with each successive band were issues to be studied at length. After a while, though, it starts to fade. Band members start getting old, people quit playing music or they just stop inspiring you.

Courtesy photo

Sean Hoen (left) and Nathan Miller of the Holy Fire.

With Sean Hoen of the Holy Fire, we have a case in which the subject turned everything anyone ever thought of him upside down and shook until it made brains rattle. The history alone would make someone interested in following up on him. Reaching near-legendary status in the late ‘90s as the leader of Thoughts of Ionesco, Hoen screamed and pounded his way into the forefront of the hardcore movement, only to seemingly forsake it all for a more subdued approach.

Thoughts of Ionesco broke up in 1999 and Hoen started Leaving Rouge, a band with a considerably quieter sound and softer themes. "With Ionesco, we were hell bent on being the heaviest, most insane thing that we could possibly fathom at age 19," he says, "but when you’re done with that, you realize that heavy isn’t just screaming and beating your guitars. After discovering artists like Nick Drake, you realize that it’s even heavier than drop D guitars, so [Leaving Rouge] was more a manic reaction to what I was doing before."

Five years after trying a little tenderness, however, we see him splitting the difference between Thoughts of Ionesco and Leaving Rouge. His newest project, the Holy Fire, reunites him with Thoughts of Ionesco bassist Nathan Miller, who rounds out the project along with drummer Nick Marko and guitarist Ryan Wilson.

Having played together for just a few months, the band seems to have crystallized into a cohesive unit that’s already getting exactly what it wants out of playing music. "With a lot of bands, they’re kind of stylized, like they’ll be doing a punk thing or an emo thing or a singer/songwriter thing," Hoen explains. "We kind of run the gamut as far as our interests go, and it seems like it would be hard to conceive of what we all want to do, but it’s all happening naturally and I can hear all kinds of things going on and I’ve always wanted that."

I met up with the guys in the Holy Fire after one of their typical five-hour marathon practices. What to me is a feat of unbelievable stamina is routine for them, and Hoen’s sentiment of finally being in the ideal situation is echoed throughout the band. "People wait for a magical musical moment to happen, but it really comes down to playing for hours and hours and finally getting something done," Marko points out. "Then you can evaluate it, but for us it’s just about playing any chance that we get. At this point there’s nothing else that we want to do."

The need to constantly play music doesn’t only extend from the idea that practice makes perfect, but also from the fact that these four individuals have a burning passion for this music and a love of playing together -- something that is evident in their live show. What once came across as an effort to intimidate the audience into paying attention, then transformed into a seeming indifference as to whether the audience was even watching, has turned into bursts of musicality and passion, driven from the knowledge that it will translate well into performance.

Sometimes the intensity builds to a frantic guitar breakdown. Sometimes it builds to a scream from the bottom of Hoen’s gut. And even though he has long since been demystified as being an unpredictably edgy performer, Hoen seems confident that those who remember are not disappointed with the new approach. "I think people just like seeing me and Nathan playing our guitars again and shaking our asses," he says.

Jokes aside, what we get from the music is an apparent desperation. Perhaps this could be attributed to the feeling that time is a factor in the careers of these four young men -- a feeling not felt by them when they were in their late teens or early 20s. "There’s a romance to these times. When you’re in your mid-20s, there’s an awareness of what people have achieved at this age, and we know that we feel the passion and vitality right now," Hoen says. Miller then sums it all up: "This is definitely what I’ve felt the ideal band would be for me. After this, I’ll probably play in a wedding band or be a dad -- one of the two."

But from desperation we get hope, and not only the hope that this band succeeds. It is the hope that translates into the songs and the hope that listeners get when they are inspired by a great work. It is through this hope that another is wished: the hope that Miller has to delay those future plans for a long time to come.

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