Mike Hranica, known around the globe as the vocalist and founder of metalcore giants The Devil Wears Prada, announces the October 4 release of Lilac, the debut album from his new project, Town of Lake. In what might go down as the most surprising solo effort of 2024, Town of Lake are a radical departure from The Devil Wears Prada, revealing a side of Hranica many have not yet seen.
So, how did the guy from The Devil Wears Prada come to make an album like this? Hranica offers a glimpse at the path that led here, name-checking influences ranging from Steve Albini to Vladimir Nabokov. He reminisces: “Hearing Songs About Fucking for the first time. Hearing Filth for the first time. Hearing Goat for the first time. First time reading Nausea. First time reading Lolita. These experiences are monumental in guiding what I create.”
Fans who have been watching closely will know that Hranica has dabbled in challenging music in the past—As the singer of the short-lived noise rock trio God Alone, he had a hand in bashing out some Jesus Lizard-inspired gems which, in hindsight, look to be the precursors to Town of Lake’s even more challenging musical explorations. Fans who have been watching closely will also know that Hranica is a published author and that there are connections between Town of Lake and some of of his writings. “Two of my most recent works coordinate with the stylings of Town of Lake,” he explains. “My books Bullet-Made Tambourine and Three Dots & The Guilt Machine are made up of abstract, observational prose, semi-autobiographical, like the Lilac songs.”
While Town of Lake is fully Hranica’s project, he enlisted the help of two friends to execute the mission: Andy Nelson (co-owner of Bricktop Recording in Chicago and a member of bands such as Weekend Nachos) and Mason Nagy (The Devil Wears Prada). He describes the process: “For most of Lilac, the lyric would either directly dictate the sounds or the sounds would directly dictate the lyric. Everything was tracked at Bricktop. Certainly not a remote project. The three of us cooked up everything there in Chicago. In terms of the instrumentation, I think we each played everything at one point. Andy is certainly the most learned with keyboards, so he cornered most of those sounds. I handled the songs’ writing, their inception, their lyrics, and most electric guitar. Mason cornered 99 percent of bass. All in all, improvisation plays a huge part in my songs for Town of Lake.” The album was mastered by Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Services.
Having ascended to the top of the metalcore heap and having held the position for 20 years and counting, The Devil Wears Prada continues to thrive. The band have toured the world with the biggest names in metal (Anthrax, Slayer, A Day to Remember, Killswitch Engage, Beartooth, the list goes on), they’ve seen their albums debut at #1 on Billboard charts, and they have been backed by some of the burliest labels in the scene. They will tour Australia in August 2024, followed by the U.S. in the fall. With such a day job as that, Hranica could play it safe and stay within those bounds, but instead he chooses to venture out and find additional new paths to creative fulfillment. In this context, Town of Lake’s Lilac is an extremely inspiring piece of work, as a pure example of a person compelled to make art for art’s sake.
We had a chance to catch up with Hranica to ask about “The Valley,” the latest offering from Town of Lake, his collaborators, and what’s next.
You’ve stated: ”I’ve always been drawn to the ordinary … I don’t love fantasy, I love everyday.” In “The Valley,” you have lines such as “a bowl of dressing to appease company” which have a very ordinary, everyday feeling to them, then you have other phrases that describe much grander things—“planetary rings of shattered rock, seven trillion cubic feet of fossil fuel,” for example. The pairing of mundane and grandiose imagery is effective; the two extremes shine in contrast to each other. Having said all that, what can you tell us about “The Valley”? What is the valley, where is the valley, and how did we wind up there?
Mike Hranica: The valley seems to be some sort of imaginative hellscape. While hell can, of course, be considered fantasy, the ordinary comes through by means of grotesque imagery. Something like a laboratory examination from a time long ago. The song sees both underground reserves of oil as well as the rings of Saturn. Bizarre counterpoints all stuffed into one place, “It isn’t what you thought.”
On one hand, you’ve been the frontman of The Devil Wears Prada for 20 years. On the other hand, you’ve been publishing books of your writing, including Bullet-Made Tambourine and Three Dots & The Guilt Machine, influenced by such writers as William S. Burroughs, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Vladimir Nabokov. In Town of Lake, it seems you are combining these two sides of yourself—the literary side and the musical side. How did you decide to take this step?
MR: If it was a decision it had to be one of the easiest I’ve ever made! The Devil Wears Prada veers from abstraction, however as an art I find that entire world (or perhaps lack of a world?) deeply attractive and interesting. “Absurdity is an intellectually honorable trait,” I once read. As someone that likes to always have the wheels spinning, working on or creating any number of things, Town of Lake is where I landed when another band I had started became inactive. This was the spigot to open.
What can you tell us about your Town of Lake collaborators, Andy Nelson and Mason Nagy?
MH: The other band I had helped to start was called God Alone, and we recorded an EP with Andy when a tattooer buddy made me aware of his recording repertoire. I was of course familiar with Weekend Nachos and had seen the band a bunch as a resident of Chicago at the time, and from there, we really hit it off! TDWP recorded a cover song with Andy a few years later, and then when God Alone got put on the back burner Andy was the first person I talked to about making new tunes.
Mason plays in TDWP and is a fantastic bass player. He has really great taste and has helped me to find and open my brain to a bunch of new music, so having him along to help create sounds and ideas was a proposal that panned out well!
What is next for Town of Lake?
MH: More songs! I already have studio time with Andy booked for early 2025 to start the next LP. I’ve got some practices I’d like to implement to create something that is not Lilac part two. We’ll see how it turns out.
Thanks for having me!
Photo by Ariel Kassulke
