BATTERY SERIES INTERFIEW : Steve Hart / The Drowning (UK).

1.What is your name and what band do you play for?

I’m Steve Hart and I play drums for The Drowning (UK).

2.Who made you want to play drums and why?

So I think we all have that one album that changed our life right?... I wasn’t even listening to any kind of heavy metal before drums, a friend gave me Metallica’s master of puppets while I was still in school, when I got home I listened to it start to finish and immediately went to ask my parents for a drum kit!
Something about it just fully gripped my attention. … I will add that now years later, I’m happy to have found better offerings far beyond the original lure.
  

3.When did you get your first kit? Tell us about it…

So my older brother used to play drums before I had an interest, and when he stopped my parents put the kit into storage. When I started asking for a drum set they pretended it was sold at first, until one day I got home from school and there it was, my brothers old set. I must have only been 12/13 years old at the time.

4.Where your parents supportive of you and your loud / expensive new habit?

Yea totally, they have always been supportive, they helped me out with drum lessons when I started out although I think my dad would rather have paid for them than to listen to be randomly beat the shit out of them night after night! I still remember the look on my dads face that day I ran down stairs high on metallica pleading for a drum kit as if to say ‘oh not again, please not again!’ My mum used to drive me to rehearsals with a few of my early bands but I think they were just glad I was rehearsing out of the house haha!

5.What drum performance on an album is perfection to you?

 I’ve always been partial to Chris Adlers playing on Lamb of gods - Ashes of the Wake album. I love his little cymbal accents that tend to play their own melody within the songs, ‘Now you’ve got something to die for’ is a great example of that.

6.Tell us about your current kit and set up in DETAIL.
 

 So my current drum set is a Tama Rockstar for those who remember those! I bought this kit to replace my brothers old hunk of junk and have built and built on it over the years,

I was lucky enough to score a job at a music store, so gear became life for a while haha. That’s how I met the band while I worked there, but maybe that’s a story for another time. So I’m a big fan of cymbals so I put a lot of my focus there. My whole kit has Evans EC2 head for batter side and Remo ambassadors resonates. For my kicks I’m using Evans EMAD. My kit consists of :
2X kick drums 22”x18”
10”x8” Tom
12”x10” Tom
14”x14” floor Tom
16”x18” floor time
My snare is a pearl steel shell 13”x8.5”
My cymbals are mostly all Zildjian A custom unless stated otherwise
10” splash
12” Z custom splash
14” hi hats
16” medium crash
16” projection crash
17” projection crash
18” medium crash
20” ride
6” Zil bell
14” oriental China trash
20” oriental China trash
I also have a custom 12” stack made from cheap stagg cymbals but it sounds great for what I need, it’s a 12” splash with a 12” China on top.
This is all held together with a pearl icon rack.

I also use a Roland spdsx along with a bt1 pad for triggering samples, controlling backing tracks and click tracks.

And last but not least I use Pearl Demon direct drive pedals, super useful that they can be single or doubles with simple modification, depending on venues etc.
 

7.If you could have a dream kit tell us about it in DETAIL

 I feel like I’ve pretty much created my dream kit, but if I had an infinite amount of money I would replace my shells with something a little higher specs like a Tama superstar or the star classic. I’ve always been a Tama fan and believe I always will be. Maybe add an additional 8”Tom.

8.Name your top 5 drummers excluding Neil Peart and Mike Portnoy

Gene Hoglan
George Kollias
Thomas Lang
Daniel Erlandsson
Chris Adler

9. Do you prefer Live or Studio?

 

Live all day long, the studio is fun, but it’s tedious pushing through the same parts over and over trying to get the perfect take. Live however you’re in the moment giving all I have to the performance, and the adrenaline gets going and auto pilot kicks in and you can really just enjoy it.

10.Do drummers really get all the chicks and if so how do we convince the guitarist?

Haha sadly not, not in my band anyway! When we come off stage the rest of the guys get to go and mingle, chat to fans etc meanwhile I’m still backstage breaking down gear, perhaps it’s time to get my self a reliable roadie so I can get out there!