Crashing The Band Van & 'Selling' Weed: Hellions Play 'Two Truths & A Lie'

Hellions are one of the most dynamic bands in Australia right now. Though you’d probably lump them into the hardcore-punk category, an early listen to their upcoming album Rue pretty much cemented that the Sydney dudes are getting better and better at doing the theatrical fare, creating this melting-pot goodness of groove, hardcore, punk and… a hint of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out-era Panic! At The Disco. They’ve even stepped the game up from the ARIA-nominated Opera Oblivia. It’s also really sick to see young bands try the whole concept album thing out; concept albums are brave, and it’s a feat to pull it off well.

"We just made up that someone broke into the van!"

I remember seeing Hellions in their earliest days as The Bride at my local PCYC when I was 18 or 19 – I had no idea they’d soon become as big as they are now. Talking to lead singer Dre Faivre was such a fun time, though. He prefaced our conversation with, “I got up to weird things when I was a kid,” which kiiiinda prepared me mentally? I still didn’t realise his stories would be quite as cheeky as they are – and sorry to the rest of Hellions; you’re probably about to have some ‘what the fuck dude?!’ conversations with Dre.

Truth

Dre: One truth, uhhhh… when we were in Europe the first time, basically we played this festival and in the midst of it all, our drummer Anthony and I, we managed to lock all our keys in the tour van.

Uppy: Whoa oh.

D: Yeaaah, so obviously everyone’s out, enjoying the day and everything like that, and we’re like figuring out, ‘how do we get the keys out of there?’ Because we can’t really tell everyone, ‘hey we just locked ALL your crap in the van’. So we were freaking out for ages, then we pretty much went… and no one still knows this to this day… we basically broke into the van.

U: Like broke a window?

D: Yeah! Like I don’t even think the van company knows who broke it, which is mad. We’re not big on… insurance and excess so that’s good for us! [laughs] And then yeah, pretty much, we literally are 99.9% sure to this date that no one – well until this comes out! – knows that.

U: So the rest of the band don’t know?

D: We just made up that someone broke into the van! [laughs]

U: Oh my god.

D: Yeah, we said they broke into the van but didn’t take anything. So they were like, ‘oh maybe it was a person who didn’t like the van or something like that’.

U: That’s hilarious, so the band are gonna find out now.

D: Literally… it was us.

U: You sneaky fuckers. What festival was this?

D: Ummm I think it was… a European festival. I feel like it was Groezrock? Yeah it was, because there was mud everywhere!

U: Oh yeah, where’s that?

D: I think Belgium!

U: So it was like… all your room keys to the hotel, car keys, all that shit?

D: Everything. Everything.

U: But you had the gear out obviously because you played?

D: My mobile was actually in the car so like… in this day and age, the first thing you think about is not your clothes. I was like, ‘oh I left my phone in the car!’

U: Exactly.

D: Yeah, so I was like waiting for the fight-or-flight for my mobile phone.

U: Oh yeah, you’d wear the same thing for two weeks straight but you can’t do without a phone!

D: Yeah, like, you can wear the things for two weeks straight because you don’t wanna do washing. But you can’t say I’m wearing the same things for two weeks straight because I locked all my shit in the car!

U: EXACTLY. Oh, that’s funny. SO the band are gonna find out this happened and gang up on you and Anthony probably. HOW GOOD.

D: Yeah [laughs].

U: That’s perfect, thank you for telling me that!

D: That’s alright, and I have literally another one that’s very similar to that…

Truth

D: I’m pretty sure Anthony doesn’t know this. He’s like the logistics side of our band – he always knows the deal with everything, he’s the mum in the band.

U: Cuuute.

D: Yeah, he’s the mumma. He’s like, ‘I have to be fully domesticated because my friends aren’t, and we’re out in public.’

U: Gotcha, he keeps you guys in line.

D: Yeah, he takes on that role quite well. So pretty much, we were playing in Perth a few years ago. It was JC, our guitarist’s, first show with us. First tour. So he’s just joined the band, he’s the new kid in the band. Pretty much, we’re like to him, ‘go and get the van’ so I walked out with him, we start the car. He’s moving the van, and there’s one of those little red and white poles? You know the ones where you can like, bring it up to save the car space?

U: Yeah, I think so.

D: Yeah, yeah, there was one of those but it was really low? It was really weird. We could barely see it, but it was definitely still present in the world. So pretty much… Josh smashed our van into that pole. We told Anthony that someone smashed into OUR van – we’re very good at bending the truth when it comes to vans! [laughs]

U: [laughs] Blame it on everyone else! Nah, but you know when you hand the car back, you have to sign the thing and they have to sign it, so they can’t just, years later, be like ‘you did this!’

D: Nah, nah, how you get past THAT, is you talk to them about the weather and overload them with info so they don’t COMPLETELY check the van. And you bring it back and go, ‘that was already there, dude’.

U: [laughs] Exactly.

D: So basically JC’s already smashed the van, the whole front of it. He was like our first show in, in this new band, and he’s like, ‘oh my fucking god, I just screwed up our friendship.’ That was the first time we’ve ever smashed our van in however many years, so he was like feeling the FULL weight of guilt. [laughs]

U: Poor dude.

D: He’s not the best in those situations. He just goes into crisis mode. Um, and yeah, we smashed it, Anthony came out and was like, ‘what’s happened to our van?!’ And we’re like, ‘ohhh we came out and someone has obviously just reversed into our van!’ [laughs] And we’re losing it and losing it and then, like, Anthony’s just looking at it and he didn’t know for a while, he’s like, ‘man, it’s crap that they didn’t even leave their details, can’t believe that.’ And he’s sitting there looking… [laughs] and he realises that there’s a little red and white pole in front of the van, and the paint that’s on the van is red and white…

U: Ahhh.

D: He’s like, ‘oh wait… did you guys drive straight into that pole?’ And the look on JC’s face is like…

U: ‘Oh no, I’m out of the band.’

D: Yeah, it was almost like a little kid. A little puppy.

U: Yeah, owning up to mum! D: And THEN… this is almost like a lie… could go in the lie category. THEN, it was really bad, so on the way we stopped off at – big respect to Supercheap Auto – we took it there, and we got the guy to match the paint of the car, and we sat in the parking lot for hours buffering out this thing, this paint job on the car.

U: Oh my god.

D: And we returned it without any damage fees, anything.

U: And they were fine?!

D: They were fine with it! They actually were like, they praised us for bringing the car back in such good condition.

U: Oh wow. So it didn’t like dent the body at all? Was it just the paint that came off?

D: The whole front bender, the whole light fixture…

U: And you fixed it all yourself?!

D: Yeah yeah, there’s nothing better than Aussie ingenuity! [laughs]

U: That’s crazy!

D: Yeah and we put superglue over the light, and rubbed it in so the cracks would sort of fill up, so they wouldn’t be able to see the crack in the light. We went full Bob The Builder.

U: Shit!

D: Yeah it was so good, we were like panel beaters that day.

U: Well, if the band thing doesn’t work out, you know what to take up. Yeah, god, that could almost be the lie, hey? Now I’m intrigued what your lie is since your truths are based in lies…

D: We’re just actually all liars, actually!

"That was the first time we’ve ever smashed our van in however many years..."

Lie

D: So when I was like, really really really young, like just getting into my teens, maybe 12? Or 11? I watched too many gangster movies, like Scarface and all that stuff, because my brothers were super into it. So at school – I thought it was cool at the time but it wasn’t – because it turned into a full on thing. So when I’m 11 or 12, I told people… ‘YEAH! I sell weed. I know where to get weed.’

U: Oh no.

D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that just went out of control! I had like, Year 11 and Year 12 students coming up to me after their tests, and literally asking me, and I’d go ‘ohhhh, yeah just meet me here!’ and I would NEVER go there! Like, what the hell is this little kid doing?

U: Ohhh my god.

D: Yeahhh. And our school wasn’t a great school, we had a school-based police officer, so what this guy did was stay in the school all day.

U: Oh wow.

D: He was the nicest interaction I’ve had with a police officer though, awesome guy. He was more treated like a counselor than a police officer, but he just so happened to be a police officer.

U: So he was like a legit cop? Not like a security guard?

D: Nah, a cop!

U: Oh wow.

D: Yeah, wasn’t a great school, it was Robina High. Near the Gold Coast. So anyway, one thing led to another and this spiraled out of control because I watched too many gangster movies, and literally I got called in one day to the principal’s office. They’re like, ‘we’ve had some reports that you’re selling drugs to the school.’ And I’m like, ‘what are you talking about? I’m 11 years old.’ Inside of me, it was like an explosion of ‘OHHHH NOOOOOOOO’.

U: Yeahh, but on the outside you’re so chill and like, who me?

D: Yeah, pretty much. Anyway so the cop came in, I got arrested! But I think it was moreso a tactic to scare everyone, like ‘we’re tough’. So I was arrested at 11 for that.

U: Oh man, you were a baby!

D: Obviously, I had to tell the whole story to them. Told my brothers, they were my guardians at the time and they’re like, ‘what the HELL? What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘Look…’ They thought it was funny as, that I watched too many movies and I thought I’d act cool. So I full had to do an interview with a police officer, all that stuff. It’s good that I got embarrassed like that because I’d never do it again. But yeah, I had to tell the whole story – I watched too many movies, had too much time on my hands. I wanted to be popular for a day or two!

U: That’s crazy though, you didn’t actually sell ANY drugs, they have zero evidence of you actually being a dealer.

D: It was just all street cred!

U: All talk!

D: [laughs] It was literally all talk! And it blew up in my face. And I got through high school, so I had to deal with that the rest of my life. Like, ‘this kid made up that he sold drugs when he was like, 10!’ Who does that when they’re 10?

U: Like a Year 7 dealer!

D: Exactly, I walked through high school with egg on my face.

U: Wait, did everyone know you faked it or they thought you were hardass?

D: By the end of it, everyone knew.

U: Aw nooo.

D: My brothers knew everyone at the school, stuff like that. They connected the dots. I think people laughed at the fact that… a 10-year-old was doing that essentially? How does a 10-year-old even think like that?

U: It’s adorable, in a way.

D: I know right?

Hellions’ new album, Rue, is due out on October 19 via UNFD. You can catch them at Yours & Owls Festival as well as at UNIFY Gathering next January.

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