Hail the Sun frontman Donovan Melero has an obvious spot in his heart for music, not just as a performer, but as an avid reader of music publications.
From the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, the Northern California native noticed a decline in some of his favorite music magazines, leaving him with the idea to take up the coverage himself and elevate up-and-coming bands by creating his own magazine, Kill Iconic.
“Years before I started it, I saw a window opening in the music genre that I listened to that was no longer being covered too heavily,” Melero said during a recent phone interview. “(In) 2016 onwards, it just shifted, and there is nothing wrong with that. I can respect a business model’s ability to shift to their subscribership or their reader base, but it left out a lot and a big window that I knew there was still a demand for, but it just wasn’t large enough of a demand for a major publication to really take notice.”
To celebrate the biannual Kill Iconic magazine and its mission to highlight new groups, the band will perform the second iteration of the Kill Iconic Festival at House of Blues Anaheim on Saturday, March 23 alongside Intervals, A Lot Like Birds, Being As An Ocean, Night Verses, Geoff Rickly, Andres, Body Thief, Makari, Moondough, Outline In Color, The Seafloor Cinema, Ahh-Ceh, Erase Theory and rosecoloredworld.
“I want people to have a good time and to be moved for one day and maybe discover a band they hadn’t heard of before,” Melero said. “I’d like to see people join what is the Kill Iconic community and the culture that helped sculpt the people that continue to discover us and help to sculpt where the future leads us.”
The founding principle of Kill Iconic can be traced back to the early days of Hail the Sun, which formed in Chico in 2009. Melero and guitarist Aric Garcia have been friends since the third grade and have made music together since they were 12. They later attended California State University Chico, meeting lead guitarist Shane Gann and bassist John Stirrat to complete their band, bonding over their various musical influences. Looking back, Melero remembers booking shows anywhere they could and going on mini DIY tours in between school breaks. Those experiences influenced him to help newer acts, trying to climb the same ladder he and his group once did.
“It’s just nice to have something to provide to younger bands that we truly believe in,” he said. “That’s going to help raise their profile and help their careers along because we all start somewhere. I remember relentlessly emailing managers and agents and anyone who would really listen or take me seriously back in 2009-2010, just trying to put a foot in the door and figure out a way for anyone to see my vision. If I can really believe in and feel it, I want to do everything I possibly can to help their career because that can be just as fulfilling as doing it myself.”
Melero said he’s also had a passion for creative writing since he was a kid and enjoyed AP English classes in high school. The writing process and artful techniques he learned are also something that he’s admired in other lyricists such as Frankie Valli and Anthony Green, lead singer of Circa Survive, Saosin, The Sound of Animals Fighting, and L.S. Dunes.
Hail the Sun’s latest album, “Divine Inner Tension,” released last August, and the band’s latest single, “Secondary Worship,” leans heavier on lyrics. It steps away from relying on some of the self-deprecating sentiments that influenced Melero’s previous work, and even though he feels some of it might be cringey, he still appreciates its place in his journey.
“It’s a great timestamp of where I was at in my life, but it just feels so overdone,” he said. “It’s a true thing and not something that was forced. I really felt those ways, and those times served me very well. They served me until everything that led to now, and I’m very grateful for that. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I leaned into a different mindset earlier in my life, but either way, I’m very happy with where things are. When I can see the picture as a whole, I still feel very inspired and very creative in writing these things.”
“(With this new music) I was really leaning into the idea that life ebbs and flows and the idea that it’s neither here nor there, and it just is,” he said. “If I’m able to turn my own perspective and retell all the stories that I’ve been telling myself that used to bring me down into a much different narrative and get good at that, I could still inspire without needing to feel the pain.”
Melero said they’ve also collaborated more with others, like their touring drummer Allen Casillas, who laid down the drums for their last record. He said Casillas now gets a big say in their decisions and processes as a band. They’ve also been working with producer, bassist and keyboardist Joe Occhiuti of Ice Nine Kills.
“It’s really hard to put in the words (for what it’s been like), well it’s more so I wish I could because I can’t really say, but it just feels like the most Hail the Sun that Hail the Sun has ever been,” Melero said.
Hail the Sun
Where: House of Blues Anaheim, 400 Disney Way #337, Anaheim
When: 1:30 p.m. Saturday, March 23
Tickets: $53 at Livenation.com
