Hollow Shift Makes “WAR” A Harrowing, Hypnotic, And Compelling Darkwave Descent Into Tension And Transformation
- 🌟 Miles Carter
- Jun 19
- 9 min read
By: Miles Carter
Hollow Shift Turns Darkness, Tension, And Transformation Into A Powerful, Cathartic World With 'WAR.'
We got together with Hollow Shift for an exciting interview to delve into the stories and happenings behind the making of this latest release and learn more about the artist.
Begin Interview:
The Cage: Hello Hollow Shift, we’re thrilled to have you here for this interview! We've had an amazing time exploring your music and diving into your creative journey. Now, we’re even more excited to get a deeper look into both your brand and your personal and professional inspirations.
Q. Can you tell us how the Hollow Shift project first began and why you chose this musical path? Is the feeling of unresolved tension in “Hephaestus” part of the reason you make music, or does this song live in its own separate emotional world?
A. Hollow Shift grew out of a creative restlessness that had been building for a long time. Before this project, Alexander and I worked together in a band called Mongoa. Mongoa blended dream-pop, trip-hop, and atmospheric electronic music and the tracks were much slower, moodier, and more introspective. We were incredibly proud of what we created there and still love that music (and occasionally still release singles), but over time we found ourselves craving something different. We wanted to make music that moved not only emotionally, but physically. We wanted basslines that pulled you onto the dance floor, synths that wrapped around you, and rhythms that stayed in your body long after the song ended.
Both of us have always loved post-punk, darkwave, synth-wave, and all forms of electronic music, so Hollow Shift became a natural home for those influences. It gave us permission to explore darker themes while creating something you can dance to even when the subject matter is heavy.
As for “Hephaestus,” I think the unresolved tension in that song definitely reflects something at the heart of why we make music. I’m often drawn to the spaces between certainty and uncertainty, connection and disconnection, and hope and fear. Music allows me to sit inside those contradictions without having to resolve them. That said, “Hephaestus” also occupies its own emotional landscape. It’s a very specific song with its own mythology and atmosphere. The tension in it isn't necessarily asking for answers. It exists because sometimes life leaves us with questions that are more powerful than conclusions. Hollow Shift is a place where we’re free to explore those questions and turn them into something beautiful, cathartic, and hopefully moving for the listener.
Q. “Nothing Dies Quietly” has thunderous beats and a rumbling, almost tribal sound. Then the vocals float above it all, feeling both trapped and strangely free, almost like a hypnotic mantra. Can you tell us more about the song’s origins? We also loved the god references. They felt direct, chaotic, and unresolved in a way that reminded us of how many people experience religion itself. Can you unravel that meaning for us?
A. “Nothing Dies Quietly” went through quite a transformation during the writing process. Initially, it had a much more traditional drum beat. The song was working, but both Alex and I felt like something was missing. It wasn’t quite finding its identity. So we started experimenting, pulling things apart, trying different textures and rhythms, and eventually we began playing with arpeggiators.
The moment we landed on the sound the song has now, we both turned and smiled at each other. We had exactly the same reaction—that look of, that’s the one. Then Alex said, “But it doesn't sound like us.” And I replied, “And?” And that was that. Sometimes the most exciting creative moments happen when you stop trying to sound like yourself and allow the music to tell you what it wants to be.
As for the lyrical themes, I’ve always been fascinated by mythology, religion, and the stories humans create to make sense of suffering, desire, power, and mortality. The gods in “Nothing Dies Quietly” aren't really there as religious figures. They’re more symbolic than literal. They represent the forces we surrender to, the things we worship knowingly or unknowingly, whether that’s love, fear, ideology, obsession, or even our own self-destructive patterns.
I love that you described the references as direct, chaotic, and unresolved because that’s exactly how I see them. The song isn’t trying to provide answers or promote a particular belief system. It’s exploring the tension between faith and doubt, and control and surrender. In many ways, the gods become a mirror for our own struggles. We look to them for certainty, but they’re often just as flawed, contradictory, and unpredictable as we are. That’s where the song lives… in that uncomfortable space where meaning remains just out of reach, but we keep searching for it anyway.
Q. Hollow Shift feels different to us. Your control and construction of music comes across as messages and emotions, not just sounds. Do your songs come from personal experiences you want to share, or are they more like warnings, observations, or pieces of knowledge you feel compelled to release?
A. Absolutely personal experiences. I don’t think I know how to write any other way.
That doesn’t mean every song is autobiographical in a literal sense, but the emotional core is always real. The themes that find their way into Hollow Shift tend to come from things I’ve lived through or am still trying to understand, and what it means to keep moving forward when life becomes complicated.
Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time navigating uncertainty, learning how to stay grounded when circumstances feel beyond my control, and trying to hold onto hope during periods that tested me emotionally. I’ve also experienced the fierce protective love that comes with caring for my son. Those experiences inevitably shape the music, whether I’m consciously writing about them or not.
So, I wouldn’t describe the songs as warnings or lessons. They’re more like emotional snapshots. Sometimes they’re questions. Sometimes they’re attempts to make sense of something. Sometimes they’re simply a way of transforming difficult experiences into something creative and meaningful.
What matters most to me is honesty. If a song resonates with someone else, it’s usually because there’s a real human experience underneath it. The production, the melodies, the lyrics, all of that is important. But at the center of every Hollow Shift song is a feeling that genuinely existed before it became music.
Q. When someone asks what kind of music you make, do you lean on genre labels, or do you describe the darker, more complex world your music exists inside? Do you feel Hollow Shift can truly be explained before someone actually experiences it?
A. I usually start with, “A blend of darkwave and synthwave with a post-punk heart.” It’s a useful shorthand because it gives people a rough idea of the sonic landscape we’re working within.
But genre labels only tell part of the story. They can describe the instruments, the influences, or the overall aesthetic, but they don’t really capture what Hollow Shift feels like. At its core, Hollow Shift is about contrast. It’s darkness and light, melancholy and momentum, introspection and release. We write songs that explore difficult emotions, but we wrap them in rhythms and melodies that move. You can dance to them, but you can also sit alone with them at 2 a.m. and find something entirely different.
I don’t think Hollow Shift can be fully explained before it’s experienced. Music is one of those things that happens between the artist and the listener. Everyone brings their own memories, emotions, and interpretations to it. We can talk about influences, genres, and themes, but the real experience happens when someone presses play and discovers what the songs awaken in them.
That’s the part that interests me most. Once the music leaves us, it belongs to the listener as much as it belongs to us.
Q. What does the name Hollow Shift embody, and how does that connect to your music and its deeper meaning?
A. The name Hollow Shift came from the idea that transformation often begins in empty spaces. The moments that change us most are rarely the triumphant ones. They're the periods of uncertainty or questioning… those hollow places where something old has fallen away, but something new hasn’t fully arrived yet.
We’re drawn to the tension between who we were and who we’re becoming. The shift is movement, evolution, and change. The hollow is the space that makes that change possible. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but it’s also where growth happens.
Many Hollow Shift songs explore that territory. They deal with endings and beginnings, faith and doubt, connection and isolation, and destruction and renewal. Even when the music feels dark, there’s usually a current of transformation running underneath it. We’re less interested in despair than we are in what emerges after it.
In that sense, Hollow Shift isn’t just a band name. It’s a state of being and a place where the most profound changes often begin.
Q. “Frequencies Will Stumble” is even more compelling. With its repeated refrain, it takes over the mind and makes us feel like empty vessels being observed from somewhere far away. The drifting references are absolutely harrowing. This song feels like an audible horror film, and we loved every second. Can you unpack this song’s meaning in more detail?
A. The repeated refrain was very intentional. We wanted it to feel almost ritualistic, like a thought you can’t stop returning to. A lot of anxiety works that way. You circle the same questions, the same fears, the same possibilities, until they become hypnotic. The repetition creates a sense of inevitability, as though something is approaching that cannot be avoided.
The drifting references come from that feeling of losing your bearings. Not necessarily in a physical sense, but emotionally and psychologically. Most people have experienced periods where the map they were following suddenly stops making sense. Relationships change. Trust is challenged. The future becomes unclear. You feel untethered from what once felt solid.
What interests me is that the song never fully reveals what the threat is. Horror is often most powerful when it leaves space for the listener’s imagination. The unknown is usually more frightening than anything explicitly shown. So the song becomes a kind of mirror. One listener might hear loneliness. Another might hear grief. Someone else might hear social collapse, spiritual crisis, or the fear of becoming invisible.
For me, the song exists in that liminal territory between isolation and awareness. It’s unsettling because it asks what happens when the frequencies we depend on—love, trust, identity, belief, connection—begin to falter. But underneath the unease is another question: if the old signals fail, what new ones might we learn to hear?
Q. What kind of live setting feels most natural for Hollow Shift? Small house shows, smoky venues, massive stages, or something else entirely? How does your live presentation change from the studio version of your work?
A. I think Hollow Shift naturally belongs in dark, atmospheric spaces where the audience can immerse themselves in the experience, whether that’s a small underground venue or a larger stage. What matters most isn’t the size of the room, it’s the feeling inside it. We want people to step into our world for an hour and forget where they are.
Our live set is actually quite different from the recorded versions of the songs. We didn't want to simply recreate the albums on stage. Instead, we've approached the performance almost like a DJ set, weaving tracks together, creating transitions, extending moments, and reshaping parts of the music so that it flows as one continuous experience.
A lot of thought has gone into the sequencing. The songs aren’t just arranged in an order that sounds good musically; they're arranged to tell a story. Themes emerge, evolve, and return. The audience moves through different emotional landscapes, both lyrically and sonically. In that sense, we’ve built a show rather than a setlist.
For us, that’s the exciting part of performing live. It’s not simply a band playing through its catalogue. As clichéd as it might sound, it’s a journey. The songs become chapters in a larger narrative, connected by mood, atmosphere, tension, and release. People who know the recordings will recognize the songs, but they’ll also hear them in a completely new context.
Q. If you could call on the universe and ask for one professional wish for Hollow Shift, what would you choose? Would it be a festival tour, major release backing, a specific collaboration, or something completely different?
A. Without hesitation: enough funding to tour and market Hollow Shift internationally.
Of course, there are festivals we’d love to play and artists we’d love to share a stage with, but the real dream is being able to take this project out into the world and connect with people face-to-face. We genuinely love performing live. There's something magical about watching songs leave the studio and become a shared experience between the band and the audience.
Making the music is only part of it for us. It’s the spark, but it’s not the whole fire. The songs need bodies in front of them. They need rooms full of people moving, singing, dancing, feeling, and interpreting them in their own way. They need to become physical.
The reality is that independent artists often face practical barriers that have nothing to do with creativity. Touring internationally requires significant resources, and marketing is what helps the music reach the people who might connect with it. If I could ask the universe for one thing, it wouldn’t be fame or chart positions. It would be the means to put Hollow Shift in front of audiences around the world and let the music do what it was always meant to do: exist beyond us.
Everything else would grow from there.
The Cage: Hollow Shift, thank you so much, we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us!
End Interview
We’re happy to have shared Hollow Shift’s exciting journey with you and uncovered such inspiring insights about their creative process.
