A Chat with Fickle Hill (11.09.25)
Known for his boundary-breaking, genre-weaving, innovatively diverse music, seasoned artist Fickle Hill has been turning heads since the 1990s. From crafting alt-folk ballads to anthemic metal tunes, the US-based musician will always keep you guessing. We speak with Fickle Hill about his new album, Warning Test Site Area: An Embarrassment of Riches, his musical journey, influential artists, and much more.
OSR: Can you tell me a bit about your musical journey over the past 30 years? Have you been in many bands in your time or signed to a label?
Fickle Hill: Growing up, I was considered a bit of a prodigy, and during high school, I would jam with friends and do more formal music with school. After I graduated, I did one studio gig playing the drums for what I believe was a toothpaste commercial (this was back in 1994). Then in 1995, I started a hardcore punk band with my best friend’s little brother, who was 1 ½ years younger than me, but he was still in high school. At the same time, I was taking advanced music theory classes at college and really broadening my understanding of composition and sound. We recorded a demo and did a portion of the Victory Records tour when it came through the West Coast. Then everyone else graduated from high school and moved away.
In 1997, I joined another band while I was attending Humboldt State in Arcata, CA (which is where the name Fickle Hill comes from). It was supposed to be a ska band, as was the style in 1997, but I had no time for that and immediately started bringing other influences into the mix, and we became something totally different. It was there that I really got to dig my teeth into writing songs. We would pull together three genres in one song, and we had a significant following. We ended up on some national compilations, playing some big venues and eventually broke up when graduation came around.
It was during college that I discovered digital music creation and production, starting with a simple program called Impulse Tracker, which would usurp your computer’s sound card and allow you to program songs using a simple interface and hexadecimal code, primarily creating EDM. I spent years doing that, and then in 2003, I purchased an electric guitar and a MIDI keyboard, deciding to hone my skills on every instrument I could. I would release music on platforms like MySpace or MP3.com, where I did everything, but nothing much came from that. Then life came around, and I found myself having to be more of an adult until I wound up getting a corporate job. Music became something I did when I had time for fun, and rarely, if ever, did I have the chance to record something, and if I did, it was shared with friends and nowhere else.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had a strange idea and decided to build myself a guitar, which ultimately evolved into three guitars. So, I had three custom guitars, an acoustic Fender, and a Schecter bass. I was having more fun, but not really producing much more than covers to make myself happy. In 2024, I had worked my way up to senior leadership at a Fortune 500 and was unceremoniously laid off. With nothing else to do, I dove back into music, and it was a flood. But this time I decided I would do it for me, and the way I wanted: no genres, no rules, no limits. So here I am now, distributing music across the world, and I’m happy that I live in a time where I can do it.
OSR: Do you like to remain anonymous? I can’t find too much about you online. Are you happier to let your music do the talking?
Fickle Hill: I love the idea of being anonymous. It allows me to create and express myself without any judgment, other than the inherent quality of my music. It’s not about me or what I look like or any bias that comes with the labels I carry. It’s just the music and I can play with it however I want, whether it be through multiple styles or changing my voice through software. I feel like it is more pure that way. I get to be a blank slate for the listener and create my art without any boundaries. I don’t have to tell anyone I am doing it, and I don’t see the value in bringing some cult of personality to my art. Do you want to know about me? Listen to my music. If you connect to the words and sounds, then you would connect with me as a person. Knowing more about me shouldn’t bring anything more to the artistic expression. I think most people hear a name and then start attaching all of their positive or negative bias to the music based on the person. With Fickle Hill, you only have the music. You either like the art or you don’t, and I like that way.
OSR: Is there a decent music scene happening in Irvine? I believe Rage Against The Machine’s Zach de la Rocha moved there at a young age.
Fickle Hill: More than Irvine, it’s Orange County. Yes, Zach was from Orange County, California and back in the day, I used to go to shows for his first band, Inside Out. They were a great hardcore band and really stuck out in the scene. Orange County has had a vibrant scene for decades. The scene is still around, it’s just less of a community today than it was before the commercialisation of everything. When I go to a show, it always makes me laugh to see the new kids in the scene that are connected to the scene via their phones and media. Then there are the old guys in back with pot bellies, beards, baseball caps, cargo pants, black tee shirts, and sneakers. Old people who have all moved on in life, but we still give each other “the nod” because we remember the days when the scene was more of a community than just a collection of bands playing the same style of music.
OSR: Do you feel that it was a brave move to release this gargantuan of an album containing 33 tracks? Are you at that stage in your career where you do what you like?
Fickle Hill: It was a necessary thing to do. I am at a stage in my career where I have nothing to lose. What are people going to do? Keep not listening to my music? Ignore my new release? I don’t think it is brave at all because to be brave, there must be an element of fear, and I have nothing to fear.
I made this album with the intent of creating as much music as I could. I know it’s a lot. I know it is an embarrassment of riches. I challenged myself to work harder and never allow a riff or idea to get left behind. I committed to completing everything and dedicated myself to continuing until I had nothing left. I was exhausted by the end, but I felt fulfilled and satisfied like I had washed my psyche. I have many volumes of poetry I can pull from for ideas and lyrics. I have hundreds of songs that I recorded in various ways over the years, and I can reuse them. I went in with the intention to drain the reservoir, and that’s what I did. Once it was all made, I spent a reasonable amount of time making sure I put together a journey. A piece of art that carried the listener along with me through emotions and energies that felt like a manic frenzy, but one that was very intentional in eliciting the same feeling you get from a delicious meal where you are stuffed and can’t eat another bite, but you want to go to that restaurant again. Within a few days, you crave that meal again. I was very intentional in making sure it was indulgent for the listener and not for me as an artist. I wish I could do 50 tracks for every album.
I am at a stage of my life where I do what I want. I am closer to death than birth, and I can’t waste heartbeats on worrying about meeting other people’s expectations. I am still growing as a person and an artist, so I put that energy into my music. At times, it’s two hours long, and other times, it’s 20 minutes. I stay genuine and honest with myself.
OSR: I like the way you can have a track as heavy as ‘Shatterproof’, and follow it up with ‘I’m Still Going’, which has its roots in country. Don’t you agree that one of the best things is to keep an open mind when it comes to music?
Fickle Hill: I have become increasingly disillusioned with the genre labels used for artists. It is a little fence that gets put around you, and you’re told you have to stay there and play nice. I’m not one thing. I am not one feeling. I am not one story. Sometimes I am an angry, loud, frustrated man. Sometimes I want to dive into the philosophical. Sometimes I want to use the profound metaphor of a murder ballad. Why would I want to be boxed in by a genre? That material is for individuals seeking to generate revenue and target an audience of repeat customers. I am not looking for customers. I am looking to connect with other humans through my art, and since we are multidimensional people, my art should be multidimensional too.
If you compare two songs like ‘Slave on Earth’ and ‘Docked at Harbor’, they both explore life and death, but tell different stories. One uses Achilles’ words to express how life is always better than death, no matter how bad life may seem. The other uses the metaphor of old boats I was looking at in a harbor, and how in our youth, we are strong and formidable, but age wears us down, and we hit a point where we let younger people be strong and formidable because our bodies can’t do the things they used to do in the past.
Those two songs have very different emotional centers and should be composed in various styles. ‘I’m Still Going’ is an ironic admission of how ridiculous my life has been this past year. I really did lose my job, my dog, and my truck. That is a country song, no matter how you look at it. The story is so cliché, so I had to use a cliché style to tell it and then call out the cliché in the lyrics. If I had done that as a metal song, it would be disjointed and miss the mark for being self-aware of the absurdity of things. So, I move through styles and sounds. I alter my voice or use a different stack in my DAW to make my guitars sound different or change the drum samples in my tracked beats. It makes the art whole and authentic. I get to put a thesis in every song, both sonically and lyrically, then let the song express that thesis. I would be doing a disservice to the song and the audience, and myself if I forced them into a single style to meet some sound required by a genre.
OSR: ‘A Frayed Man’ has an excellent intensity to it, containing some great distorted synths. Can you describe the process when making that one?
Fickle Hill: That is one of my favorite songs I’ve made recently. I released that as a maxi-single recently, and it has the demo version of the song on there. I write many songs on my acoustic guitar. That’s where ‘A Frayed Man’ started. It was a demo with me singing over my acoustic guitar. Then something in my head sort of broke, and I began to hear that repetitive saw wave synth in my head. I went into my software and started playing with synth sounds and filter envelopes.
As I was crafting that gritty glitch punk sound, I had visions of a big anime fight scene in my head. I wanted to create the same juxtaposition you see in anime, with a cartoon showing something disturbing and violent. At its core, it is really a sad song about my failures as a person and how I struggle to keep a hold on everything from finance to friends to family, while feeling like I am falling apart. So, instead of making it a sappy poor-me drudge, I made it an intense glitch punk anthem that you could sing along with and dance with all the energy of the best day of your life, but weaving the frustration and sadness in that sound. I wrote something that was sonically driving and up-tempo, and then I sang it like a cyberpunk tough guy. My hope, and it’s just a hope, is that you get addicted to the intensity and sonic canvas I create, then take a moment to read the lyrics and think, “Damn, that’s not what I thought it was.” Maybe even connect to the feeling of being emotionally frayed and experience that intensity in a new way on your subsequent listens.
OSR: Tracks like ‘Did It’ and ‘Smart Monkey’ are fantastic and sound like Linkin Park at their best. Are you most comfortable when doing heavy rock?
Fickle Hill: Wow. Linkin Park. I never would have thought of that connection. That’s cool. That one was the remake of an old EDM song with no lyrics, which I made back in 2001. ‘Smart Monkey’ is really just me wishing I were as incredible and talented as Quicksand. Heavy rock, punk, hardcore, metal, yelling and screaming, these are all things I hear in my head constantly. It’s like a fetish. I continuously have heavy, crunchy guitars chugging in my head. It’s harder for me not just to make everything heavy. Many people in real life describe me as “intense”, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but physically and emotionally, I like that intensity in my music. Yet, at the same time, there are times when I get consumed by bands like Amigo the Devil, and I want to make that sound and style. I guess heavy is sort of my cheat code, but I feel like it is just one layer of who I am and is limited in its expressive colors. God, I know that sounds like I am really up my own butt thinking I am so cool, but I hope it makes sense.
OSR: Who are some of the artists that have had a profound effect on your music career?
Fickle Hill: If you looked at everything in my phone, every single artist in there has had an impact. I’d even say that the ones I don’t listen to and decided I don’t like helped to shape me as well, serving as a sort of antithesis of what I want as an artist.
The most profound artist, hmm, I guess first and foremost is Ian MacKaye and all of his work from Teen Idols to The Evens. He was the first artist I saw open up and be raw in an aggressive way; being heavy and emotional at the same time. The sonic equivalent of punching someone in the face, not to prove you are tough, but to show how someone is wrong. He invented and crafted new sounds and genres to explore himself as an artist. I also saw him get stuck in that stupid genre fence that I find so frustrating and try to avoid. He did it for the sake of expression and not money or fame. I connected to that.
After that, I’d say Refused had a huge influence on me in the way I see music and the intentional avoidance of genre while also staying whole in a chaos of intensity. Their album The Shape of Punk to Come changed my life, and for months in 1999, I listened to it nonstop.
Next would be Quicksand, or more specifically, Walter Schreifels. Another guy who seems to have that same creative fire that constantly drives you to create. Plus, there is a “bouncy” quality to Quicksand that resonates with me. It is intricate and skilled, but catchy and has a sort of groove.
I don’t know about a single artist, but the advent of Djent had a big influence on me with its raw, stripped-down, aggressive sound. I love Aphex Twin and his use of EDM to break convention, and I studied his use of tech to make anti-music and break convention through music and by deconstructing those conventions until they become something new. There are really too many to list, and I know I am doing a disservice to many of my influences, but this subject could be a 1,000-page book for me.
OSR: Who are the musicians that you have playing with you on the album? Have you worked with them for a while?
Fickle Hill: This one makes me giggle a little. I have worked with them my whole life because I am the only musician you hear on my music. I play every instrument, I sing every song (although I will process my vocals digitally to make them sound different), and I do it all in my room connected to my Mac. I can’t stay happy in one genre, and I can’t stay satisfied with one instrument. I know that without modern technology, I couldn’t do this, or at least do it well. Back in 1995, I borrowed a friend’s four-track recorder, which used cassette tapes, and recorded a number of songs. They weren’t bad, but they all sounded unpolished and lacked something. As technology has grown, it has reached a point where being a solo artist means I control everything, from performance to final mastering of the sound, and I can do it all at minimal cost. I think it’s actually amazing to live in a time where this sort of tech and tools are available to anyone with a cell phone instead of rich record companies and corporations that get to puppet artists into being commercial instead of the artists making the art inside of themselves.
OSR: What are your hopes for Warning Test Site Area: An Embarrassment of Riches? So you plan to tour with it?
Fickle Hill: This one is easy. Connected. Excited. Energized. I want people to feel like they are in a fist fight with their stomach full of butterflies and energy. I want them to feel like the 33 songs go by too fast, and they need to go back again. I want them to feel like they are not alone in this world, that somebody feels what they feel and understands. None of us are alone, and we should celebrate the pain and joy with the same breath, because the pain and joy are what we all share. I hope people get to the end of the album and want to start at the beginning again until they are emotionally and intellectually exhausted.
I’ve thought about doing shows, but I run into the problem of money. Like I said, I do everything and play every instrument. If I were to do a show, I would have to hire at least two other guitarists (many of my songs are triple-tracked), a bass player, a drummer, a keyboardist, a percussionist, and a sound guy. That’s expensive. Worse yet is that I know people I could call to play with me with the skill needed to perform all of the craziness I do on the recording, but they are professional musicians with Grammys or have attended the Berklee College of Music, and would cost me thousands to retain through practice and performance. I don’t have that sort of money or following. I want to one day. I dream of being able to get up in front of a group of people who connect with my art and have a communal experience where we get to be a sort of collective unconsciousness for a few hours. I think that’d be beautiful, but I am way too poor to pull it off.
Many thanks to Fickle Hill for speaking with us. Find out more about Fickle Hill on his Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
