INTERVIEW: Hardcore Superstar guitarist Vic Zino on Abrakadabra & history with Australia

Interview by Andrew Massie

Hardcore Superstar

After releasing five singles to enormous critical acclaim resulting in over 1.6 million Spotify streams, numerous sold out shows and in excess of 400,000 views on YouTube, HARDCORE SUPERSTAR have now unleashed their highly anticipated new album “Abrakadabra”. Building on the momentum and huge success of their 2018 album You Can’t Kill My Rock N’ Roll, the band were inspired and enthusiastically started writing songs for Abrakadabra whilst still out on tour.

We caught up with guitarist Vic Zino to discuss the new album plus we find out a special connection he has to Australia.

 

On the new record Abrakadabra:

Vic: I guess a lot of people it’s a lot of looking back to the self-titled album, I guess it’s got that vibe that the self titled album has. I guess somehow we wanted to go back to that album or that era. If you listen to the [previous] album “You Can’t Kill My Rock N’ Roll”, it sounds completely different than this one. It’s a lot more modern, this one is not so modern and I think that’s a reaction to the last album because we don’t want to do that again because we’re creative people and we don’t want to do the same stuff again.

On joining Hardcore Superstar in 2008 and doing his first shows with the band in Australia:

My first show was in Sydney and then Melbourne at Max Watts. I hadn’t toured that much prioer to this, with my previous band Crazy Lixx we did a tour with Hardcore Superstar for 7 days and then after 7 days their guitar player Thomas [Silver] quit and they asked me if I wanted to finish off the tour so we got 2 days to practice and then we flew to Australia.

On influences and discovering the guitar:

Yngwie, Slash, Randy Rhoads, Dimebag, Paul Gilbert – those guys I listen to a lot and if they influenced my style, of course they have but I’ve gotta go in my direction. My dad bought me a $3 guitar and it only had one string and that string couldn’t be tuned. So it was me in my brother’s room listening to Nevermind by Nirvana and just trying to figure it out and I hit a note that was actually kind of correct and I was like, ‘Yeah I can do this!’ [laughs].

 

Check out the full interview
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/39xSmd9D1m4
Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3KiSax1
Get Abrakadabra here: https://bfan.link/HCSS-Abrakadabra

 

Hardcore Superstar - Abrakadabra