Coming out of The Netherlands like a (very strong) breath of fresh air… OK, not the best segue but it’s early!
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We’re from Haarlem, The Netherlands.
How did you meet?
The three of us are all students at the conservatory over here, Conservatorium Haarlem.
How long have you been playing as a band?
The band celebrated it’s fourth birthday last month, it took us about a year of writing and rehearsing to get going so I’d say we’ve been playing gigs for about three years.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
The band name originated from one of our names (Jurriaan) being autocorrected to ‘hurricane’. Originally we just thought it sounded cool but over the past years, while we were looking for our musical identity, we found that our band name perfectly reflects the kind of ‘duality’ we envision for our music. A balance between control (‘Operation’) and chaos (‘Hurricane”). Maybe it was a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts haha
What are your influences?
Sonically, I’d say our main influences consist of grunge bands like Seether and Soundgarden, maybe throw a dash of Queens of the Stone Age in there as well. Song writing-wise we’re all just fans of great songs, not confined to any particular genre. Jari (bass guitar) listens to a lot of prog rock/metal, Jurriaan(guitar/vocals) is very much into jazz these days and Max(drums) just loves anything that grooves.
Of course we’re all schooled in popular music, so there’s a fair bit of that in there as well.
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Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We have decided to label our music “pseudo-grunge”. You could describe it as a freaky fusion of grunge, prog, punk and pop.
We play with the rawness and honesty of grunge, yet with from a more modern and methodical point of view. Our songs are very dynamic and lyrical, going from hard and heavy to surprisingly catchy in a matter of seconds.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
I like to really tell a story with my lyrics. Sometimes that story is our own but it doesn’t always have to be. For example: the song “So It Goes” off of our upcoming EP is based on the book Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Our live shows are a bit of a rollercoaster. Because of the dynamic nature of our music, we keep both the audience and ourselves on our toes. We’re very energetic on stage, we believe this really drives home the message we want to bring across with our music. We’ve played about 60 shows as of right now. Unfortunately, due to Covid we had to cancel pretty much everything this year but we’ll be back on the road some day.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
This one time we were asked to play at a party for exchange students from across the globe, about 1500 people. What sounded like the gig of a lifetime turned out to be quite the opposite. The entire evening was complete chaos: we got locked out of our backstage area, apparently there was a dj playing at the same time as us so our audience consisted of about 30 people and to top it all off some old woman ran into my car while we were unloading, destroying the side mirror in the process.
Ah well, at the very least it’s another adventure to reminisce about!
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What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Jari plays Fender basses, Jurriaan either a Fender Telecaster or a mysterious Les Paul from the late 60’s made by an unknown brand. Max uses a Pearl kit and Istanbul cymbals.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We just released our debut-EP called White Walls.
What are your plans for the next 6 months or so?
Our plans seem to be changing on a week to week basis due to Covid-19 so writing and recording will be our main priority for the foreseeable future. We’ve got some livestream-shows planned here and there as well.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We’d love to play another show with our friends in Minor Citizen. They’re an Amsterdam based three piece band and our music seems to fit together really well. We’d love to open up for bands like QOTSA or Triggerfinger.
Check out this month’s BotD Playlist on Spotify and YouTube
Operation Hurricane: facebook | instagram | spotify | youtube
