Alternative band The Hunger tells of past, present

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After their show in Houston at Numbers, The Hunger had a few minutes to speak with Noelle Berryman of the Thresher about where they came from and where they plan on going.

Thresher : How did you get started with this type of music?

The Hunger: We started years ago -- and when I say "years," it definitely shows how old we are. I'm not going to say how old we are, but it shows how long we've been doing this.

We started in about late '87 or '88 as an entirely different entity. We were still called "The Hunger," but my brother and myself (I used to play bass and he used to play drums), we had two other singers who are no longer with us and a guitar player that is no longer with us. It was just the three original members -- myself, my brother (Thomas) and one of the founding members (Brian), and we just started off playing. I think it was more because we were just aimlessly going through life.

We didn't have a goal. We were going to college and things like that, but we weren't really into it. We had all grown up in high school organizations playing musical things here and there, but we were kind of starting from scratch here. Thomas was never a drummer and I was never a bass player. The only person who had really practiced for years on their instrument was our former guitar player.

We started off doing cover gigs way back when in '88 and '89 and at the same time, kind of working on our own material. Over time the other guys in the band either got in trouble -- one guy got in trouble with the law -- another guy decided that he doesn't want to risk any more of his life being a musician and goes back to college to get his degree. So it ended up just being the three of us left -- myself, Thomas and Brian.

So we were going to college, and during this whole time we started recording our first record. It just so happened that the first single we released on our own, a song called "Shock" back in '88 or '89, started to do well on different alternative charts everywhere right about the time that Nine Inch Nails was just first coming out. ... We were there at the top of the charts with Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.

It was quite exhilarating at that time to see yourself there. It didn't really get us where we wanted to go because at the time we had just been lucky with that one song, but the rest of our material was kind of -- we had one other song, but we hadn't found our direction yet and it wasn't enough for us to cut a deal.

We then released a song called "Never Again" that had been played on Beaumont radio. That got us to the point of where we were actually what I call an "actual band," where we were playing gigs and making a lot of money due to radio airplay over stations like Beaumont here in Houston. We released it on our own and pre-sold the 2,000 units that we had; it was sold out. I guess you could say we got lucky with that one song. ... I guess a lot of people called in to request it and it started to do well at the radio stations.

We then got some attention from an independent label in Philadelphia, Alpha International, and that kind of got us started as a band and then we decided we didn't have time to go to college anymore. We were just going to do this music thing.

Since then it's been all we've been doing. The whole Alpha thing started back in ... I think we released our first album with them in '91.

T: Who were some of your influences? You mentioned Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. ... Were you influenced by them and other industrial bands or other alternative bands?

H: I think we have influences that go past just the bands that we were influenced by growing up as kids, like Kiss. As we grew older, our tastes changed, and I was a DJ at a night club and was influenced by just about anything.

T: What performances have you had lately?

H: We just played at Numbers and we also played at Buzzfest. We may have one more date in Houston. ... I'm not going to say where or anything like that because it hasn't been finalized yet, but I'm sure you'll hear about it because it should be with another really big national act.

Other than that, we'll be on the road for most of the summer. I'm sure we'll come back and do another show towards the end of the summer, but we're going to attack all of the North American continent.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the May 17, 1996 issue.

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