BY REV. ADAM MCKINNEY for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 9/25/2026
Here’s a quick life hack: if you wear sunglasses at night, as you walk through hushed city streets alone, you will get mystically transported to an after-hours discotheque beyond the bounds of perception.
All the bar’s tourists have long since gone home, leaving only the truly heartsick to populate the shadowy booths. The air is rich with smoke and perfume, and shafts of light from the lone disco ball cut through the pillowy haze. And the music that’s playing sounds a lot like Hot Hail!
The Seattle solo project of artist Billy Sigil, Hot Hail! draws heavily from the early ’80s, when post-punk and New Wave went kaleidoscoping out into directions both light and dark.
“I’ve been in bands and writing songs since I was 15,” says Sigil. “I’ve done punk, indie, and kind of doomy country, all kinds of different things. And I’ve always been a guitar player, but during the pandemic I started using Reason, which is a music program, to make dummy tracks for demos. As I got working with it, I realized the program is kind of an instrument in itself, because you can kinda do anything with it.
“I’ve always been at least partly a goth kid, like I was listening to Siouxsie and shit in high school,” Sigil continues. “It was a genre I hadn’t really touched before, but it lends itself to more of an electronic feel. I was at a point where I just wanted to do something on my own where I didn’t have to work around someone else.”
That goth inspiration is most palpably felt on Hot Hail!’s 2025 debut album, ALL THE BLOOD YOU WANTED, which revels in darkness and a kind of howling anguish. Sigil moans like a wounded animal as they work through the pain and horrors of modern existence. It’s enough to inspire whiplash when listened back-to-back with Sigil’s follow-up, 2026’s comparatively bright and energetic Hope in Hell.
“The first album was very darkwave-y, like very classically that, and I feel like I got sort of bored with it already,” says Sigil. “The second album is very synthpop; it’s still dealing with a lot of political themes and dark stuff, but it’s slipping it under the door in a pretty, pink envelope. … I was like, ‘If I have to write an entire album’s worth of really dark stuff about the rise of fascism, I’m going to fall the fuck apart.’ So, I wrote an entire album full of really poppy, synthy stuff about the rise of fascism, which is a little bit easier on the system.”
Hope in Hell mines that same time period of the early ’80s. But where ALL THE BLOOD YOU WANTED carried echoes of Ministry, The Birthday Party, and Soft Cell, Hope in Hell incorporates poppier New Wave innovations like New Romantic and sophisti-pop. The ’80s have long been fertile ground for reinterpretation and revivalism, but it’s fairly rare to hear touchstones like Spandau Ballet, Tears for Fears, and Simple Minds; Hope in Hell sounds like it could have fit in on record shelves right next to those artists, without a hint of pastiche or irony.
Sigil is quick to brush off praise for so uncannily nailing that sound.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic fan, and there are times when I do feel like I’m backing myself into a corner of writing a ‘Weird Al’-style parody of Depeche Mode,” says Sigil. “I’ll find myself saying, ‘OK, let’s ease off the gas pedal on the Depeche mobile, just a little bit.’ But I also just like what I like. … And at this point, unless you’re doing some kind of extremely experimental thing, and even then, we are a cocktail shaker of our influences.”
As the album title implies, though, we may have hope, even as we feel like we’re in hell. “Joy” seems to sum up what must have been going through Sigil’s mind as they were making this album, with Sigil singing, “I’m so tired of making all of this so miserable. I wish I could write something to make you smile.” With a galloping, New Order-esque bed of music, Sigil repeats again and again the importance of “holding on to joy.” On an album of Hot Hail! originals, Hope in Hell tellingly ends with a cover of “Something Good” by Paul Haig of post-punk stalwarts Josef K.
If Hot Hail! is currently trying to put a good face on things, it doesn’t seem destined to last, as Sigil tells me the next project will be a “dark concept album about gnosticism.” Hey, the way I see it, if someone must tell me about the ills of the world, the least they can do is make it sound as good as Hot Hail! does. I’ll gladly spend more time in that haunted discotheque.
Hot Hail! will play at Real Art Tacoma on Monday, September 28, with Blone Noble, Replicas, and Nite School DJ. All ages. Tickets and more info at realarttacoma.com.
