Hot Lava Monster

What are you doing with your summer vacation, reader? Whatever it is, Hot Lava Monster’s having a better one than yours.

Come August, the band will be trekking to Weed, Calif. — huh huh, weed — to record at RadioStar Studios with noted engineer and producer Sylvia Massy.

“I had been following her for a while,” says Hot Lava Monster guitarist Mike Schaming. “She liked what we had on MySpace and responded almost immediately. Kind of freaky how quickly it all came together. But she seemed really excited about the band and she has a cool studio. We’re looking forward to it.

Why is this awesome, you ask? Well, Massy’s best known for her work with Tool; she engineered and produced the band’s seminal debut Undertow. She’s also worked on Grammy-winning records with Rick Rubin (she engineered Johnny Cash’s Unchained), and she’s worked with rock ‘n’ roll heavyweights System of a Down, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Slayer.

The session, unfortunately, is for demo purposes only, and the band has no immediate plans to release the recordings.

“We’ve been writing a lot over the past year or so and I think we just want to get back into the studio for a bit and get a fresh perspective on things. Maybe [the demos] will end up part of something down the line. We haven’t decided anything right now.”

Drag. Then again, perhaps you, reader, can talk the quartet into it: The band plays tonight at the Five Points After Five concert series. Sequoyah Prep School opens. It’s Hot Lava Monster’s last local show until the fall; so catch ‘em now — for free — before they head off for sunny California.