HLAH

Head like a Hole
Booga Beazley in character at the video shoot for Glory Glory.
Background information
Origin	Wellington, New Zealand
Genres	Alternative rock, industrial metal
Years active	1992–2000, 2009–present
Labels	Wildside Records
Associated acts	Shihad
Members	Booga Beazley Nigel Regan Michael Franklin-Browne Andrew Ashton Simon Nicholls
Past members	Mark Hamill Tom Watson Andrew Durno

HLAH (Head Like a Hole) is a rock band from Wellington, New Zealand. The group is named after the Nine Inch Nails song of the same name.

HLAH formed in Wellington, originally comprising Nigel Regan, Mark Hamill, Booga Beazley and Andrew Durno. Previous to HLAH forming Regan and Hamill played in a covers band playing songs by artists such as early Masters of Reality, Black Sabbath, Faith No More, Nirvana, Butthole Surfers, Mudhoney and Fugazi. "It wasn't a cover band as such that we played gigs and got paid, more an excuse to get together jam and bash out songs we could play" says Regan.

At the end of 1990 Beazley returned to Wellington from art school in Auckland and was roped in as singer (even though he had never sung or been in a band in his life), as Regan and Hamill's latest singer and bass player had left and they wished to form an original band. The three of them went to their practice space at the 'Hopper Street Warehouse' in Wellington and after blasting though a rendition of "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath to see if Beazley could actually sing, the decision was made and the band was born, minus a name and a bass player which was soon rectified by the addition of Andrew 'Tall' Durno who Hamill had met at a party and invited along to a practice.

Not long after the band was fully formed, for a bottle of Whiskey and $100, they recorded their first self-penned songs on an 8 track at (now defunct) Tongue studios in Wellington above the pool hall on Manners Street. This became their first self-released cassette titled Shitnoise. Only 100 copies of this were made and these are now sought after.

Around this time Head Like a Hole shared a run down practice room at the old Empire Spice warehouse on Hopper Street with local act Shihad. After an off the cuff remark from Jon Toogood that HLAH should support Shihad on their up-and-coming Devolve tour Regan rang Gerald Dwyer (Shihad's then manager) and said "Hi, I'm Nigel from Head Like a Hole and we're coming on tour with Shihad" to which Dwyer replied "Is that right?". Toogood had neglected to actually inform Dwyer of this. However, seeing the benefits in it, Dwyer stopped in to see HLAH playing upstairs at the Empire Warehouse and the idea was put into play, and it was on this tour that Regan for lack of a suitable 'rock wardrobe' hit upon the idea of playing naked.