Alternative rockers Hurt have made the transition from record label mainstay to independent artists for a while now. Goodbye to the Machine, their first album since parting ways with Capitol Records, was released back in April, and also represents a departure from the style they established for themselves on their albums Vol. I and Vol. II.

Paul Spatola (guitar, keyboards, background vocals) said that he and band mates J. Loren (vocals, violin, guitar), Rek Mohr (bass) and Louie Sciancalepore (drums, percussion) only had 30 days in the studio to record Machine and get it out there. That, and Mohr and Sciancalepore were new to the band for their latest album, Spatola adding that the drummer was brought on board with less than a week prep time before they recorded.

“He’s a buddy of mine from 20 years ago, and didn’t know he was going to be on the record until six days before we were recording,” Spatola said.

If that wasn’t a big enough change, the band financed the album themselves, recorded on analog tape and had to go through a strict deadline process to meet their new distribution deal with A2M Distribution and Amusement Recordings.

That was a long way from having a label’s support staff and getting the chance to rework songs “10 times” like before with Capitol, Spatola said. But it’s an experience the keyboardist said he’d “love” to get to do again.

“We have to grow a little bit, take a little bit of risk, so we won’t be doing the same thing over and over again and get bored. If we start getting bored, then we’re not going to have a good band,” he added.

While Hurt created a desolate ambiance for much of Vol. I and Vol. II, the sound of Machine makes even drug-related tunes like “Pills,” or a familiar woman-problems track like “Got Jealous,” have a brighter sound accompanying the grinding guitar riffs. “All our earlier stuff, it’s pretty dark. But we have lighter stuff on the other records too. It’s not as dark and depressing as the other records,” Spatola said.

“With ‘Pills,’ we were writing it, and it was acoustic when we wrote it, and it didn’t sound like what it does now. But the lyrics are probably are some of the most depressing, so the lyrics, the irony, ... it’s how you’re supposed to feel, the repetitiveness of taking the pills.”

Hurt’s keyboardist and guitarist spent a little more time with CrankIt Entertainment and gave a little more insight into the writing process of the latest album, and talked about what the band enjoys doing with their downtime.

CrankIt Entertainment: Can you describe the process of getting Machine written and recorded compared to your earlier tunes?

Paul Spatola: With the first two records, J. wrote the bulk of the material. And that was all written years ago. And we don’t want to be all doom and gloom and depressing all the time, because life ain’t that bad. Rick and I pretty much wrote all the music, and J. wrote all the lyrics, with the exception of a few songs. In the past, we did a lot of strings, and layering in all the songs. On this one, we went with more of a raw kind of sound.

CrankIt: Though a lot of Goodbye to the Machine has a brighter sound, we’re reminded that ‘we’re all gonna die’ at the very end of the album.

Spatola: As depressing as it is, it’s a joke. We’re not jut a bunch of depressed people walking around, saying life sucks. So we wrote the song, and put it on the record, and people will listen to it afterwards. It’s something that’s a little different than we’ve done, so we figured why not? We had all the engineers, all the other guys, had them singing around like when you’re drinking. I think we did one or two takes for it, and had them sing along. It was fun, a good way to end the session, as opposed to someone saying ‘Oh, we didn’t get to work on this.’ I don’t know that we’ll be writing any joke songs again, though.

CrankIt: What’s something crazy that’s happened out on the road lately?

Spatola: I’m actually looking for disturbing things to happen to us. We go to haunted places every day, looking for something. That’s what we try to do every day. I have not yet seen a ghost, although I’ve been to some really creepy places. We haven’t been out that long on this (touring) run, so nothing too crazy has happened. We’ve got another two months to go on this one. We’re really relaxed during the day, so nothing really crazy happens anyway. We’re not a crazy party band, we’re just really concentrating on playing music.

To catch up with the band, head on over to their MySpace at www.myspace.com/hurt, to check out all of the tracks off Machine and their other releases as well. As always, keep checking back with CrankIt Entertainment and crankitmag.com every month for the latest on acts you need to hit up when you get the chance!