The Hoff Gets Heavy on New Metal Album

Dave of all trades

David Hasselhoff is probably best known to American audiences as Michael Knight in Knight Rider or Mitch Buchannan in the 90’s bro-hit Baywatch. Younger Amerian audiences may have also gotten to know him as a judge on America’s Got Talent from 2006 - 2009, but to European audiences, particularly those in Germany and Switzerland, he is something of a rock and roll sensation. The Hoff’s illustrious musical career began in 1983 with the release of a single titled “I Get The Message”, this was followed by 1985’s Night Rocker a full-length album that went #1 in Austria. Hasselhoff would go on to release another 13 studio albums, 12 compilations, and 47 singles, most of which would see little limelight stateside but nearly every single one would chart in Austria, Switzerland, or Germany.

Crooner

If you’ve never heard a Hasselhoff track and you are having trouble imagining what that might sound like, he is generally very well nestled in a soft-rock, pop-rock type of space, and what’s even more shocking? He’s pretty good! The Hoff’s catalog fits well beside bands like Boney M, Men Without Hats, Modern Talking, and Eric Carmen (though his taste in politics is slightly better). Hasselhoff's voice embodies the rich timber characteristic of many barrel-chested male vocalists of the '80s. You can almost hear the unbuttoned shirt and chest hair radiating through on each track. The fact of the matter is, he has it pretty good as an 80’s soft rocker - it kinda suits him - but apparently, it isn’t enough for a guy who’s driven a talking car onto a speeding semi.

A new direction

On October 28th 2020, Hasselhoff announced in a video that, together with Austrian duo CueStack, he had been working on a hardcore heavy metal project. CueStack themselves have released 4 singles of absolutely scathing electronic metal that could find comparison at times to California-based Korn, or industrial metal veterans like Ministry. But since 2018, The Hoff and CueStack have been secretly working on a track called “Through the Night”, upon its release it will be accompanied by a high-concept music video and a documentary about its creation.

In the announcement it was revealed that the 3 of them had funded the entire project themselves up until this point - they claim that this allowed them to make the track on their own terms without involvement from outside voices. It also means that they've spent alot of money on it, and in the video, they reveal that they are turning to Kickstarter to crowdfund the remainder of the project.

Brass-tacks

In the video it's pretty clear that the song has already been recorded, in fact, we even get to hear little snippets of it and frankly, it doesn’t sound terrible. What they really need the Kickstarter for is to fund the music video and the documentary, so just how much stands between the world and a David Hasselhoff metal track? Apparently $7,047.

After claiming in 2016 that he was effectively broke, with just $4,000 in his bank account, it is probably a sizable obstacle, lucky for them, as I’m writing this, the Kickstarter has already raised $17,965.

So as it turns out we probably WILL be seeing “Through the Night” sometime next year. Will it be worth the wait? Will it be a surprise hit? Will it go quietly into the night, right beside Garth Brook’s Chris Gaines? I feel like the latter is probably going to be the outcome but here I sit...ready to be surprised.

You can check out a playlist of The Hoff's hits here

And you can see the official video announcement by David Hasselhoff and CueStack for "Through the Night" here

Check out the Kickstarter campaign here