Flying across the world and then driving hours into the desert to shoot a death-defying music video is hardly the easiest way to promote your new band. But taking the easy route was never an option for the electronic-punk duo House of Protection.
In April 2024, the Los Angeles outfit — made up of former Fever 333 members Stephen Harrison and Aric Improta — flew 8,000 miles to Ahmedabad, India, to film the wild video for “Pulling Teeth,” from their debut EP GALORE. The hair-raising visual shows the band performing the anthemic, genre-bending song at the bottom of a circular “well-of-death” motordrome, while stunt drivers dangerously speed around them on motorcycles and in cars.
“The craziest part was when those doors shut and you realize that there’s no way out,” Improta reflects with a nervous laugh. “The adrenaline from that first pass, when the motorcycles went around us, almost felt like the biggest show we’ve ever played — where you’re just like, Fuck, alright, this is it, let’s just make sure that we do a good job on this take. Because you don’t know how many chances you’re going to get.”
House of Protection are clearly committed to taking full advantage of any opportunity, and their invigorated approach has already attracted a growing fan-base and notable collaborators, including former Bring Me the Horizon member Jordan Fish, who produced GALORE.
The duo played their first live shows last fall (a pair of sold-out one-offs in L.A. and London) and are gearing up for even greater expansion in 2025 (including gigs supporting Bad Omens and Poppy, on the former’s ‘goodbye, friend’ Australian run in January). House of Protection has been nothing short of a creative rebirth for both Harrison and Improta — but the path to get there wasn’t without its challenges.
Anthony Tran
“We just hit a point where we knew we wanted to do our own thing,” says Improta matter-of-factly. “It wasn’t really chaotic… It was this natural progression of wanting to capture a certain sound that we felt like we had to do elsewhere.” He also adds that the genesis of House of Protection has felt like a “relief,” because the duo are now free from the expectations that surrounded their previous band.
House of Protection’s origin story begins in 2022, when the musicians left the L.A. rap-metal trio Fever 333. Despite the growing success of that outfit, which they co-founded with Jason Aalon Butler in 2017, vocalist-guitarist Harrison and vocalist-drummer Improta were feeling creatively limited — and needed a hard reset to reconnect with the childlike wonder they experienced during their early years of musical discovery.
Thanks to this newfound artistic freedom, House of Protection became a blank canvas to create what-ever they wanted. For inspiration, they looked to experimental-leaning alt icons, including the Smashing Pumpkins, the Prodigy, Massive Attack, Alice Glass and others. They also leaned on each other for support.
“It feels good that [this band] is just me and Aric, someone who I love and trust a lot,” Harrison notes. “If there are things I don’t understand or things that I don’t feel that I can do myself, I know [Aric can] do it.”
“And vice versa,” Improta chimes in. “We don’t ever feel like we’re obligated to have a breakdown in a song or … bring back something from our past records. Everything we’re doing for this project is for the first time, and that aspect opens a lot of doors.”
Speaking of firsts, GALORE marks the first time either Improta or Harrison have taken on the role of lead vocalist, even in their previous projects. (Beyond Fever 333, Harrison was a member of the Chariot, while Improta still performs in Night Verses). Though the process was initially daunting, the trust the duo had built together over the years made the task at hand all the more possible. They also had the help of long-time friend and producer extraordinaire Jordan Fish to help solidify their sonic vision.
“Jordan’s really smart with that kind of stuff,” says Harrison of Fish’s skillful approach to working with vocalists. “He really helped me figure out my range, what to do and what not to do. He’d say, ‘You can sing, but you just need to know your lane.’”
Harrison and Improta know that their voices are evolving every day, but they’re both deeply proud of the progress they’ve made so far — a sentiment that is reflected in the lyrics of “Being One”: “Thought I started the journey just to feel out a vibe/Tried to learn to be perfect but I don’t have the time/String together some words, just some shit on my mind.”
“[That song] is our singing journey,” Harrison states. “We didn’t have the time to learn to be perfect, we just had to find our voices and kind of fall in love with them.”
House of Protection is all about fearless creativity and turning challenges into opportunities. This mindset is present all throughout GALORE, especially on the driving, pulsating “It’s Supposed to Hurt,” which was co-written with Night Verses guitarist Nick DePirro (who also served as assistant engineer on the record and contributed guitar to “Being One”).
The song was the first they wrote as House of Protection, and it’s one of Improta’s personal favorites. “We knew that if we were going to do this the right way, then there would be obstacles that we would run into,” he says, reflecting on its message. “But [ultimately] we just have to deal with them head-on.”
Once the duo found their footing, Improta describes the creation of GALORE as the “fastest writing session” of his career. “We were all shocked at how natural things came about between us,” he says of the sessions with Harrison, Fish and DePirro. “It was the four of us in an Airbnb for five days, and other than ‘It’s Supposed to Hurt,’ the rest of the EP got written in those five days.” Their laser-focused approach resulted in GALORE’s six tracks of highly frenetic ’90s rave and electronic-tinged punk anthems that beam with unfiltered, defiant and youthful vitality.
This unrestrained freedom of expression is central to House of Protection’s art and performances. According to Improta, it’s a state that can only be achieved by “surrendering to impulse.” He traces that primal creative urge back to his childhood, when he first saw a live video of post-hardcore titans At the Drive-In during their infamous 2001 appearance at the Big Day Out Festival in Australia.
“Within five seconds, I was like, That’s how I want to play music,” he remembers. “They had an inter-view where they said, ‘When you get onstage, just act like you’re in your room and no one’s watching.’ And I swear to God, the minute I heard them say that I was like, That’s the agenda then.”
Likewise, Harrison’s own self-described “musical awakening” also stretches back to his youth, when he discovered punk rock and heavy music in the sixth grade. “That’s when I was like, OK, I want to do this.” And after receiving a guitar from his sister for Christmas, his dreams would soon become a reality.
Now, years later, Harrison and Improta are living their dreams to the fullest. And with House of Protection, the pair aren’t setting any limits on their imagination. “We don’t want any sort of walls or barriers,” says Harrison. “We want [this band] to be as authentically everything as possible.”
He adds that their all-inclusive stance also extends to the environment they want to create for their fans. “What we all have in common is that we still have this childlike stoke about things and surrendering to impulse,” he continues, “and not just in how you want to participate in the show, physically, but also in your own self-expression. However this band makes you feel, just make it your own.”