Fourth in Line is a progressive rock/metal group from Falls Church, comprised of Andrew Hokaj (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Nik Hokaj (backing vocals, screams, keyboards), Zaeem Hasan Khan (lead guitar), Dave McAllister (drums), and Noah Saberhagen (bass).
They recently released an EP entitled “Sigma” (stylized Σ), which you can listen to on Bandcamp here, and read a review of by fellow Odyssey writer Jesse Harman here.
I wouldn’t consider myself a huge progressive rock fan and I think the album is fantastic. “Everything” and “Sigma” are probably my two favorite tracks. (Also, it was produced by Ernie Page III, who’s the drummer in my band, Notch Theory, which I will shamelessly self-promote here.)
I got the chance to sit down with lead guitarist Zaeem Hasan Khan to talk about the recording of the record and about the band generally.
Me: Hey Zaeem, thank you for agreeing to talk with me today.
Zaeem: Of course, man—glad to do it.
Alright, so how long have you guys been a band?
About four years now.
What bands would you say influence your music?
That’s tough ‘cause we all like different things. Nik is really into power metal. Dave likes progressive rock; Noah likes Djent. I like everything, so it’s hard to say one thing. Dream Theater, TesseracT; maybe bands like that.
How would you describe your songwriting process, whether lyrically or sonically?
It’s just kind of us venting about things we’re going through; events in our lives.
Do you all contribute to the songwriting process?
Yeah, we all write—at least, we all write different parts of different songs and we put it all together. It’s a pretty collaborative effort.
Tell me about ‘’Sigma." The album is fantastic.
(chuckles) Thank you!
Why did you guys call the album “Sigma?"
We called it “Sigma” because it’s kind of like a throwback to what we were originally called. We were called “Crew Sigma” before we changed our name. The symbol of Sigma is, like, the symbol of creativity, and we thought it was like the perfect symbol for our band. So we adopted it as the name for our first EP and also as like a band symbol.
How was the recording process of “Sigma?"
It was pretty rigorous. It was recorded and rerecorded several times. We originally recorded it by ourselves. It was done really badly. And then we stopped recording for a while—and then we got in touch with Ernie, who, basically, took us and, like, whipped us into an actual band [that’s] fit for recording. The whole recording process took like, six or seven days. We did drums, bass, vocals, and rhythm guitars in a span of, like, five days, and lead guitars in two days, and lead vocals in two days. So we recorded in a very short amount of time when we did the final part of it, but the whole recording process has probably gone on for, like, two years.
Which track was your favorite to record?
Ummm… ‘my favorite to record?' Wow. It’s a tossup between “Pure” and “Sigma”, because “Sigma” was kind of like, that first song we wrote and, like, performed together, and “Pure” was fun recording ‘cause the solo in it is pretty intense, so recording that solo was a lot of fun.
Which track was your least favorite to record?
Again it has to be ”Pure” [chuckle] or “Lost in Delusions,” mostly ‘cause they’re so technical I messed up so much that I had to redo parts so many times. But, in the end, I think it worked out.
What was the thought process/design behind the album cover?
Dave, Noah, and I were sitting around a table, trying to come up with different ideas for the album cover; Dave came up with the purple lines that are one the edges, and we knew that we needed a Sigma and we wanted it to be kind of simple. We just put a Sigma in a diamond and put the band name [on it]. Pretty much we voted on it, and it’s just the perfect cover for our first EP. We didn’t want anything too grand. We all thought it was perfectly minimalistic.
We had Mike [Thompson] make it. [A mutual friend of ours who has made several band logos, including Notch Theory’s.] We gave Mike the design. He actually took a couple artistic liberties ‘cause inside the Sigma, it was supposed to be vines, but he turned it into, like, metallic water which just looks fantastic. So he just took his own interpretation of it.
Do you feel like there’s a theme or a meaning to the EP, sonically or lyrically? If so, what is it?
Well, kind of. We kind of wrote it like our journey through high school and everything, and lyrically, it’s just how we felt going through, like, events and different parts of high school. “Take a Bow” was written kind of for all the people who were too stressed out about high school and they were, like, working really hard to get into college that they didn’t take time out to have fun during high school. So our whole album is kind of, like, ‘let’s write something that we’ve gone through.' So it’s like [our] experience.
What image do you hope/want do you want your music to create? Like a song like”Sigma," that doesn’t have lyrics; what image do you want in the listener’s head?
To be completely honest, when we write music, we don’t really think about what other people will be thinking about when [they] listen to it. We pretty much have just written our music because we enjoy what we’ve written. So for us, we write something that, for us, moves us; like the part in “Sigma," when the clean guitars are playing, right before everything just piles on—when I’m listening to that part of the song, it’s very easy to close your eyes and just, like, think—not even think, just get lost in music. So, we just write what we think we enjoy, and luckily, other people have found it enjoyable as well.
