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Artist: Nicodemus Date Added: 11/08/06 (interview took place on 27/08/06) More Info: Nicodemus Official Website Interview by: Lou and Mark Written by: Lou “Hey Chris, can I get some man-chowder?” Chris Finster [guitarist] asks Chris Morris [bass, vocals and all-round Nicodemus mastermind] just before the recording cuts out at the end of the interview in the lobby of the Jurys Inn in the depths of Croydon. Those were the last words spoken in the interview, and a running joke with the band. Chris Finster, or simply referred to as ‘Finster’, comes across as the band’s joker , especially when he’s describing his ideal band - “when I was growing up one of my favourite instruments was the xylophone… it’s not very metal, don’t laugh at that. Next I’d probably have an accordion, I like accordions. My grandma plays a mean accordion… now to round the band out, you’ve pretty much got all the metal you could ever need from the accordion, we’re gonna go with Ronnie James Dio on vocals” and he seems even more pleased with his imaginary band when I point out that he needs to include a kazoo. Laughter breaks out around the table where Mark and I are sitting with Finster, Chris Morris, Andrew Greene [drums] and Erik Schibo (sp?) [keyboards] just before they’re due to head off to The Cartoon for their next gig. Dave [check surname] [guitarist] couldn’t join the band on this tour as his wife had just had a baby. Sitting in the lobby, Nicodemus are pretty relaxed and look, well, like rock stars. At numerous points during the interview they are greeted by school children who feel that they should know who these guys are. At one point Erik nips up to the hotel room to grab a bag of merchandise and tries to make use of another opportunity to promote the band. Unfortunately the kids’ teacher drags them away before Erik returns. As I mentioned, Nicodemus are playing at The Cartoon tonight and I think I’m the most excited person in the room… possibly the most excited person in Croydon… or even the world. I’ve been obsessed by their music since I first heard “Vanity Is A Virtue” over a year ago. People say that should never meet your heroes, but thankfully they can’t have been referring to Nicodemus. Not only are these guys capable of creating amazing music, but they’re also really nice blokes. This was made especially clear when, despite having a less then perfect tour up until now [they have been plagued by exploding PA’s and poor promotion], they couldn’t praise their fans highly enough. Chris Morris commented on the shows so far, “the tour has definitely been a test in character for all of us…. The people have been great though. The people have been fantastic. Basically, some shitty venues and some great people… I think that’s the best way to put it. Being here has been fun, I think everyone agrees with that. Hopefully the second leg [of the tour] will be better on all fronts - rather that just half, which is kinda what we‘ve had so far. “Over the 3 albums we’ve sold more in Europe and the UK than anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, we’re having trouble getting the word out to [UK] fans right now that we’re here… but part of that’s the promoters job… and we’ve had to deal with some assholes so far. Part of that is a loss of momentum because we really did our best for our second album [‘The Supernatural Omnibus’] and then we were in this sort of limbo between labels for a very long time and it even interrupted the recording of “Vanity…”. There was a period of time where we all wondered if that record was even gonna get done… In the States it’s shit. We probably only sold a few hundred [records] in the States to be honest and we’ve sold around a few thousand in Europe and in the UK.” He then goes on to comment on the differing attitudes between American and English fans when it comes to travelling to shows, “The weird thing is this, the fans that have made the effort to come and see us have been the best I’ve ever met, whether it be the guys who flew up from Germany or the guys we met in Stoke-On-Trent… they’ve all been fantastic. But, at the same time, we’ve noticed that it’s a bitch to get fans to travel… even though, by American standards, England’s fucking tiny as hell. Its nothing for us to be at home in Portland and drive 3 hours to see a show… it could be one band on a bill of five… but we’ll fucking do it. It’s no big deal. I’ve even taken short planes to go and see bands, and I’m not talking about going to see Iron Maiden doing their biggest ever show, or a festival…. I’m talking about a club or a theatre. It’s common place in the states to do that, but in England its not. That boggles my mind, but if that’s the way it is… that’s the way it is…. With that said, the fans that have made the effort are absolutely fantastic and loyal and awesome… and they spend money - which is cool!”. During this semi-rant I begin to feel more than a little guilty (I really should have gone to more shows on this tour) and extremely embarrassed about our Public Transport system, because if it were better, more people would go to more shows. Right? When it comes to the question of fan experiences of the weird variety, Finster is the one to answer and, yet again, he is on top form, “one wanted me to come meet his grandma… so we went to see the grandma and she actually had one of those [voice boxes - Chris ‘does’ the voice here!]…. That was probably the weirdest thing. That, and there was the gay hooker decapitation… but we’re not gonna get into that…”. Again, laughter spreads around the table and it’s a fair while before we’re all able to compose ourselves. I threaten to make “Gay Hooker Decapitation” the headline for this interview, thankfully I didn’t as I didn’t want to cause offence to any gay hookers… decapitated or otherwise. Going back to my earlier observation of the band looking like rock stars, Mark asks the band if they have rock ‘n’ roll lifestyles and I think he was a little disappointed when he realised that no TV sets will be flying out of the Jurys Inn’s windows tonight.
It’s at this point that we find out about Andrew’s other talent - Graphic Design. “Chris gives me a very general idea [for a t-shirt/CD cover design] and I do stuff with it. It does take up a lot of time, but I’m sitting at the computer for 2 or 3 hours a night anyway so I can work on it.” I found Andrew to be a man of few words, but this man can certainly drum (this was proved in The Cartoon’s less-than-brilliant conditions)! He is, however, quick to comment on the closing times of restaurants here. “You need to serve food later dammit!” he almost shouts, “We’re hungry after the show! The only thing that’s open late at night are the kebab houses and they’re fantastic and cheap.” Chris Morris gives us more of an idea of what life is like after a gig (after the all-important kebab obviously!), “The aftershow experiences on this tour have actually been more fun than the gig because Liquid Sky [the band’s touring partners, except for the Croydon show) have become really good friends of ours and we’ve had a lot of fun with them. That’s also when we’ve met a lot of fans and signed autographs and that kinda stuff”. Having never heard Nicodemus before, Mark was keen to find out what they sounded like and Chris was able to provide him with an explanation, “It’s progressive gothic metal - that’s the only way to describe it, it really is. It’s Dream Theater getting their ass kicked by Cradle of Filth… and then going shopping afterwards!” When asked about their personal influences a wide range of artists were mentioned. As soon as the question had been asked, Chris [Morris] jumps in first with “Simon LeBon [Duran Duran]… I usually hate metal vocalists, period”. He then lists an impressive bunch of bass players (including Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Gene Simmons, Michael Mannering and Billy Sheen) as his other main influences. Finster tells us that he likes Kerry King, Dave Mustaine, “the lead guitarist from Radiohead” and Yanni. The name Yanni sparks off the laughter again and Chris [Morris] informs us that he has “Live At The Acropolis” on his iPod. Andrew replies with “Oh gosh, Dream Theater… a little bit of Rush, but didn’t find Rush until later… unfortunately. Umm… and I grew up playing a lot of stuff that wasn’t very metal, so.. Y’know, kinda 80’s stuff” and Eric [keyboards] answers “I’m really new to my instrument, so..er…I’m influenced really by current people. I can’t remember all the names, but it’s mostly stuff like Nightwish, Dream Theatre. As far as my writing, and stuff like that though, my main influence is the people I surround myself with”.
We also discover that while Finster would like to be in a band with an accordion in it, Chris would like to work with… yes, you guessed it… Simon LeBon… “I would wanna work with Simon Lebon. I would wanna work with Roland Ozabal from Tears for Fears…. And I wanna work with Michael Mannering, the bass player I mentioned. I wouldn’t form a band with them either, I’d just wanna write with them. I really care more about writing.” Chris seems to get very excited when I mention that Tarja Turunen (sp?) may be free to work on a project at the moment. “Yes! I totally forgot! I’d work with Tarja from…well, ex Nightwish and Liv Kristine from Leave’s Eyes. I would fucking give my left nut to work with those bitches! Absolutely… I would just be floored if I ever got the chance to work with Liv or Tarja. I don’t know about Tarja now, as I’m kinda sticking with the Tuomas side of that argument because of what I’ve heard and the fact that I love Nightwish’s writing so much. I don’t know how they’ll [Nightwish] do now because when you change the lead singer it sucks. You don’t know who’s gonna be able to fill those shoes, but the writing stays the same, which is the most important thing.” During my numerous listens to their 2005 release “Vanity Is A Virtue”, I thought that if they ever wanted to, Nicodemus could quite successfully make music for films. We asked the band if there were any existing films that they would like to re-write the music for. Finster seemed extremely keen to work on ‘Tron’, while Chris said that he would love to re-write the soundtrack to ‘Underworld’. “I would like to re-write that score as it deserved better than that. Other than that I’ve never really looked at a film and thought I could do better. I’ll hear soundtracks that make me want to write for films in the future, but that’s not genre specific, that could be anything. Anything John Williams has done… the basic ‘Star Wars’, ‘Superman’ … ‘Highlander’ had a great soundtrack… and Queen did fantastic for ‘Flash Gordon’ as well. But I would not want to write a metal soundtrack for anything, I’d wanna do full orchestration.”
I am now extremely glad that I’ll be witnessing a Nicodemus gig tonight… and quite saddened at the idea that this will be my first and last Nico-gig. Instead of focusing on it too much, I get Chris talking about short films and music videos… “I honestly can’t think of any metal video that I really like. The videos fucking blow. I don’t like the way they’re edited, I don’t like the way they’re directed. When I think of the videos I love it’s all Duran Duran. I think Bjork does some pretty fantastic videos… I’m trying to rack my brain and think of one metal video that I actually like and I can’t think of one that entertains me. Even looking back to my childhood, and I used to stay up late to watch Headbangers Ball and MTV and every band I loved was on there…. And the music I still love… but the videos I love because of nostalgia, because I was a kid. I was 13 years old, what did I know? Now I can’t really watch them and enjoy them as videos. It’s not good film making, and to me, that’s what videos should be about. It’s short film making and no one really did that. I will say though, that I do like King Diamond’s video for “Welcome Home”. I’m a huge King Diamond fan and to this day I will sit down and watch that video.” Finster adds that Chris is working on something for a DVD release with the live footage from this tour and says “I don’t really know what sort of premise his cooking up [for the next video], but we’re using the same director.” Chris fills us in with “Its going to be another full-length conceptual piece, but not in the same vein [as “Next In Nocturne”]. it’s not going to be overly Goth and it’s not going to be black and white. It’s going to have a totally different look and a totally different feel. But, the same director and the same ambition are going to go into that one.” Keen to be on the Nicodemus DVD, I ask Erik if they’re going to be filming tonight. “Well I’ve got the camera and the microphone, so yeah. We’ll see what we can use”. I start practising my autograph for any of my soon-to-be fans that may see me on the DVD. But, before I could start setting up my fan club, I had to continue with the interview… and, quite importantly, I had to find out what the story was behind the video for “Next In Nocturne”. I’ve watched it many times and I’m still none-the-wiser. Luckily, Chris was able to clear things up… “It’s a conceptual video, its not just a bunch of guys hanging around playing with a handicam - which is good because there’s too much of that crap. Basically the storyline of the video is about a death-by-fetish party that the band’s throwing and there are girls who wish to commit suicide but have chosen to do it by being with me and have me off them basically. So, y’know, if they could chose their own fate, that would be it. It’s the ultimate in vanity… and it plays on a lot of the lyrics. The song’s not really about that, its just a cool fucked-up changing of what the song’s actually about. The song was actually written because at the time I noticed that once every couple of years, there were always mad nuts of fucked up, psychologically wrong women who enter my life.[laughs] It would happen in groups… there’d be a few of them, then they’d disappear, then there’d be a break, then I’d attract a few more into my life…. And I just kinda spun that into a gothic song… and, y’know, who’s next? Who’s gonna wanna be in my life next? …and how am I gonna wanna get rid of them?” So there you have it - the world of Nicodemus. Everything from man-chowder to shopping. Gay decapitated hookers to the revelation that Nicodemus are to just be a studio band from this point forth. I suppose that in this day and age bands do not necessarily need to tour the world to spread their music, when the Internet is more than capable of doing this for them. Many people are quick to point out how the Internet is harming the music industry (with the popularity of illegal downloading), maybe Nicodemus can prove themselves to be an example of how the Internet can really help a band’s career. Here’s looking forward to the new video, DVD and forthcoming albums…. |
