Utter Trash--Nocturnal Solace

Finding Peace in the Dark

An interview with Deth and Gollum of Nocturnal Solace

By Bob Ignizio

Deth (l) and Gollum (r) of Nocturnal Solace

Sometimes it can be tough having a vision. Deth (guitar) has been trying to realize his since at least 1989, when he founded the band Lost Soul. In the spring of 1998, Deth found the perfect co-conspirator in Gollum (vocals and keyboards). “That’s when the whole vision really came together", says Deth. “I spent years hearing you can’t put keyboards in metal, you can’t do this and that. Now we’ve got everything that I wanted.” The band was rechristened Nocturnal Solace after finding out that a Polish band was already using the name Lost Soul. Gollum says, “It fits the music well. That’s the one thing I hear from people. Everybody we knew thought the name was perfect.”

While Nocturnal Solace is indisputably a heavy metal band, Deth prefers not to worry about what specific sub-genre the band fits in. He says, “I think everything has become too separated. There are too many subgenres now. I always tell people we’re the bastard child of Cradle of Filth and Type O Negative. Toss in a little bit of Slayer and The Misfits, and that’s where I come from for the most part.” Gollum shares similar influences, but adds, “Joy Division is one of my favorite bands, even though they’re not metal. Our old keyboard player had more pop influences. Having the varied influences really helps as far as writing together. You get a lot of different flavors and mix ‘em together. We’re just trying to come up with something that’s our own.”

Numerous people have been in and out of the band since its earliest days, but the current line-up is rounded out with drummer Cyrus and new bass player Monica. Long time keyboard player The Underground Priest recently left the band on amicable terms, and Gollum switched from bass to keyboards. “Kind of like musical chairs there. We try to keep a full band together, but sometimes it seems like we change people more than we change our underwear.” jokes Gollum.

Since Gollum and Deth have been the only constants in the band for the past 6 years, it’s not surprising they’ve become the main songwriters in the band. Gollum says, “Jamming together for 6 years now, we have this strange connection. I don’t know what you’d call it. We just have an intuitive thing going. We don’t know that much theory, so we just communicate with each other in our own terms.” Deth says, “And the looks we give to each other when we are using the right terms are like, where did that come from? Are you speaking theory?”

Although Gollum and Deth split the music writing duties almost 50/50, when it comes to lyrics, Deth is the primary author. He says, “They can go all over the place. One thing I’ve always said is that music is too powerful to be taken lightly. I write about a lot of dark subject matter. I’m fascinated with serial killers, I’ve studied psychology and I write about that. But then we’ve got a song about the Vietnam War, one we wrote a couple days after September 11^th. I always write what the voices in my head tell me to write.”

As serious as much of their material is, Nocturnal Solace isn’t without a sense of humor. It’s just a little bit on the dark side. Deth says, “Our original drummer was a grindcore fan and really wanted to write the lyrics for this one song. So we’re in the studio, and all of a sudden he starts singing about digging up children in the cemetery. I was thinking this one is going in the garbage, but I finally read the lyrics. I was like, anybody who takes this seriously has problems, because this is hilarious.” The song, "Necropedophile", remains a live favorite.

“Grandma’s Dead”, another humorous number, originally came into existence in Deth’s 10^th grade English class. He says, “The most boring teacher ever gives us the assignment of writing a letter of condolence. He looks me dead in the eye and says, ‘And I don’t want to see ha ha Grandma’s dead.’ So I gave him the assignment and gave him the song as extra credit. Then somebody dug it out of my notebook and wrote the music for it. There’s the music you can tell we’re passionate about, and then there’s the music where we’re just having a blast.”

In 2001, Nocturnal Solace released their first CD, the four song ‘Lost Soul’. Of that release, Gollum says, “The CD was a rushed effort, and Deth was the only one in the band at the time with any studio experience. In my opinion, the biggest mistake you can make in recording is to say, ‘Yeah, that sounds good enough.’ It will sound good to you then because you’re ready to get out of there. But when you listen to it later, you realize it could have been much better.” The band plans to avoid those mistakes on their next studio effort. Gollum says, “Right now we’re slowly putting together our own studio. We don’t want to get all Axl Rose on everybody and take 8 years, but at the same time you want to do it right. That way we can put out something that we’re really proud of.”

While Nocturnal Solace takes their music quite seriously, when it comes to success, in Gollum and Deth’s minds, they’ve already achieved it. Gollum says, “I got in an argument with this guy at work because his idea of success is big money, the glam, the glitz. The way I see it, just playing one show on stage, which I did three years ago, was it. Everything since then is beyond what I had dreamed. Part of me wants to see how far we can take this, but if the band ended tomorrow I’d be proud of what we did. I don’t really want to be famous.”

Deth adds, “I reached my goal a long time ago. I think it was the fourth song I wrote. Somebody was reading the lyrics and said to me, ‘Wow, that made me look at the way I think about things.’ That was enough for me. I’ve got the mortgage, I’ve got the job that pays the mortgage. Music is what I do for fun. I feel like I can’t live without doing it, but I don’t want to have to worry about music paying the mortgage. I think that’s where a lot of bands compromise and lose it.”