Utter Trash--Nucleon

Crush, Kill, Destroy

An interview with Paul Resnick of Nucleon

By Bob Ignizio

Nucleon l to r: Rich Troha, Danny Cohen, and Paul Resnick

Nucleon (Paul Resnick – vocals, synth bass and space sounds, Rich Troha on guitar and effects and Danny Cohen on drums) begins every performance by stating that their audience will be destroyed. Due to a serious string of bad luck, however, Nucleon itself came close to destruction. “The Euclid Tavern was our home away from home. We ruled that club. When that closed, that kind of dropped the bottom out for the group. Then we got all our equipment stolen, and our old drummer broke his back,” says Paul. “Those things put us on hiatus for a little bit, but we’re coming back now.” On the night I spoke with Paul, Nucleon had just made their return official with a performance at the Cleveland Agora Ballroom.

The band, which started its sonic assault on Cleveland area music fans in July of 1995, plays a style that Paul describes as “heavy space rock.” “We’re definitely coming from the space rock, stoner rock community. We like to mix in the Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, and old Black Sabbath sound with the Hawkwind stuff,” says Paul. Having such an unusual sound can make finding appropriate gigs a bit tougher, but on the plus side the band is more likely to stand out as something different. “Everybody who sees us likes us, but as far as getting gigs it is a little more difficult because we don’t fit into any predefined niche. We still play all the space rock festivals like Strange Daze, but whenever we play live in town we always seem to be lumped in with a lot of metal bands,” says Paul.

The annual Strange Daze festival, which unfortunately did not take place this year, has allowed Nucleon to play with Hawkwind and its various spin-off projects, as well as other like minded bands from around the world. “Going up on stage and talking to all the Hawkwind guys and sharing the stage with those guys was incredible. Dave Brock is my hero,” says Paul. In fact, before Nucleon Paul was in a band called Space Core which arguably sounded more like classic Hawkwind than anything that venerable English band has released in years.

Aside from being influenced by other musicians, Paul also draws inspiration from film. In particular, the sort of foreign art film that features guys in rubber suits smashing model cities while hundreds of extras run screaming. “Kaiju rules. All those Japanese monster movies, I’ve got almost all of them. In fact we watched ‘Gamera vs. Gyaos’ last night. The 1961 version. I was up til 3:00 last night watching Gamera fight the evil pterodactyl monster,” says Paul. The influence comes through strongest on the song “50,000 Feet Tall” which uses Akira Ifukube’s signature music for Godzilla as its intro. While just hearing that classic piece of film music is enough to put a smile on this writer’s face, the rest of the song kicks major ass as well.

Prior to their string of bad luck, Nucleon recorded their debut CD, ‘Hyper Emitter’, for local label Manic Moon Records. “It’s distributed through mail order and through our website. It’s out there, we get a lot of college airplay including out of state and overseas. We’ve been on 92.3 as well,” says Paul. The band is also working on new material. “I’m the main writer currently. Rich contributes, and now that Danny’s in the band he’s starting to contribute. The song “The First Destroyers” that we played tonight, that was a triple bill of writing on that one,” says Paul.

As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Having survived more bad karma in so short a time than any band should have to, these guys ought to be strong indeed. With their problems now behind them, Nucleon is ready to resume their path of destruction once again. You have been warned.