Photo Credit: Andrew Vaughan
THE VIDEO INTERVIEW BELOW WAS DONE AFTER I TOOK TOO LONG TO TRANSCRIBE THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW FOR THIS SITE. SO WE RE-DID IT VIA ZOOM BUT INCORPORATED SOME OF THE FOOTAGE AND PHOTOS FROM THAT INTERVIEW.
THE TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEW BELOW WAS DONE IN BRISBANE, AT THE BRIGHTSIDE, BEFORE THEY OPENED FOR DAYS LIKE THESE. Note: It does not have names as it was hectic and I didn’t keep track of who said what – Sorry.
HOW ARE YOU GUYS GOING?
– Good. Music’s good. Work sucks. But we get to cap off our week by playing cool shows like tonight.
– I’m feeling good. Feeling excited to play tonight.
– Feeling nervous.
– Yeah I’m feeling a little bit nervous but excited to play a show tonight.
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HOW ARE YOU GUYS FEELING ABOUT THE SHOW TONIGHT?
– Nervous.
– Yeah you could say there’s a nervous light… *band groans* (Nervous Light are a band playing the gig tonight)
– Nah, definitely feeling nervous but I think we all naturally sort feel that way before we play a show. Before we played the Tivoli show with Deadlights, during the day we were amped up but just before the show we started getting all “wooo we’re playing on a big stage with lots of people”.
– There were a variety of different poos that day.
– 5 minutes before we got on stage I took about 5 wee breaks, I’m not even kidding you.
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WHO IS DEADNERVE? GIVE ME A RUN DOWN.
– Deadnerve started off, so we all know each other from High School.
It was on the tail-end of High School. We were playing in 2 separate bands, a rock band and a metal band. We’ve known each other for a long time, all of us and near the end of High School we decided to get together and play some music. It was a lot different to what we’re writing now but it was more alternative.
– It was Deftones-worship.
– But it wasn’t as good.
– Shit Deftones covers.
– We put out an EP in 2019.
– THAT FLOPPED.
– This is the part where the boys don’t give themselves enough credit. They wrote, recorded and released a full EP. They did everything themselves. They call it a flop but I think it’s actually pretty groovy because the EP is not bad quality for 4 cobbers giving it a go.
– We would just get into the room and write tunes live, just play together and write songs. Now we’ve refund that process and write songs together.
– The boys were playing some shows around the south east area of Queensland. Between 2017 & 2019, they were doing their own thing and I was working on my own band in NSW. Then I wrapped up down there. They were doing their own thing. I came to Brisbane from NSW and I had always known we were going to link up as a band, it was just a matter of time. So I kept jokingly saying to Oliver, let me join Deadnerve. I kept hassling him. Eventually these guys let me come to a recording session and were like okay just lay down some vocals and see how it sounds. That was the demo’s for Iceman, which sounds relatively different to what it does now. At that point we all realised the sound worked and we all glued together because we had know each other for a while. That’s when I jumped in Deadnerve and that’s who Deadnerve is today.
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ARE THERE ANY TRACKS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY LOOKING FORWARD TO TONIGHT?
– Forgetting.
– Yeah unreleased stuff apparently.
– Yeah probably the unreleased stuff. We’re doing a cover. I’m keen to play Iceman and the new song. I’m keen to see everyone’s reaction to the song live is, see what people think and see if the audience engage with it, fingers crossed.
*Rest of the band voted Iceman*
HOW HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN AROUND THE RELEASE OF YOUR MUSIC, FOR YOU GUYS?
– Personally, I’m going to take over this question again, sorry guys. I’m stoked with it. Honestly, as long as it’s doing better than last release, that’s progress for me. That’s all that matters to me. So to me that’s massive.
– I think something that I’d like to add is, recently being a band that plays hardcore-style music, you have to be happy with the fans and listeners that you do have. Because you have to understand that not everyone is going to listen to a song like that and go “oh man”. Some are going to go “what the fuck”. That’s just the reality and that’s okay.
– Yeah honestly if there’s anyone that reads this and has a negative opinion on our songs please let me know. Because I like the negative more because it’s just constructive criticism.
– And it makes him scream harder.
– And cry harder.
– Spit did really well, better than I thought it would do. And Iceman has gradually been getting 100 listeners a day so we’re hoping it hits that 1k mark in the next week or 2 and I’d be proud if it hit 5k listens. I’d probably shed a tear.
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WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR THE ARTWORK COME FROM?
– We gotta give a shout out to Andrew Vaughan. We will usually write a song and have a way we want it to look. And we’ll go to Andrew and we’ll say, Iceman for example, hey we want it to have a cold vibe to it, we want it to have blues and just a more cooler feel to it. In terms of how you feel & how you’re watching it. We usually go to Andrew with an idea.
– And he’ll elaborate on it big time for us.
– Andrew will basically do whatever after we say like one keyword and we’ll say that looks cool.
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WHAT IS THE RECORDING PROCESS?
– We’ll go meet up with Dan. Usually it’s Dan, Jamie & I. Alex comes in towards the end of songs but lately he’s been a part of a lot it. I’ll sit there and play anything until somebody goes THAT’S COOl. Then you put some drums to it etc. if we can’t write a song within a day we usually don’t keep the song.
– Yeah we try to grind through it as quickly as possible. Otherwise it gets stale really quickly.
– Yeah it just makes us hate it.
– Once they have the instruments done, they’ll send a demo through to me, I’ll listen to it and get an idea on how the song makes me feel and how I want the song to feel. First listen will usually be, this is the themes I want in it and the topic I want it to be about. Then I’ll flesh out 2 pages of lyrics and then narrow it down to the song. I’ll usually go to Dan’s or Oliver’s house to record. Then once it’s done we listen to it back. Some songs like Iceman, we spent months finishing the vocals on that just because we kept being like this sounds sick, listen again a couple of months later and oh this isn’t as sick. Usually it’s a process of instruments done then get the vocals done.
– Back in the old days, on the odd occasion I’d have a drum beat or a rhythm or a feel in my head and I’d get in the jam room with Jamie & Oliver. We’d start with the feel and Oliver & Jamie would add the colour.
– We wrote the first half of spit in the jam room then we took it in, demoed it and got it sounding how it ended up.
– At the time I was listening to a bit of Arctic Monkeys and there was a song where there were quite a bit fo snare and hat crossovers and that’s how that drum beat intro came to life. I came up with my own thing and the boys built on it.
WHAT IS NEXT? ANYTHING EXCITING COME UP?
– We got songs. We got beats. We been cookin’
– We’ve been patiently waiting in the beat laboratory. We’ve basically got an EP. It’s not recorded or anything but we’ve got an EP’s worth of songs done that we’re still putting those final touches on before we go in to record it and get it done. But yeah the plan is new songs and possibly a 4/5-track EP coming up. We’re hoping to release it by the end of the year or early next year. But more music by the end, that’s for sure.
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RANDOM QUESTIONS:
FAVE SNACK?
– I love any form of lollies, chips or anything that’s bad for my cholesterol and health.
– You suck on those minties like a 4 years old.
– There’s never been a jam where you haven’t had a bag of Allens.
– It’s true.
– I like oat flakes in a bowl. Dry.
– I don’t really do snacks, I just do big meals. But if I was to have a snack it would be toast of some description.
– Beers.
– Beers and a parmi at the pub.
– I love Ben & Jerry’s and peanut butter toast.
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IF I SAID NEW ZEALAND TO YOU, WHAT IS THE FIRST THING THAT POPS INTO YOUR HEAD?
– I want to visit there.
– Lord of the Rings
– Skiing & Snow Boarding.
– We definitely want to come to New Zealand, do some skiing and play some shows.
– There’s a deathcore band from New Zealand, I can’t remember what their called, but their hectic. Their vocalist is wild and I really want to play a show with them.
I’m trying to figure out who you’re talking about .
– It starts with a ‘D’
Depths?
– YES! Their fucking sick. If you know them tell them there’s as band from Brisbane that they don’t know about, that they won’t be interested in playing a show with but we’d like to play a show with them.
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IF YOU COULD MAKE UP A RUMOUR ABOUT YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
– All 5 of us wished that we had bigger dicks.
– No see, I’d want a rumour to go around that I have a small dick, then there’s no expectations.
– I want someone to start a rumour about me that I have a dick wider than it is long.
– I want a rumour to start that I am the world record holder for the biggest flat E chord.
– To answer this question seriously though, it would be that I could do 64 back flips in 1 jump. Because imagine if you could convince people of that. Everyone would be like you have to do it and you’d be like I can’t. Then they’d say you can’t do it and you’d be like, I can but I just don’t want too.
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DOODLE GAME
“I can not draw for shit”
“Are we playing Pictionary?”
Draw a representation of Deadnerve.
