Interview with the Nerve Agents by Fat bastard Andy courtesey of insound.com The first Nerve Agents record seemed to live in the shadow of Redemption 87, but with Days of the White Owl you guys have really created an identity of your own. You seem to be going in a different direction. Was this a conscious decision, getting away from that other style, or was it just a natural progression? Eric: Well I guess on that whole Redemption thing, we kind of came in on the coattails of Redemption 87 and Model American, and our styles were actually kind of similar in the first place. So, we were just doing what we knew how to do. If Redemption would have went the way I originally wanted it to be, this is how it would have sounded. So, basically the chemistry in the band, gelling together, getting Dante, adding Zac, getting rid of Kevin, everything came into a whole different light, and everybody kind of gelled together with all the different influences and stuff like that…basically that’s what you get with Days of the White Owl. That’s what we are pretty much about. It wasn’t anything we were trying to do I don’t think. We set out to be in a hardcore punk band rooted earlier, with the faster stuff, stuff that we all really wanted to play. That’s what we started out as, and that is what we are doing now…it’s just kind of getting dark, and that’s his fault [points to Dante]. Yea, my next question was that the atmosphere is darker, has your outlook changed at all? Eric: I tell you what, the lyrics…the way that I’ve always written stuff is very positive, and the whole song would be positive. This is the reason why you need positive: you have to have a negative to have a positive. Now you’re seeing a lot of the negative stuff with sometimes the positive in there. Some of the stuff is more like questions. Like with “Days of the White Owl,” where do we go now? We’re fucking everything up. There’s going to be nowhere to go. We’re just going to pigeonhole ourselves…things sometimes just need to be thrown out there, and I didn’t do a lot of that with other bands. But I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just kind of doing whatever I’m telling myself to do. Andy: And I play drums. Okay, and Andy plays drums. The song Days of the White Owl, I think it brilliantly puts into words how a lot of people feel about corporate infestation, and the fact that the biggest problem is that there’s this enemy, but it’s not something like animal exploitation or racism where it’s a separate, tangible enemy. It surrounds us, and it’s everywhere. You can’t get away from it, and it’s so easily digestible. My question is do you have any suggestions of combating it before we lose any sense of culture or identity? Eric: That’s the question in the song. I have no idea. It just sucks. It’s a freaky thing, yet no matter what, you’re touching it. You can’t…I can’t even use an analogy for it, but it’s just like you’ve always got your hands stuck in it somewhere. Whether it be in a small way or a big way or whatever. You’re basically just fucked by it. Dante: There has to be like a huge nuclear war, and the whole human race will be completely wiped off the Earth, and then the Earth could heal for a thousand years, and we could start all over again…some other creature evolving out of the ocean. Eric: That’s how we got dark…to answer the other question…Dante. [Inside jokes fly back and forth] I like how this record really brings back the aura and the sound of earlier punk rock, like you said before, as opposed to traditional hardcore. However, the music feels like it’s reaching its potential, with the things you can now do in the studio, getting the sounds you want. Therefore, now that you’ve done a really good job here, almost perfecting this type of music, where do you see yourselves going? Do you move on? Eric: You know what? This record is really good. I’m gonna be really freaked out trying to do something…you always want to do better than the last album you did. I was already worried about doing better than the EP, and then we did this, which totally blows the EP out of the water. So there’s no real direction. We’re just gonna keep on writing. Tim: Yea, we’re definitely growing. You’ve gotta grow to make things better. Like Minor Threat. They did the first album, and then they did Out of Step. That’s growing, and it’s still great. Kind of like that. Tinker on it, but keep it based in that… Eric: One thing about that record, Days of the White Owl, that we did a lot of is we’d get stuck in a song-writing avenue, and sometimes I would be like, “Well let’s write something fast.” Because we were writing all these crazy kind of different things. So we just try to balance it out, and keep that whole song writing process balanced. I mean sometimes we go way out there [pats Dante on the shoulder] and sometimes we’ll be like, “Ehhh…I don’t know if we should be going like this. It’s kind of crazy.” But you do stuff like that. So you just do what you do. If we like it, then obviously we’re gonna keep it. Zac: Creativity is the key. Eric: We’re not going Chili Peppers style or anything, so it’s not gonna get all weird, I don’t think. I mean I can’t ever say what’s gonna happen to our band… Tim: And we don’t want to be bland either. Everything’s been done before…verse chorus verse chorus breakdown, even though we totally do that all the time. But it’s like the more you can incorporate different things, just noise or…spice it up a little, you know? Zac: Andy plays drums. Andy: I play the drums…I’m a Ladykiller. Eric: To be honest with you, I have no idea what to expect for the next record. If I sat and thought about it… Tim: It’s gonna be a ska record. Zac: Crossover, yea. Tim: Yea, it’s a crossover ska record. Have you guys written anything, or have you been busy touring? Eric: Yea, we have about four new ones. Dante: They’re all what you’d expect from our last album…they’re a little bit more experimental, I’d say. Eric: It’s kind of heavy, kind of like a Danzig heavy. Oh that would be awesome. I’m way into that. Zac: The thirty-two-piece orchestra, well we’ve kind of incorporated that into our live show.