NIGHTSLUG’s Dismal Fucker is one of the heaviest, most fucked up records of this year and probably the following 20. Emerging from Germany’s Hardcore-Punk scene and featuring (ex-) members of infamous bands like The Now-Denial, Burial, Doomtown or Union Of Sleep, the quality of Dismal Fucker could have been foretold but still surprises with its blatant uncompromisingness. Sludge, as heavy as performed by NIGHTSLUG, is not easy to be found anywhere, but most people surely wouldn’t expect it to come out of Germany. Being the fanboys and –girls that we are here on CVLT Nation, we had to do an interview with NIGHTSLUG to get to know this band more. So I sat down with Jens, the singer and guitarist of the band, and asked him a few questions while having a few beers and listening to the new Black Sabbath album. Besides Jens, NIGHTSLUG is Philip on bass and Fabian on drums.
Was the current quasi-inactivity of Union Of Sleep the reason for you to start NIGHTSLUG?
I guess you could say so. I really wanted to play music, just rehearse regularly. It wasn’t so much about playing live or anything, just to hang out and play music together. So I fell back on Fabian and Philip because it’s always cool to make music with these guys. At first I didn’t even know if they’d be into this kind of sound – because the stuff we did in the past was quite different for sure. But it clicked already at the first rehearsal, so that was that.
You are coming from a Punk, DIY background, and with NIGHTSLUG you’re also at home here in this scene. Could you imagine to do this in a, let’s say more “professional” surrounding?
No way man. I don’t even have the ambitions to do so. Actually I’m quite surprised how good this band catches on with the Hardcore and Punk crowd. Maybe people are more open minded than in the past, because of things like the internet where you can easily find all sorts of music you like, also slower stuff obviously. So it’s really cool that it works. Sometimes we’re also playing in a more (semi-) professional Metal context, which is quite different to what we know. I always realize at these shows that it’s not my thing at all. More often than not it’s very impersonal and I definitely prefer smaller shows in smaller venues.
Would you say that the passion is afflicted with a certain degree of professionalism, if you do it to pay your rent?
It’d be a huge challenge at least. But it never was an option for me, because I know that this music is only interesting for a small amount of nerds anyway.
Do you care about the overall positive reactions towards NIGHTSLUG or do you give a fuck about that anyway?
Basically I don’t care, although it’s surely important to get some kind of feedback, you know. I think the overly positive reactions are based on the fact that we do not promote the record in the common sense of the word, like getting everybody to listen to it by all means. People are finding us, because they dig the kind of music we play, and same goes for the people who write the positive reviews. They’re searching for stuff they like, and so they might stumble upon us.
Per Koro Records, one of Germany’s most renowned DIY labels, released your demo on 12″ and is also putting out the new lp. Are you fully satisfied with the label or could you imagine to work with a “bigger” label as well?
I know Markus for more than 20 years, and although I don’t like everything he ever released, I always liked the way how he does it. Working with Markus is always easy, always fair, there have never been any serious issues. So I’d say Per Koro was the best choice for us. And “bigger”, what does that even mean? Of course it might be nice to be on a label where more people might take notice of you, because especially for bands from Germany it’s hard to catch people’s attention, like on an international level. But at the end of the day, you can only reach so and so much people anyway, playing this special kind of music.
A lot of people compare NIGHTSLUG with the usual names in the Sludge game, Eyehategod etc. But where do the influences for your riffs really come from?
There’s a thing a lot of people realize when they listen to our music: Although it’s somewhat the Sludge/Doom thing, they hear that our roots are in Punk and Hardcore music. So you can definitely say that we’re as much influenced by Sludge and Punk as by all sorts of music we like to listen to. Lyric-wise everyday life surely is the biggest influence. But I’m not gonna lie to you: When we started the band I always said I wanted to play music that sounds like Hellhammer, but slower. But it developed from there, because Philip and Fabian brought a lot of new influences to the band. Whereas the old stuff is just plainly brutal, the new songs are a bit more experimental, if you know what I mean haha. Like a bit more atmospheric, more noise-elements. Stuff like Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, Winter of course, early Swans – those bands had quite an influence on our songs.
You’ve just mentioned the lyrics – the track titles alone speak a very pissed-off and nihilistic language. Do you rather express personal experiences or are the topics you write about more general ones?
Usually I try to write from an outside perspective, this appears to be easier for me. Of course those lyrics express my personal view on things, and NIGHTSLUG, of all my previous bands, is the best vehicle to get emotions of that manner across – pissed, angry, maybe even nihilistic. I mean it’s not that I’m super pissed all of the time, there are a lot of good things happening in life as well. But nevertheless I feel like I’m a type of person carrying a lot of negativity within me.
Where did you record Dismal Fucker? To record such an extremely rough sound in such a powerful way is quite hard to do, isn’t it?
We recorded in Oldenburg at the Tonmeisterei. We were there for three days, worked pretty fast, recorded much of the stuff live. I was a bit sceptical at first if the guys there would be able to catch the dirtiness. Because a lot of stuff they do sounds incredible powerful, but not exactly rough and ugly – how we wanted it to be. But it worked out really well, they totally understood what we were aiming for.
How long did it take to write the songs for Dismal Fucker? Did you start to write the songs just after the demo was released?
All in all we started around September 2011 to write the songs. But a lot of things happened in the studio as well, certain arrangements and stuff like that. We’re quite spontaneous and do not plan everything 100% en detail, for example there are some overdubs on the record I didn’t write beforehand. So I just played some fucked up shit and we took the first take haha. Sometimes that’s just the best way to go, without thinking too much. It works for me, at least.
I really think the artwork of Dismal Fucker is the weirdest, most fucked up artwork you can do when you play this (or any) type of music. There’s nothing that looks even somehow similar to it.
Yeah, that wasn’t unintentionally of course. Fabian, our drummer, did the artwork. I mean it’s not that I don’t like more classic artworks that might fit “better” to this type of music. I’m not the type of guy who does things differently just to be different. But a lot of people react quite confused and find it really weird, and that weirdness just reflects us. And we also dig the fact that some people are pissed off because of the cover haha.
I literally can imagine that. I mean a lot of artworks of Doom and Sludge bands look somewhat similar, gloomy, sinister you know.
Exactly, but I really didn’t want to go for the “goats, tits and blood” thing, and the other guys in the band even less. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be totally atypical per se, but it definitely was a deliberate decision to do something different for Dismal Fucker.
What would be the perfect live situation for NIGHTSLUG?
Small venue most definitely, maybe a basement or something like that, people who are really into it, and a super heavy sound. You know, people should have a good time, although we play music you can be in a bad mood to – or get a bad mood from haha. But people should party, that’d be the best thing.
Anything left you want to say?
Ah, no. Thanks for the interview though.
Dismal Fucker is available from Per Koro Records. You can stream the entire record here on CVLT Nation.
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