When Domenic ‘Nicky’ Palermo finally slowed down after ten years of grinding, it hit him what the years of life in NOTHING had done to him.
Since the band first burst onto the alternative scene, carving out a blueprint for what a modern shoegaze band should sound like, Nicky has never truly given himself a moment to take stock of what was going on. But after closing out the cycle for 2020’s ‘The Great Dismal’, the realisation that he was entering his fourth decade loomed heavy.
Taking the time to consider what the band had achieved, and where he sat within that as the years started to fly by with more pace, he also started to ponder on the things that still sat heavy in his chest. The ghosts of his past still haunting the halls, the health troubles that he kept to himself, the fear of even looking himself in the mirror and accepting the person that he was; he knew that the only way to truly exorcise everything was to put it into the band. But not in the way that he had before.
The result is ‘a short history of decay’, a record of immense depth, discomforting beauty and unrelenting soul. The most delicate yet devastating collection of songs that the band have committed to tape, their tear-stained messages lingering around you like smoke on the surface of a lake, it exhibits the sort of honesty that Nicky would never have dreamy of sharing. No longer hiding behind reverb, even letting the shakiness that has found its way into his voice, caused by the essential tremors he now experiences, be part of his delivery, it’s an album that represents a whole new way of looking at life and art for Nicky.
To dive into the changes, both musical and personal, that were made to make this special record possible, Rock Sound sat down with Nicky to talk it all through.
Rock Sound: What would you say have been the catalysts for you really committing to this new approach to NOTHING?
Nicky: First and foremost, I’ve always had a bit of an identity crisis and a sense of imposter syndrome. This band has changed lineups so many times, and I’ve always struggled being the face of it. I hate being ultra-polarised. I’m already polarising myself through the songs and the stories that I’m telling and stuff like that. But I’ve never really felt too comfortable putting myself completely out there as I did on this record. This record, for me, was really about shedding a lot of the weight and not being scared to really dive into a lot of the stuff that I’ve avoided along the way, or prettied up with words to get away from the true directive of what I’m saying. This is the vulnerable that I’ve been, and it came from an epiphany of sorts.
Getting out of that cycle of every two and a half years releasing a record, touring it, then writing another record, recording, touring, rinse and repeat, I realised 10 years had gone by. With the time I had at home, I was forced to look myself in the mirror, look inward, and try to tackle the war I have in my own head. And the best way for me to accomplish that was to bear everything and be as honest as I possibly could. A record for me comes naturally when there is something to write about. Before I was stuck in this gear, where people were expecting things, and I had a group of people behind me that I wanted to make sure their livelihoods were taken care of. It forced me into the studio, and I can work well when my back is against the wall, but I knew I was stuck in a cycle. This is the first time that I had time to reinvent my process a little bit.
RS: The thing is that when you look back to the start of the band, you’re making music that you love with no real incentive of people liking it or not. It’s very much just for you, so you’re putting things into it that you didn’t expect to have to play and regurgitate for the next decade. You’re almost forced to put that mask on and do what you can to keep going.
Nicky: That’s exactly right, it’s so accurate. With that first record, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing or what I was getting myself into. I didn’t really have plans on this being a thing that was going to last this long. This thing I started in a bedroom got shovelled into making a record, and then it was my goal to get that one record done so I could shed some of that weight. I had the freedom to do what I wanted because I had no expectations. But I was way in over my head. From playing in hardcore bands to this, it was a whole new world. And then when you get caught in that cycle, all of a sudden it’s, ‘Okay, well, I only know this method, and we’ll get it done.’ And we did, we managed it. I’ve always kept a good group of people around me, whether they’re here or not now. But I’ve learned so much from every moment and every member of this band; they all made their impact, and it continues to be that way. But I am the one steering the wheel, and two things happened as these songs started coming together whilst I was outside of that grind.
The first was that I realised the process needed to be challenged again, and I needed to challenge myself. I needed to shed more, because it wasn’t enough for where I was at before. I knew that I was going to be more of a polarised figure, and I had to deal with that for better or for worse. And the second was that I realised I had accomplished way more than I ever thought I was going to with this, so I didn’t need to be as nervous or self-conscious with myself. I’m not the greatest musician in the world, far from it. But a big part of what has kept NOTHING relevant for 15 years is the fact that people relate to the honesty that I put forth. So, we can travel through time pretty effortlessly. And I let those things within the track distract me from real life. From my home and my relationships at home, and that happened every time that I came home from a tour or a recording. This time, I knew I couldn’t let it be a distraction. I had to face it.
RS: The thing is, with the songs you wrote in the past, you were very much hiding behind the noise as well. But when it comes to the songs on this album, they are more stark and see-through than anything you have ever written. There is a heartbreaking delicacy to much of this record. How much of that was a reaction to what you were facing inside your head, or was it just a sonic decision that made sense for where you were at?
Nicky: Honestly, it’s just what happened organically. It was just when I realised I had this untapped resource of things that I could be speaking about that have been here the whole time that I’ve reluctantly avoided, subconsciously or on purpose. It always starts with a pen and paper, and it was abundantly clear at that point that when I started writing some of this stuff, I had what I needed. Then I knew that if I was taking these new steps and throwing caution to the wind with the content, I needed to take the same measures when I was approaching the songwriting. There is a sound that we have created to be our home, and I wanted to get away from that. I wanted the songs to come out the way they sounded in my head, without worrying about where they landed. I was going to let the songs take me where they needed to go, and that was definitely nerve-wracking.
A big thing that also happened was that when I was listening to the voice memos I had made, I started scrolling back really far. And I would get to these awful demos I made of me struggling and bumbling around on acoustic guitar, trying to get them in a good enough place that we could get them into the studio and turn them into NOTHING tracks. There’s one demo of ‘Tic Tac Toe’ from ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’ where I sound distraught, and when I listen to the full track now, I’m like, ‘Wow, we polished that up so much. It just didn’t have the same feeling to it anymore. So I wanted to lean into that and not polish my terrible voice into something all pristine. If I’m going to do it one way in one area, I want to try and do it all the way through.
This is where the Essential Tremor thing that is going on with me started to really come in. I was sitting back in the studio near this hot mic, and I was singing really quietly, and when I was hearing it, I would say, ‘Oh wow, my voice is really doing something crazy. What the fuck is that?’ I soon realised that it was my tremors making their way into my vocal cords now, and I said, ‘This throws a wrench in the gears’. But speaking to some of the band, they would say, ‘This is what you wanted. You wanted to show yourself, this is you doing it’. So, that’s when I knew not to fight it. Let it be there, and it will carry more weight. If people don’t like the voice that way, that doesn’t really matter to me. This is part of being as honest as possible.
RS: So how does it feel now to listen back and realise what you have created? Not being in the middle of that process, having time to let it all sink in, what are the things that stick out for you?
Nicky: It’s definitely tremendously different. Everything hadn’t been resolved suddenly in my head. I am constantly at war with myself. But this time has definitely given me a certain bit of clarity on so many different levels. One such trauma that’s forever in there is the prison thing [Nicky was jailed for two years when he was 20 after stabbing a man in self-defence during a fight between rival gangs]. I get so nervous about talking about it with people, because of the perception that it gives me, and I’m so used to just spearheading through and saying, ‘Oh yeah, well, it happened. It’s done, such is life’. But it isn’t. I dealt with some severe shit in there. I still have nightmares every three weeks to this day about it, and it’s been like that for two decades now. Nightmares where I did something wrote and I’m back in prison, and I’m basically saying goodbye to all the people that I love. It’s still there, whether I want to laugh it off or not. I can speak a big game, but maybe I can act on it, too. Apparently, I can. But you may be done with the past, but the past isn’t always done with you.
Every day is a day I try to get my head around it, and recording a record like this definitely helps loads, but it’s a work in progress, just like everything in life. I am a work in progress. I’m far from a perfect human, and in many cases, I have done things that I’m ashamed of. I had a hard time looking in the mirror for a long time. But by creating this peace within myself, I hope to be out of that. It’s far bigger than music, you know? It’s life, and life is a struggle. But I took some big progressive steps towards making myself a better person and making it easier to live with myself. I don’t concern myself with the fear of what people are going to think or say anymore. I had a job to do, for myself, and I stuck to that job and made myself really uncomfortable to get it done. And it’s opened up a new window of how I see things across the board.
RS: It’s incredibly powerful when you use a word like peace. Because it’s a reminder that peace doesn’t always have to be perfect, and clarity doesn’t mean that things get easier. Everything you are experiencing is forever moving and changing, for better or for worse.
Nicky: Absolutely. There’s nothing comfortable or settling about this life. There is an eternal struggle that we go through constantly, and that’s without even tapping into what’s going on around us, which is a whole other thing. No one should ever feel perfectly fine with everything they’re doing. You’re constantly making mistakes, you’re constantly causing people pain, even if you don’t know it. And if there is a moment of actual clarity or peace within yourself, it is momentary. There is never a period at the end of the sentence, you know what I mean?
RS: Though within that, NOTHING continues to be there for you to question those emotions, especially not that you have broken through into a completely new place. What does that mean for you as you look to the future, especially as you go out on tour?
Nicky: Right now feels more reminiscent of how I felt before did our first tour of ‘Guilty of Everything’, but obviously a lot more prepared. I’m walking with a different kind of swag in my step, for sure, and I’m not super concerned with any individual’s thoughts about what I’m presenting to rooms across the world. For me, it’s about doing this the right way. I want to carry that same energy across the shows. Obviously, NOTHING has made a huge step in live sound over the last six or seven years, from what it was in the early days, which was just an aggressive outlet for me. It used to be about the raw emotion of the show rather than what it might sound like on the other end of the room, and I had no care about it at all. I was very much in my own head every night, and that’s drugs and alcohol and the raw emotion of what we did.
This record is aggressive in its own way, where I don’t have to lean into that hiding space, that cowardly method of dealing with it. I can do what I’m doing now, perform these songs and make them sound as good as they need to be on stage, and that is good enough. These songs are going to get the point across without me throwing my guitar 40 feet in the air and throwing up on my pedal board. I don’t need to be that person anymore. But that’s the beautiful part about being so upfront with yourself: you can drop the charade. And that feels great. It feels like a huge step for me as a human, and I’m excited to share that with people.
