Nocturnal Rites – Nils Eriksson
Milton: Now, how does the composition process work for you? I wonder that because your albums are fairly different one from another. That was especially noticed on the last album in my opinion. It was the most refined songwriting the band has ever done, but at the same time it was more accessible. Do you ever care about what the album will sound like, or what people will label it?
Nils: You know, I don’t think we care at all. I think that’s the secret. We start every album from scratch, with a clean slate. I don’t know, after a couple of songs I think the direction becomes self explanatory for us. I don’t think we’ve ever tried to write a softer or more aggressive song. We never really planned ahead “Ah, let’s make a really heavy album now!” or something. It has always just happened. I think that’s one of the strong points of NOCTURNAL RITES, that we’re always evolving with every album. We’ve never made the same album twice.
Milton: Absolutely.
Nils: We just write songs, you know? Things happen. (laughter)
Milton: You guys never really get tied into any trends, so to speak. There was a period in the early 2000s where the big thing with Power Metal was the big bombastic choruses with the choirs and orchestras and stuff. You didn’t do that. We can even go back to the 90s, everyone was playing death metal in Sweden, and there was NOCTURNAL RITES playing melodic metal and people were like “What the fuck?”
Nils: (laughter) I guess we just play the music that we like. Fredrik has always been into Death and Thrash metal, the heavier side of metal, since day one. He’s always been writing a lot of the stuff for the band. I remember already back in the early nineties, we started out as a Death metal band. We played Death metal with clean vocals, actually. It was ten years ahead of our time, you know? In 94 or something, we started going even more towards regular heavy metal and that evolved into our first album in 95. We did the death metal with melodic vocals crossover thing fifteen years ago already. (laughter) We’ve always just done what we wanted to do without putting much thought about it.
Milton: It’s funny how everyone thinks this death metal with clean vocals is the new thing, and you must be saying “Meh, old news.”
Nils: Well, it didn’t sound as well back then, now that I listen to the old tapes. (laughter)
Milton: The band was named Necronomic beforehand right?
Nils: Yes, that’s right.
Milton: And you have once described the music you did with them as, and I quote you, “a bizarre hybrid of death and melodic metal with weird death metal vocals.”
Nils: Wow, you got the whole quote! (laughter) Yeah, that’s really what it was. It was like IRON MAIDEN on dope or something like that. I’ve always come from a melodic perspective, but Fredrik has always been into the hair and metal stuff, but always from the heavier side like KREATOR, DESTRUCTION, all of the early Death metal bands. I love that stuff as well, but that’s closer to his heart. And him being the main songwriter and me coming in from a different perspective on ideas for arrangements, influences and throwing things in the pot, I think that’s a mix that turned into a weird hybrid.
Milton: Well, I guess with most bands that’s how it works in the beginning. Everyone brings in their influences, but the band doesn’t really define its sound for at least a few years.
Nils: Yeah, exactly.
Milton: You guys received a few record offers for that band when you started out, and you passed on them. Have you ever asked yourself what if you had actually taken those offers?
Nils: Yeah, definitely! I hate the fact that we didn’t really take the opportunity. I was 14 years old, how could would it have been to release an album at that age, and still have that available now? It’d be great! I love the old songs, we have a few recordings that aren’t that bad but it would be nice to do them for real. I don’t know what happened. We were very young and didn’t think ahead. Universal was just about to come and knock at our doors, we thought.
Milton: Had you accepted those offers, do you think history would be a little different as for NOCTURNAL RITES? Maybe that weird hybrid would really take off big time?
Nils: No, I don’t think so. The offers we got weren’t really offers for real. It would’ve been maybe an LP with 500 copies or a split single or something. It wouldn’t have been a proper release. I don’t think it would’ve changed anything at all. It would really have been a demo. Still, it’s a bummer we didn’t do it. It’d be great just to have on your shelf. (laughter)
Milton: Yes it would. Nils, a lot of people nowadays consider NOCTURNAL RITES to be one of the top bands in the Power metal scene. To me, however, it seems that the band is missing that one last little push into the so-called…
Nils: Major league?
Milton: Yes, we could call it that. You know, the closest to mainstream as far as popularity that it can get. Do you know what I mean?
Nils: Yes, I hear you on that. We’re always kind of the runner-up. I think that’s the story of our lives. (laughter) It’s all good. We’ve done eight albums and we’re selling more and more records every time we do a new one. Our fanbase keeps growing. We’re not the biggest band in the world, but we love what we do and we have a lot of fun and we’ll keep on going. You can’t really change anything, we can’t ask the label to… Well, we can ask them, but it’s not going to happen. They’re not going to make us into the new…whoever. It’s just out of our hands, you know? We can only do so much; we can tour, write better songs, release albums and that’s pretty much it. We have to rely on the label and the music itself.
