By Andrew Bansal
From the murkiest depths of the unforgiving, unrelenting local pay-to-play scene, Los Angeles’ very own ‘goblin metal’ band Nekrogoblikon have emerged as a truly entertaining live band that know how to blend their love and passion for heavy metal with two very accessible theatrical aspects, i.e. goblins and humor. They’ve been around for more than five years and I’ve seen these guys put on some impressive shows at clubs in LA, but recently, they’ve become a lot more popular and have achieved success within a short time period. Whether or not they’re able to sustain this success remains to be seen, but as of now, they’re riding on a goblin-induced high. Their new album ‘Power’ came out in September, and a few days after the album release, I had an expectedly fun conversation with vocalist Nicholas Van Doom and guitarist Alex ‘Goldberg’ Alereza. Enjoy it below, along with their music videos.
It’s good to have you guys on Metal Assault again. The last time I did an interview with you, it was at the Key Club when you were a pay-to-play opener for some band and we were all getting kicked out. Do you remember that at all?
Alex: Yeah, out by the parking lot, right? That was the show we did with After The Burial and Veil Of Maya. I remember that. It was like two years ago (laughs).
Right, the reason why I brought that up is, how does it feel to have made the transition from being that band to what you are now?
Alex: It’s pretty nuts! I’m still not used to it. I sometimes feel like it hasn’t quite totally hit me, because it’s been a really sudden change. A lot of bands just have to go on the road indefinitely and take the usual path of doing a slow, grassroots build-up. Whereas for us, we were always just completely local for five or six years. So it’s a unique path we’ve been on.
Nicky: It’s definitely cool, and it’s weird because we were famous in 1988 and then we had to step down from our high horse for a number of years. Since we released the ‘Power’ EP, we’re back to being super famous. And that’s it!
Alex: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. We were famous in ’88. But everyone knows that. It’s common knowledge.
Right! I wasn’t in LA last year when all this happened with you. Basically you guys put out a music video for the song ‘No One Survives’, it went viral and you blew up. Who’s idea was that to begin with?
Nicky: There was this guy named Brandon Dermer who directed it. It’s interesting because he was actually in contact with the same goblins who’re our masters, and unfortunately for him, they kidnapped him from his residence in Sherman Oaks and forced him to do that video. So it was his idea but he was told to do it by the goblins, so it came from the universe, with the assistance of goblins and Brandon Dermer.
Alex: Yes, and Brandon is working on a follow-up to that narrative video as he is being held at gunpoint by goblins.
Nicky: We also just put out another non-fictional music video for a track off of our new release ‘Power’ as well, in the meantime. It’s pretty cool, and we shot it when we were hanging out with John Goblikon on tour in Europe. It’s pretty exciting, and if you haven’t seen that you should definitely check it out, it’s called ‘Powercore’. But as Alex said, we’re also working on a narrative follow-up to ‘No One Survives’. It should be out sometime soon.
With this whole attention that you got from the videos, you sold a bunch of merch and everything and gained a huge following on facebook. Even after all that, have you still been able to keep the focus on writing music as you used to do before all this happened?
Nicky: Yeah, I think so because we’ve always written music in a unique way, which is that every couple of years or so the goblins just come back to LA, gather us up into their spaceship and take us far away into the outer stretches of the universe where we are mercilessly beaten and tortured for eons and eons. So those are our roots and I’d like to think we have been standing true to our roots.
Alex: Our next torture session I think is in three months or so.
Nicky: You can never tell the exact date because then it ruins the surprise, you know.
Alex: Yeah we write better music when it’s a surprise, it seems. So we’re not exactly sure but the goblins know.
Nicky: We’ve also been collaborating a lot with the guy who does Bieber’s albums, which is new for us.
I wanted to ask you about the new album ‘Power’ which just came out. How does it compare to the first two albums?
Nicky: Well, you could make a spreadsheet if you want to highlight the different attributes from each album. We should really put a compare feature on the website. That’s a good idea. Honestly though, our first two albums took a lot longer, and we were a lot lazier to produce them. For this one, there are songs that were written as far back as 2009 but we were really motivated and inspired when we put it together. I’d like to think that it’s more closer to what we always wanted to be as a band. When you’re younger, like we were when we were first captured and brutally raped by the goblins, you feel a bit hindered by peer pressure and stuff like that. You’ve just got to be metal enough! This time we were like, fuck that shit. We would just make the goddamn music that we and the goblins want us to make and then see what happens. The first two were also like that, but the third one is more so.
Alex: Basically, I feel like we’ve progressed, have a better idea and understanding of our own abilities. If we had the option to create something like this in the past, we would have. We just kind of didn’t know how to. This album is definitely what we wanted to be making all along.
Nicky: But I don’t want to give people the impression that we’ve landed on a specific sound. The thing about Nekrogoblikon is that it’s what the goblins make us do, and they kind of change it up per release. So I wouldn’t expect us to put out anything that’s exactly like this again. We prefer to write music rather than one kind of music.
In terms of the live shows, I’ve seen you at places like the Key Club and Viper Room. Has that changed now with you getting to play bigger stages in Europe and even here?
Nicky: Yeah it’s been cool, you know. The smaller clubs have always been a favorite of mine, but the fact is, a lot of the times they make it really hard for young, struggling bands to succeed because these guys charge a band of 15-year olds 800 bucks to open a show on a Tuesday or something. It’s pretty much a barrier from entering to play those kinds of clubs. Now that we have some gravity, people are definitely a lot more responsive about booking us better shows and we’re almost at the point where we’re breaking even.
Alex: As for the performance itself, now we have John Goblikon on stage with us. He’s really shy and doesn’t really have a lot of self-esteem so we bring him up on stage to make him feel good about himself. And the audience seems to like it. But yeah, we’ve just been bringing him around, he interacts with us, brings us beer, embarrasses himself, and whatever needs to happen happens. As far as what we do, it’s kind of more or less the same. We never wanted to be a band that dressed up as a certain way. It doesn’t really represent us. So it’s still us, with a goblin now.
What kind of shows do you have coming up?
Alex: We’re doing an East Coast tour in November, just for six days hitting the major cities like New York, Boston, Toronto and Montreal. So we’re just going a slow buildup rather than jumping on tours.
Nicky: We’d rather keep it exclusive. We’re not doing shows for a 40-day run, but may be a 6-day or a 15-day run instead, with specific areas of the country so we can still visit everyone who’s a fan but also keep it exclusive.
Alex: We’re trying not to burn out, because so many bands get signed and they get thrown on five tours in a row. And then they come back home, they’re 10000 dollars in debt, out of jobs, they have to write a new record but then they’re completely so jaded and burned out on the whole thing that it really ruins the morale. So we’re trying to do it steady and there may be a point when we start touring heavily, but if that’s the case we want to really have a natural progression into it, and not just jump on any tour that comes our way.
Nicky: We’re also going to the UK in February, to play with the glorious Limp Bizkit.
Alex: Yeah, it’s a trip! Kerrang has been pushing us really hard in the UK which has been amazing. It seems like they just really enjoy the band and they’re having fun talking about us. So we were invited to be on the Kerrang tour with Limp Bizkit and Crossfaith, just 11 dates in the UK in February. That seems like it’ll be a lot of fun and I know that both Nicky and I were fans of Limp Bizkit in middle school before we got into really heavy music. So it’s definitely like a blast from the past and we’re excited about that.
Nicky: It’s cool to be traveling opposite sort of paths. I think we’ve been an absurd band always. We always will be. Absurdity is our number one fact, more than anything else. I think Limp Bizkit were kind of the same way when they were first starting out in public in 1998 or whatever. The public wasn’t in on the joke, I feel. But now that we’re ten years later, everyone is like, ‘I miss Limp Bizkit. They were hilarious!’ So they’re blatantly absurd at this point, and it’s funny that our bands are crossing paths now.
Visit Nekrogoblikon on the web at:
nekrogoblikon.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/Nekrogoblikon
twitter.com/Nekrogoblikon
youtube.com/NekrogobliTube
instagram.com/NekrogoblikonOfficial