The Moshville Times - Nexilva

Recent “Band of the Day” Nexilva took some time out to rattle off a few answers to some questions I had for them. Thanks, guys!

A new release and your first through a label (Ghost / Subliminal Groove). How has this differed to your experiences with the first album which you self-released?

I think it took a lot of the pressure off of us as we weren’t solely responsible for the release campaign this time, and had a lot of great help from great people. We were still heavily involved in everything but it felt like we had a bigger team working on it and making sure everything went down as planned. Having our release exposed to our labels’ fan bases also helped a lot and made sure that a whole host of new people heard .

Your first release was four years ago when you were all barely old enough to shave! How long have you been together as a band? Any line-up changes in that time? Am I right in saying that Connor moved from guitars to drums?

Nexilva was formed in late 2009, me, Connor and Gaz had been in bands beforehand that didn’t work out so we ended up getting a lineup together composed of us and musicians we liked from other local bands. There’s been several lineup changes since the bands first inception but we’ve had the same lineup for over 5 months now. Connor made the jump from guitar to drums October 2012 as we had been struggling to find a drummer for a long time, to the point where we did a whole UK tour with backing tracked drums. It wasn’t necessarily holding us back but it was a position that needed to be filled to complete the lineup.

Who does the keyboards/synths?

Connor writes and programs all of the synths.

What bands would you say are your main influences?

Collectively we all listen a wide array of artists from Necrophagist to Katy Perry and everything in between. Bands like The Black Dahlia Murder and Between The Buried and Me had a significant influence on us when it came to the metal side of things, those guys are very inspiring.

Is there any underlying theme to your music / lyrics?

The lyrical concept on Eschatologies is all about the end of the world/the apocalypse. Each song is a different scenario of how this could arise and what the consequences would be.

Your logo has changed somewhat over time. The original was far more like a traditional death metal band’s effort. What prompted the redesigns and the various different styles?

The logos changed as our attitudes and ethics changed. When we started out we were very young and impressionable so we went for the very generic deathcore sound and style but we soon realised we wanted to stick out from the rest of the UK metal bands and not follow any fads or trends. We still wanted the new logo to look like a metal band’s logo but with an interesting and quite ominous edge to it.

Similarly, how do you feel your sound has changed since the early days and the first EP?

The first release as Nexilva was a two track EP named The Viral Annihilation. It was a very, very raw sound which definitely needed to be fine tuned into something more. But it’s honest expression of what we wanted to sound like at the time which was a deathcore outfit.

After that we had a few line up changes and wrote our first full length entitled The Trials Of Mankind. This release still preserved our original deathcore sound however it also showed how much we had progressed as a unit and as songwriters.

In between writing Defile The Flesh Of Innocence there were more line-up changes and more growth in our individual musicianship. Defile The Flesh Of Innocence was a bit more of a ‘straight up in your face’ brand of the deathcore sound with more elements of straight up death metal! In 2011 we knew that we had to begin to write music that was a true representation of what we wanted to be known for. We thought about what other inspirations we could bring toward the next release.

This led us down the path of adding synths and a whole host of other effects to make our sound a lot bigger than a traditional death metal band. Over the course of 2 years we wrote the album Eschatologies. It’s a cacophony of sounds ranging from technical ages, ambient sections and straight up death metal arrangements. We genuinely believe there’s something in our sound for everyone and we can appeal to a wider range of people because of this.

Finally… seriously, what are Sunderland’s chances of staying up this season?

The only person in this band who cares is Ryan who says “Yeah.”

Nexilva’s Eschatologies is available now via the following links:

Ghostmusic’s bandcamp | ifmerch | evil iTunes | marginally less evil Amazon

And for more info on the band themselves…