Written By: Words and Photo by Ryan J. Prado Sr.It isn't every day you come across a band whose dedication necessitates allotting two four-hour rehearsal blocks in the middle of the week. But then again, it isn't every day you come across a band like Portland, Oregon's Nux Vomica. Emerging from the supportive but small crust-punk/metal scene in Baltimore in 2003, the band found ways to mortgage out their time for what has become an increasingly more varied musical endeavor than what you can or cannot call your typical crust-punk fare.
After relocating to the West Coast in 2005, Nux Vomica—vocalist Just Dave, guitarist Chris, guitarist Tim, drummer Zach and their newest member Danny on bass—began to incorporate the artistic meanderings of some of their side and former bands to form a kind of ambient-metal tapestry; by all accounts a far cry from the material produced during the inception of the band, when writing songs meant pumping out short, angry punk rock rather than following the muses of progressive metal.
"Before I was in the band," said Zach, "Nux Vomica had a long history of being 'jumbled' by having a lot of sporadic parts. There's been more of an effort to try and make transitions more smooth, and that really extends whole songs."
"We never try to write long songs," explained Chris. "We just start writing them and then realize, 'wow.'"
The band's acceptance of a smorgasbord of different genres is described as the byproduct of its members being involved in so many far-reaching side projects. Between the five members, an eye-popping eight separate bands, if not more (some with multiple members of Nux Vomica, including 57 Octaves Below, Down River, Cancer, Machine Gun Congress and Deadpan Pariah all producing spectrum-crossing soundscapes), also exist. That's not including Tim's purported four solo projects.
Still, with the spider-like ventures, regardless of genre, the band acknowledges their association with the tight-knit embrace of the crust scene.
"Nux Vomica has a lot of different styles and influences because the scene was a lot smaller in Baltimore," said Zach. "You hung out with all kinds of people, and everybody appreciated other people's opinions on different types of music and started different types of bands."
In terms of the wildly differentiating styles many bands in the scene, it's tough to understand what exactly places a group like Nux Vomica into such a pseudo-niche as the crust-punk/metal community. But the band waves it off as mainly an implication derived from the musical support system they were brought up in.
"It has more to do with coming up in that culture than anything," said Chris. "I feel like no matter what kind of music I was playing I would probably play it for the punks, but I'd play it for anybody else also. I think part of the reason that us and the Makai are drawn to each other is because we're both bands that don't drive right in between the lines. It seems like we're doing our own thing. We're definitely associated with the crust-punk/metal scene, but we're not bound by it. I definitely appreciate that about them."
"Those guys are more punk than most people that sing about punk," added Just Dave, referring to Chico's behemoths of what we will heretofore dub “myth-core.” "They're really active in their small community. Everybody knows them and they do so much. They're not big dumb metal heads; they're all really smart, really cool and really DIY...and they write fantasy lyrics. That's awesome."
With a few US tours under their collective belts, including an excursion to the South (with Wake Up On Fire—Chris, Just Dave, and Tim's other band, now dissolved, whom all toured as one big happy family. "Two members got mugged at gunpoint while they were dumpstering..."), the band will be embarking on a West Coast tour that will bring them through Monstro’s Pizza, to share a bill with The Makai.
Nux Vomica's recording production has yielded various 7-inches on a few different labels, most notably Aborted Society, a DIY label based in Seattle, that will be releasing their ambitious double LP/CD this year. The band also plans to release a split 10-inch record with The Makai, and has a 7-inch scheduled for release from Zach's label, Defector Records, sometime this year as well.
The collective's anticipated double LP is not just rumored, but confirmed by the band to consist of seven songs clocking in at a whopping 60-plus minutes—a lengthy endeavor indeed. It's easy to imagine the impending dominance of their new album. The band's sound pulses with the chops of early '80s Bay Area thrash, filtered next by the scope of an acute punk rock lens, then ripped at the seams by a sea of wailing, writhing metal and vocal tones that if you pay close enough attention to will make you more than slightly pissed off to be alive. But don't be put-off by the focus on societal ills; the crises of humanity is Just Dave's lyrical modus operandi ("It's almost hard for me to try to write about other stuff. It's just the way my brain operates," he explained), and of all the members of Nux Vomica; his position within the band's morphed style has likely been the most augmented.
"I used to have notebooks full of stuff that I would sit and write in some coffee shop, and then at practice, I'd look through the book and just start [singing] something," related Just Dave. "Now I'm coming up with stuff while they're playing, building the lyrics while the song is being built. And I have plenty of time to do that because we're working on 20-minute songs."
So maybe the insistence on four-hour practices isn't so hair-brained after all. But, goddamn it...seriously? Four-hour practices? Inquiring slacker metal bands need to know.
"On a good day," admitted Zach.
"If there's a certain part that you wanna practice and play it over and over, that part might be five minutes long," explained Chris. "You might play that three or four times and there goes 20 minutes."
"We'll spend 15 minutes talking about a part that is literally 12 seconds," added Just Dave.
And that's just that.