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NVMD performed at the Zanzibar on Saturday night to a packed crowd.
Chants from their fans ensued as the boys set themselves up for a 45-minute set. From the first time they performed, the confidence of the band has grown. Their stage presence combined with their audience interaction proved to be popular amongst the audience.
Starting with an original, the crowd roared. ‘Revolutionary’ got the crowd dancing, as well as them singing along with the band. The incredible set list had the crowd dancing non-stop, and even gave the lads the chance to show themselves off as a band. The chemistry and camaraderie between the NVMD boys was visible to everyone. The banter between them got the crowd laughing.
Fans of the NVMD lads filled the front of the audience, with passer-byers walking in to the Zanzibar to listen to the band, and fans of bands performing later in the night joining the crowd to dance and sing along to the cover’s the bands performed.
Those covers included songs from Arctic Monkeys, Green Day and Blur. Each song held a special place in each of the guys hearts for various reasons. Their cover of Green Day’s ’21 Guns’ was a favourite both by the band and the audience. All of the audience had their hands in the air singing along to a song they all associated a period in their lives too.
In amongst the cover songs, the boys debuted some of their originals and played other well known originals. Every time an original was played, the reaction from the crowd screamed success, and without the prior warning of it being an original, it was difficult to distinguish the two. Speaking to the band after the gig, they were all overwhelmed with the support from their fans and are looking onward and upwards for their next gigs, with the aim to release and EP by mid 2018.
Here at Purple Revolver, we caught up with the band to ask them a few questions. We got to know them a little bit better following our chat at their first gig. Ryan, Nick, Sam and Ed are all second-year college students and during our chat, we spoke about all things music, their future and what influences their music.
Here’s what the lads had to say;
PR: So, do you each have our own different music tastes then?
N: I have a very eclectic music taste, alright, yeah I’ll admit I like a bit of jazz, there’s some nice things in jazz. I also like, like, prog-metal
R: I mainly listen to Nirvana, but then also at the moment I’m listening to, like, weird 70’s stuff, been listening to the Joker and it’s all I’ve been listening too for like a week.
S: I’m quite simple, I listen to like punk/pop punk type music
N: We all like our punk and rock, that’s why we are here
E: Arctic Monkeys
R: I don’t think Ed knows any other band other than Arctic Monkeys
PR: So, how do these influence the band, then? How does each different music taste influence what you do?
N: I think it’s just sort of, like, everything you hear, even if it is just something on the radio, can be an influence, like that’s why I think it’s good to listen to such a wide range of music because anything can be an influence.
E: You’re kind of influenced by everything around, aren’t you
R: I don’t listen to a specific style of music, I just listen to whatever I feel like at the time.
S: I like what I like.
N: I think that’s the great thing about music, because you can just mix any occasion and be inspired in so many different ways.
PR: So where do you guys feel you fit then, what genre?
NVMD: Alternative Rock definitely
N: A lot of originals are quite eclectic, you couldn’t pin us down to one band, and I think that’s just because we are starting out
R: I feel like when we write a song, it doesn’t have to sound like ‘us’, because whatever we write is our song, so it doesn’t matter. If we like it, we like it and we play it
N: We’re definitely something different, you know, we write what we like and if we don’t like it we get rid of it
R: Yeah because, Starve, is completely different to like the newer one we’ve written, and Ex Vevo and This Means Nothing
S: And that Scottish one!
PR: Outside of the band, what are your passions? Sam, Ed, I know you two skate, but Ryan, Nick you’re, er, quite the elusive type, so what is it you all do outside of the band?
R: Write sh*t. I write a lot, really, that’s all I do
N: I’m quite into acting, I really like theatre and stuff like that. I do a bit of acting outside of the band and I like going to see plays and watching films and stuff like that.
PR: So, you said before you have a group of originals, and I know they are a solid set of originals, but when is it that we can all hear them?
N: Come see us live, check out our social media pages for when we are gigging and come see us live. We’re hopefully going to get together some recordings soon and put them out there and, yeah, we’ll see!
PR: Sam, what’s your inspiration then? I know Ryan is the lyricist, so what makes you write the lead guitar to his lyrics?
S: Basically, what Ryan does is he pitches lyrics and rhythm guitar, and I just build off that, and if everyone likes it, they’re like ‘yeah’ and give constructive criticism on it and then we work our way through that by adding in bass, starting with building off what Ryan did and then, like, Nick goes onto his own thing because he is a sick bass player and Ed does his own thing.
N: The inspiration, you know, comes from the lyrics and the chords that Ryan puts down. We take in our own influences, and we try and bring our own edge. It’s not one person’s band, we write together, we all write the songs
R: We’ve been asked who the leader is, and that’s not how it works, if you’re in a band, you are all the band. Yeah, I write the lyrics for it and I write the rhythm, but sometimes Sam will come up with something and we will jam that, or Nick will, and we will jam that. Ed will, as he plays guitar too, believe it or not. Ed made this reggae thing not too long ago with someone he was working with, and I’d like to do something with that
E: Yeah sure!
PR: I know you guys have done one gig, before, what did you think of that?, do tell all!
NVMD: Very warm!
S: Fun, ridiculously hot
N: It was, toasty. I’ve gotta admit, I think, I was really nervous at the start, but then I kinda just got over it and then I watched some videos, and I was like ‘why the f*ck did I do that?’
E: I felt so insecure
S: At least you were hidden by a drum kit!
N: I really didn’t know what to think, I was so nervous, I just didn’t know what to think
R: It was funny, Ed wasn’t expecting to drum that night either, so it was worse for him!
E: I was walking on stage, and I was like, so nervous! All I could think of was ‘For f*cks sake! Oh, sh*t!’
PR: Speaking of performing then, what do you think of performing? Nick, I know you said get nervous at the start, but what happens when you’re fully immersed into the performance.
N: Man I love it! It’s great
E: It sounds really cliché, but you do get lost in the music
N: I was completely sober, but I can’t remember like details from that night
R: I feel like when you do perform live though, it’s weird, because you do feel like you’ve got a rush and it does feel like, you feel super confident when you’re on stage, and then you get off and you feel even more confident and when it wears off, you just wanna play again. Every time we play, I can’t wait to play again
PR: So, you all met in college, but we are getting to that stage when we leave for jobs, universities, what’s going to happen to NVMD?
R: Nick’s going to be Scottish and think about things for a living
S: Well, I’m at College for another year, because I failed my subjects last year!
R: Ed’s going to do some art stuff, because he’s weird and likes to paint
N: Although we are going to leave college at some point, there are, like, there are a few months before then and I think those months are going to be really important to us, I mean like we could, I mean, we all wanna go somewhere
E: As a band, I feel stuff like that won’t be an issue
S: I wanna take NVMD somewhere
N: Although we’ve told people we are going off to university and get jobs, we also want to be rock stars!
R: I’m going to university in Liverpool, so I get to do both, it’s fine!
S: I just wanna be a musician
R: I enjoy the song writing, like I enjoy performing but with me, I like sitting down and writing a song because I don’t know when I’m going to come across a song. Sometimes I don’t end up playing anything, and other times I end up playing covers, and other times, I’m like ‘I wrote this! Guys, do you wanna hear it?’ and we play it mainly. We play all my crap stuff
S: I like all of our songs, you know!
PR: The guys mentioned your killer bassline in one of the songs, it is a really good bassline! What influenced in writing that one, Nick?
N: Is this Liquor Stained? Yeah, oh, I don’t know, it was a mix of things, just like, when you listen to bands with the bass being the forefront, 3 bands come to mind – Green day, and that was listening to one of their albums sort of brought out the idea that the bass can be more than just something for the other musicians in the band to listen too, it could be like a real driving force.
N: Bass players like Dave Hollingworth from a prog-metal band that I listen too, he uses lots of different techniques and that, sort of, is my inspiration. I use slap, strumming, picking and all sorts! Also the idea of using distortion in bass, as well, to create presence and that’s what I wanted to do. When it kicked into the choruses, I wanted to give it something that’s like, powerful, because it’s quite mellow but I can feel it and it was going into more of a driven section but I kind of wanted that feeling of it could be more and that’s why I sort of, wanted to do this big slide and it’s just like ‘guys!’
R: You didn’t also mention the other 2 bands that come 2 mind. You went ‘3 bands come to mind – Green day…’
N: Oh yeah, Green day, Karnivool, and Primus, their overall tone and the bass players approach to playing.
PR: So, guys, as a band, favourite song?
NVMD: Teddy Picker
E: ‘Perhaps Vampires is a Bit Strong’ by Arctic Monkeys
N: I enjoy that one. Favourite song, oo, I dunno! ‘Crying Lighting’ by Arctic Monkeys, that’s a sick song that!
S: ‘Statutory brain rape’ by Emily’s Army, it’s a really good song!
E: Keep in mind that song was written by like 16-year olds!
S: They were about our age when they wrote that song, that’s why they are some of my biggest inspirations as well
R: At the moment, it’s probably ‘The Joker’ by Steve Miller Band but I don’t know. At the moment I’m into Sky’s the Neighbourhood but it changes a lot, my favourite song, depends what I’m into at the time. This is why all our songs are different because every time we write something, it’s like, it’s whatever we are listening to at the time goes into it, as opposed to one sort of thing
E: That’s the thing, that’s why there’s loads of diversity, because you lot listen to Arctic Monkeys and at the same time I listen to the Foo Fighters as well, so my drumming’s quite, I try to make it quite complex, whereas its quite different for you guys! I mean it’s all sort of influenced by the music you are listening too isn’t it. Taylor Hawkins is a stupidly fast drummer and I try to be like Taylor Hawkins, but it doesn’t work
R: Like, you can tell in our music taste the time we were writing Revolutionary, it is very Green day heavy. And then, by the time you listen to the new one we have written, you guys said it’s like System of a Down.
N: We were all quite into our punk at that point, writing Revolutionary.
E: Every song is different
PR: Do you feel you’ve grown as band then, because as you say when you wrote Revolutionary, which is a brilliant song, you seemed to have really gelled together as a band and you’ve really grown from where you started out back in November?
NVMD: Definitely yeah!
R: I feel like what’s happened is, I wrote Starve and didn’t like it, but everyone else did and now I’m writing stuff that I actually like
E: I feel like we have a heavy influence on each other
N: We are now more comfortable with each other, so we aren’t afraid to say ‘That’s sh*t’ or ‘Who the f*cks out of time now?’
S: Or ‘Ryan, tune up!’
R: See, what I really like is trying out new things, like in the new song, I use a delay pedal which I hardly use, and I wrote a little bit for it and it sounded cool! Ed tries a double kick drum now and Sam just puts his pedal board and screeches and he loves it
S: I had a singular distortion pedal and now I have a multi-fx board and it’s the most beautiful thing
Big thanks to NVMD for taking their time to chat to us!
Catch NVMD on all their social media to keep up to date on all their gigs and adventures!
NVMDBand – Snapchat
Nvmdofficialuk – Instagram
@NVMD.BandUK – Facebook
@RealNevermindUK – Twitter