We had the chance to sit down with the wonderful Brendan Shane of The Nocturnal Affair ahead of their UK tour supporting Wednesday 13. Check out as we chatted about their sound, touring plans and the UK scene!

How would you describe your sound?

I like to call it dark rock. Mostly because I always lean towards the harmonic minor scale. It’s always the darker melodic scale. Not all the time, but most of the time!

And you put out a couple of singles fairly recently, right?

We had a radio single serviced in America called ‘Cross me Out’, and then while it was charting we dropped a heavier single called ‘Benefit of Doubt’.

Is your plan to stick with the single structure or build to more of an EP or follow-up album?

I think we’re kinda doing it all! We’ve got a lot of time on our hands when we’re off tour so we may drop a few singles here and there, we may have an EP in the works. I don’t know what exactly I can and can’t talk about!

I find the industry is so hard to read these days, it’s pretty hard to decide what to actually drop!

Oh yeah. It’s interesting because as soon as you drop something someone wants more. So if you drop a full record, 12 songs that you’ve worked years on, by the end of the week people are like ‘okay, when’s the next record’. We haven’t even left for tour yet!

You’ve got quite a big touring schedule for the summer, right? You’ve been out here quite a lot recently, right?

Yep, Europe and the UK!

We’ve been to the UK twice, both times with Kris Barras. We absolutely love him and his band; phenomenal musicians and phenomenal people. And then we also toured with Alien Ant Farm.

Obviously that was the tour with CKY on originally, are you able to talk about that whole situation at all?

Yeah, I can talk about it; it didn’t affect us at all! We had nothing to do with it.

It happened really fast. We have nothing against CKY’s music; I grew up playing video games with them in it! Viva La Bam and all that other stuff. We were really excited to tour with those guys alongside Alien Ant Farm. They were the soundtrack to my childhood.

The way we did it was we started our tour with Kris Barras, Kris took a break and we filled it in with AAF, and then we ended the tour with Kris. It puts a lot into perspective as far as the size of venues you play and the amount of people you play in front of and the different productions. It really makes you navigate every aspect of touring no matter what stage you’re playing on. We were on the last of the first-half with Kris Barras. We’d just finished playing and I go back into our dressing room and my phone’s just blowing up. Like ‘dude did you see what happened?!’. And it’s all over every news source.

I don’t really know personally what happened between them. But I will say that after touring with AAF; those are the nicest dudes ever! The singer, so nice. The team were always like ‘hey, are you guys okay, do you need food, do you have enough money, it’s a different country and it’s cool to have fellow Americans with us’. They were super cool!

Have you managed to play with CKY at all since?

Nope, still haven’t met CKY!

So they were booted off that tour and then there was The Fear that jumped on. Those guys, super amazing people! And we played with another band called InMe; a really awesome metal band.

Are there any comparisons you can draw between playing out here to back home?

So I’m originally from Boston, Massachusetts; New England. I grew up in Vegas but I spent a lot of summers and family holidays back East. You never really think twice as to why they call it New England. Then, we landed in England for the first time, and it felt like Boston everywhere! Aside for the driving thing! I felt like I went home. I was like ‘I’ve never been here but I feel like I’m at home’. It was such a great impression of the entire country. It was so beautiful. Each city has its own little charm. London reminds me a lot of LA meets New York. Then you go to Birmingham and it’s a little rougher around the edges, a little more red brick everywhere and it kinda reminded me of Seattle. And there’s some parts of it, when we’re going to restaurants and clubs under bridges and stuff and it felt like Detroit! It was so cool, man!

I guess you find familiarity everywhere you go; maybe that’s what you do to feel more comfortable in new places. But it was love at first sight in the UK. Coming back in a couple of weeks, I feel like I’m about to go home and visit family. That’s how excited I am!

You’re here with Wednesday 13, right? And then Europe with Drowning Pool?

Yep! I grew up listening to Drowning Pool. I don’t think I’ve accepted that it’s happening yet. I’m so in denial. It’s something that’s happening but I haven’t associated myself with it. I think once we see them on stage after we’ve played, I’m gonna lose it!

You mentioned that you’re based out of Vegas. I imagine there’s a bit of a difference between the reality of it and what people might think, given the amount of venues and party atmosphere of the place?

Vegas is an interesting monster. It’s exactly what you make of it. There are people out here who say the music scene is dead. Then there’s other people out here getting great shows, building crowds and coming up in the scene by cutting their teeth and putting in the work. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here but we’ve rose up in this town while everyone else has gone ‘the scene is dead, what’s the point in playing shows’. Truthfully, if you wanna be a successful band in Vegas, you need to make friends with the kings of Vegas: cover bands. Cover is king in Vegas, always has been. When the Brat Pack came to town what did they do? Covers. Elvis? Covers. You need to play with someone who lets people feel comfortable in their own atmosphere, so once you play the go ‘wait a minute, who the fuck is this?!’.

Our team has taken that idea and applied it to our live performances. When we play in the UK or various other places where people are gonna go ‘I’ve never heard the name Nocturnal Affair before in my life’. We’ve played more covers in our set than most. Our first UK tour we played our single ‘It’s No Good’, which is a Depeche Mode cover, covered ‘N.I.B.’ by Black Sabbath, we did ‘What is Love’, and we played ‘Hash Pipe’. So four out of nine songs were covers. But, for being a band that maybe 800 people were watching for the first time, most of those people were singing with us for most of our set. Because of that, when we came back in November and played less covers, those people were there singing our songs to us. You give them a sense of familiarity and make them comfortable and they open their mind to your music, and you make new friends!

Yeah, it’s the same here, so many great cover and tribute artists and it really helps an emerging band hopping on a bill with them sometimes!

Yeah because at the end of the day, so many people are flocking to these bands, I’m sure they care if it’s the original artist or not, but they’re paying money to watch a show, to get away from all the other bullshit in life. They wanna party and have a drink and see some rock, kinda just let go!

Do you have a pretty busy rest of the year planned once you get back from Europe?

I plead the fifth…

We’re working on something in Vegas for our local fanbase. Maybe there’s a record coming up, but that’s about as much as I can say, it’s all very secret right now. What we’re building is gonna be really cool!

Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? You mentioned you’ve supported a few bands from your childhood but I imagine there are more you want to join?

Yes! And I don’t care how old they are. We just saw Black Sabbath play and how old are they? It’s definitely Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails. We have to do it. I don’t know how or when or why but that’s the goal, man. Just two of the best live performances I’ve ever seen!