We had the pleasure of chatting to Brendan of the amazing Nocturnal Affair again last week. We caught up about how the last year has been since our last chat, as well as the bands new and upcoming music, and tour with Fear Factory. Check it all out below!

Sadly our stupid video didn’t record fully again, but I have some potential plans for still getting bits out… watch this space!

It’s been just over a year since we chatted last time. So, how’s the last year been?

Crazy, bro, crazy! Did you chat with me before or after Drowning Pool?

I think it was just before.

Yeah, that was crazy. They took good care of us. It’s just been great, dude. We’ve been working on a ton of music. We’ve got a bunch of songs we recorded forever ago, that we’re still waiting on the schedule of release. And then we’re mixing it up with even crazier songs. After that, people are going to think I’m a crazy person, more so than usual! But, I’m really looking forward to that.

We’ve had three singles since the start of the year, right?

We’ve got ‘Deep’, ‘Oxygen’ and ‘Place in Time’. And I’ve got two more that are we’re kind of pushing the limits here as far as how many we can release at once. I don’t know if we’re doing two at once or if we’re doing one at one time while we’re on tour with Fear Factory.

All three so far seem pretty different in style as well. I assume that was a conscious decision to kind of put something out that was a different side of the band each time?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s I do my best to not write the same song again and again and again. I love so many genres. I’ll go to the gym and I’ll listen to like Ramstein. And then later in the day, I’ll go back for cardio and I’ll be listening to Bill Withers. Then I’ll listen to like, Hayley Williams’s solo stuff, like Hayley from Paramore.

Yes, oh, some of her solo is so good.

Her solo records are so good!

So, it’s just, because I love to listen to so many different things, I’m not trying to limit myself to metal, or hard rock. And I feel like if I tried to, it would show that I’m meant to do more. I feel like I’d be forcing it if I only tried to do rock. I do rock when I feel like doing rock. When I want to do a piano ballad, that’s what I do. When I want to do an alternative, I’ll release something like ‘Oxygen’.

Yeah, definitely. I was reading the press release for Place in Time as well, and it was a really It’s a cool kind of concept and story to it. I feel like it’s really kind of touched quite a few people.

Yeah, it’s really cool that a lot of people have enjoyed the song and and and kind of felt the the power that was behind it when when we wrote it, because it It wasn’t a personal story for me. ‘Place in Time’, it happened to somebody who’s one of my best friends. He’s such an inspiration to me as far as just the type of man he is and and how good he is to people, and I’ve watched him fall apart from this sickness that just like chooses anyone. I mean, it’s scary. That bacteria that whatever it is is fucking scary.

It’s so funny, like they used it for our video. The thing that you see, I don’t know if you’ve seen the video yet, the big yellow thing with the tentacles, that’s the actual virus. That’s the actual cell, that is the thing that tries to kill you and and it’s antibiotic resistant.

I mean he died on the table four times. Yeah. Four times. The last time he heard his father’s voice screaming at him to get up. So that’s why we put that in the song. And also, what’s scary is like something that kind of creeps around and whatever, that’ll kill you if it if you let it. They’re relentless. When they pulled it out of him, it had grown so much, and they had to put it in a thing, and it had tentacles. Like the the bit that had grown and overpowered a lot of his body, they put it in a thing, and it reacted to light when when light showed on it, and it was moving.

God, that’s terrifying.

It’s crazy. It’s out of an alien movie. Yeah, and he fought it and he won. And thank God, he’s still here with us, and he’s stronger than before, and I’m so grateful.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it was just such a compelling story, and I don’t think we had planned to write about it. I think we was just going out to see him to hang with him in Jersey, and he was just like… He doesn’t play music; he listens to a lot of music, but he is definitely a creative mind like the rest of us…and he was like, “I have this riff that just like keeps playing in my head. I think it’s original. I don’t think it’s something  that I’m hearing from something else” So, I just brought my writing stuff with me, put down my laptop. I was like, “Okay, just sing it out for me.” And we sang it out, and we kind of built it, and it turned into what it is.

I gave it to my the guy who produced it, Tony Carbani, and he took the instrumentals, and he just turned them upside down, added his little bits to it. There’s a lot of stuff we kept in the chorus that was originally written in Jersey with Rick, but then it became its own monster. Then we were just like, “We got to do this, we got to release this.” It went from being like, “Hey, let’s just kind of help you get everything going out of your head and onto paper,” to now it’s like, one of my favorite songs to play live!

All your videos seem pretty massive and ambitious. I imagine it’s quite a big undertaking, to do videos of this kind of magnitude?

Not for me! I get to sit back and watch them do their magic, which I have never done before.

So, it’s done by management. Mark Willis, and somebody else on our team named Larry Hinson, who has this whole media conglomerate, where he works with a ton of other people; our good buddy Dustin and various other people in other states. They have this like insane time machine Frankenstein’s monster computer that’s the size of Texas, and it’s like when you turn it on, it sounds like a plane engine. And this thing, they scanned our bodies. And it’s done in the Unreal video game engine. That’s what the videos are done in. So, we have avatars in this video game world. They just put their minds together and create this awesome madness. That I have nothing to do with. And it’s not that I prefer that, because I love to see what I create with what producers I’m working with at the time. But I love to see how that inspires other people, even if it’s management and my team.

I had ‘Deep’ written back in the in like 2022, right? ‘Cross Me Out’ was 2023. ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ was beginning of 2024. All three of those songs were so different. They were so, just unrelated, different parts of my life, different emotional experiences, I was a different person in each writing session. And my manager heard it, and he was like, “Cool, we’re doing a trilogy.” ‘Cross Me Out’, and ‘Benefit of the Doubt’, and we’re ending it with ‘Deep’. And I was like, “You’re crazy, but that’s brilliant. Let’s go.” And he just did it, and it works. I think we’ve got a super cut of all three videos too, and how they run together.

I’m so grateful. What they did with Place in Time is like next level. They have like a bunch of new equipment, new programs, like new editing, and like with the avatars of the other characters, I had, dude, I had no idea what was going on. No idea. We went there, we got in front of a green screen, we performed. We’re in the moment, we do our thing, we think we know what’s going to happen. And then they released it and I was like, “Are we in space? Are we on a spaceship?” It’s so cool!

Then what they did with ‘Oxygen’ was freaking awesome. Like, he heard the song and he went, “You’re going to be Eric Clapton, and when Eric Clapton tried to fuck George Harrison’s wife, we need to find George Harrison’s wife.” And I was like, “I’m going to  what?!” That was just so fun, and just that he heard that song and he thought of that instance… I would have never have done that.

What’s the writing process? Is the rest of the band involved with it at all?Do you kind of bring some of the stuff to them and jam it out?

I have an open door policy on writing. So, since this band has started, I’ve kind of written and recorded everything, generally, except like guitar solos. Like for the entirety of Metamorphosis, I think except for one middle beginning solo on ‘Nothing left’, that was all done by our lead guitar player, Andy. Aside from that, I’ve written and recorded the lot. I mean, he did riffage and stuff and various other syncopated rhythms. But, I’ve generally been the the sole songwriter for the band.

Until kind of recently, I’ve been working with this Tony guy, he’s been kind of bringing stuff to the table that has just inspired. Like, we’ve got this song in the works that I really can’t say much about, that he wrote years ago for somebody else. That somebody else didn’t take it. I guess that’s what happens a lot with a lot of producers and songwriters. They bring them to many other songs, because he’s worked with many bands, so there there’s a couple other bands he’s worked with that he’s got stuff. Like they didn’t want it, and I hear it and I go, “Yeah, how? Are they crazy!”

I’ve learned to kind of check my ego and not worry about “Oh, everybody has to know that I write everything.” At the end of the day, who cares? So I’m like, instead of trying to be big tough guy, big writer on campus, I want to be creative and I want to surround myself with the most talented people I can and learn from, because I discovered when I work with other people and they write with me, oh, I become a better writer. So, it’s kind of a win-win. You get a great product, and then I also get better.

So I’ve told the guys, open door policy. If you’ve got a song idea, you can bring it to the table, but if I say no, you can’t be mad. And it’s it’s sometimes a little difficult, because I’m like, if I don’t feel like it’s Nocturnal, i’m probably going to say no. But the funny thing is, lately we’re throwing a lot of curveballs with the with the genre that we’re we’re dipping our tootsies in. So it’s going to be an interesting thing to see how everybody feels after these next few releases!

I feel like, outside songwriters are a lot more prevalent than a lot of music fans at least seem to think, as well. I know we’ve chatted to a few country artists and it’s even more of a thing in that genre, like everyone will just kind of get together and write everything and pass it around. Whereas it’s it’s less of a thing in rock, but I mean you’ve only got to look at Elvis barely writing any of his own songs, really.

Exactly, and he was so wonderful. And it’s kind of music should be, right? An expression of the artist to get through, or express whatever I would like, right? But it’s I’ve kind of discovered it’s really not about me. It is, but it’s not. Like, if it was about me, I wouldn’t be doing this in a public forum. I wouldn’t be writing this music and showing everyone I write this music, and it would be for me. But the moment I release it, it becomes whatever anybody is listening to it thinks it becomes. It is now now a soundtrack to a moment in their life, if they choose for it to be. I mean I’ve had people call me, you know, friends that heard when ‘Cross Me Out’ was being played a lot, and they’re like, “I just can’t stop thinking about this specific moment in my life,” and they tell me a story, and I’m like, “That is not what the song is about at all.” But I’m glad that it is a medium for you to maybe face demons you needed to face, or relive some happy nostalgia, or just maybe relate to it completely.

You said you’ve got another couple of singles that you haven’t to drop. Are we building towards something a bit bigger, like another album or an EP or something?

We might have an EP. I thought we had an EP a year ago, and then we kind of just took another turn with what we were doing musically. You know, it’s interesting, because the music industry is changing every 3 to 6 months on a crazy level. So you think you have an idea for what the next couple quarters are going to look like, and then you’re like, “That that’s not going to work out so well.” So, maybe… we sure as hell have enough unreleased music to release an EP. But I think anything is possible.

You’ve for a busy rest of the year planned, right?

Yeah, we’re going out with Fear Factory on Thursday. We leave, So we’ll be waving at you on the way to the rest of Europe. Then we’ll be finishing the tour with you in October.

Dude, I miss the UK so much! I just want like one just one English breakfast, which it’s never one. I’m going to have one every morning and I’m going to feel all like bloated while I get on stage. But it’s going to be worth it!

I saw it’s your birthday, right, while you’re out here?

Yep! Well, September 2nd, we will be in I believe either Lithuania or Latvia. And it will be Dino’s birthday, too. And what’s crazy is I do a sober tour, so I don’t know what I’m going to do. Kind of like have like a diet coke and maybe like a steak!