Ahead of the release of Nanowar of Steel ‘s brand new album and UK tour, we got to sit down with guitarist Mohammed Abdul to chat about it all! Check it out below!
So firstly, what inspired you to be more of a comedy band?
We just wanted to have fun together. The thing blew up unexpectedly, maybe a little too much! But we have to follow it through and here we are!
So obviously you self-released a lot of your early stuff, how does it feel to now be signed to someone like Napalm?
It feels fucking great! We were struggling for a long time to have the chance to play the game in a professional environment. This is our first chance. The first album we did with Napalm, we made something very special for the Italian fans during the Covid period. But this is our debut, it’s our first time and we’re very very happy to collaborate with them.
They’ve been great to us. They let us make whatever we wanted because they knew it’s kinda hard to make any lesser version of the bullshit we put into the songs. So they didn’t want to do anything in advance, they let us do what we want. Even we don’t know what we are going to make next! They gave us complete freedom and great support so we’re happy.
And obviously the album is out 10th March, what was it like to write and record?
This album was mostly written during Covid together with our previous one. We’re quite happy with that as we had a lot of time to work on the details of the album, the arrangements and the instruments and everything. I’m not the one in charge to judge myself or the work we do as a group but I’m happy because I had the chance to put all the things that I have into it. I have nothing left in the pocket, we just put everything in it. And we’re happy with that.
The process has been quite difficult, as you can imagine. We started from the Covid stuff and wrote the songs just like we are talking right now. We were talking in remote meetings all through the year. It’s not easy but we’re used to it a bit as we never used to be in the same city. What changed for me personally is that once I started working from home it was easier to switch from the regular job to the songs. I had much more time to do more accurate work.
The recordings have been quite a pain in the ass. We recorded this album while touring. We faced quite a hard summer as we had to make the shows for this summer and all the previous shows from 2020 that were cancelled and rescheduled. So we had a very crazy schedule and we made maybe the wrong choice of editing the tracks ourselves, as that’s what we’re used to. But we had to edit the tracks while touring. So I spent all summer while touring in the van with the headphones on mixing the tracks. It’s been quite a huge pain in the ass! But it’s over now and we’re happy!
It’s not easy. Even just travelling, going around and playing, can be tricky. Adding on more to that, spending all the time you’re supposed to relax working is not fun at all. So for all the bands and readers, please don’t do it! Take care of your mind and don’t do that!
A fair few people consider it harder to write comedy over more serious stuff. Have you found that?
I cannot tell you if it’s harder or not. I’m very happy that you give us the credit of the work! The main approach I’ve found talking to people is the opposite. Many people think that writing comedy songs is kinda B-side music or that it’s easier to do. It’s not. I cannot tell if it’s harder or not than non-comedy music as the approaches are completely different. But I can tell you that it’s not easy.
You have to face a lot of things that you don’t have to with regular music. You have to put a lot of effort into the lyrics and the relationships between the lyrics and the music. It’s easier on the musical part as you can be a little more relaxed on the innovation put into it. You’re not forced to make something completely new, not that that’s something that’s taken into account much in metal! But the drawback of it is that you have to put more work into the lyrics.
You guys are coming to the UK soon, right?
Yeah! Somewhere between April and May. We’ve only been there for one concert, last summer for Bloodstock. That was great. Every time I come to Britain I have a great time, I love the place in general. I’m saying this like the common sentence that you say at every live show, but I do actually love it there!
All my favourite bands come from there. Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, even The Beatles. And Jimmi Hendrix got famous when he came to the UK! That means the UK is great!
And I imagine you have a lot more touring planned off the album for the rest of the year?
Actually we don’t have a huge long term plan. We are planning this long tour during the spring, around Europe and the UK, and then we take some rest and then do the festivals in the summer.
After that we don’t have anything planned. So I really don’t know what’s going on during the autumn or winter. We expect something, but I think it depends how the record goes and how good the concerts go. This is the first time we’ve headlined a tour like this around Europe so we hope it goes right as that would mean a lot to us and our business.
Are you guys planning on doing more parody tracks like ‘I’m Heavy’?
No, actually it’s something that we want to stop doing. The early years we were perceived as a parody band. We mock the style of a lot of bands but we don’t make parody, in a strict term. We saw that once we stopped doing them people started to feel that we can write songs. So we are trying to be as far as we can from the strict parody stuff. We just write our own song in the style of something else or put a reference in, but we prefer to write our own style of music.