(L–R) Dominic Palermo, Brandon Setta, Nick Bassett and Kyle Kimball of Nothing demonstrate Relapse Records’ penchant for releasing quality records with Guilty of Everything.

The Chords are Crushing, a Relapse to Nothing

By
March 6, 2014

Music Interviews

During his tenure with Horror Show, Palermo’s aesthetic/musical palate was transitioning to different tastes. “I was barely even listening to any hardcore at that point,” he says. “I’d already progressed into different things, just getting into a lot of the shoegaze stuff. I wanted to do it, and at that point in time, didn’t necessarily have the tools [or] the patience to try to sort it out.” Around 2010, friends pressured Palermo to realize the project, and Nothing released “a demo, and … it [was] received well,” says Palermo. “I just decided to try to do something else with it—that’s when I met [guitarist and Guilty of Everything co-writer] Brandon [Setta], and we recorded the Suns and Lovers EP together. That’s when I knew we were doing something kind of special.”

Nothing released Downward Years to Come on A389 in 2012 and played SXSW at a friend’s house show in 2012. Last year saw their first official shows with SX in conjunction with their tour with Whirr. With some experience playing in Nothing under their belts, Palermo praises Setta as being crucial to the band’s momentum. “We share the responsibility pretty evenly,” says Palermo. “Brandon did write a lot of the riffs for the record. I think I help a lot with song structure … We’re a good combination, I think, for making some really fucking depressing music.” The two went into writing Guilty of Everything knowing that they wanted it to be a “sad record”—a goal they have always strived for in this project. The two locked themselves in a practice space, bent on creating nine songs for an LP, and just played riffs, sitting in opposite corners of the room without talking to each other until they found material they liked. Palermo says, “We know that there’s always beauty in melancholy. We try to bring that same thing to the music. We want things to be heavy and have an undertone of hope and try to mix that in to where it eventually hits that point in the song where that hope is this crushing chord progression.”

The band took what would be Guilty of Everything to be recorded and produced by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs, Swirlies). Downward Years to Come exhibits similar songwriting to Guilty of Everything, but the production of the former is more jagged. “We’re pretty good at finding tones, but we lack a lot of the information of the actual gear stuff, so it was really good to work with a ‘gear guy,’” says Palermo of Zeigler. “We learned a little bit more about exactly what we needed rather than us ‘making due.’ He’s really good friends with one of the owners at Relapse and was sending the record as we were playing. We kind of just laughed it off.”

The “who you know” axiom rang true in this case: Nothing are from Philadelphia, which is where Relapse’s headquarters are based. Jaffe says, “[Zeigler] sent it to me when it was almost done … I’m not sure that he was necessarily thinking of it as a Relapse title as much as he just thought that I was gonna like it, and I thought it was awesome and listened to it like 20 times straight after I got it.” Jaffe brought the record to Relapse president Matthew Jacobson’s attention, and the two decided to approach Nothing to sign onto Relapse. Palermo says, “They were really detailed about knowing the material on the LP … the lyrics, music—brought specific things up. To me, that was really cool: We put a lot of emotion in—a lot of hard work into that LP. It seemed only right that the label putting it out would be behind it as much as we are.”

Jacobson says of Nothing and Guilty’s release on Relapse, “They’re just awesome. It’s as simple as that. One of the things I’m most proud of with Relapse is that we have a reputation for taking the left-hand path or following our own path.” In 1990, Jacobson, a tape trader who made fanzines, started Relapse. He says, “I just got a buzz off of turning people on to music that I loved and that they ended up loving as well. Really, in a lot of ways, Relapse became a vehicle to do that on a larger scale.” As a curator of not only the label’s sound(s), but of a team working for the label, Jacobson says, “We, as a collective of people, have always had [a] broad interest in lots of forms of music in the underground and in sides of the underground.” He cites Terminal Sound System and Malformed Earthborn as artists who exemplify a similar non-metal allure as Nothing; Jaffe cites Zombie, and they both recall 27.

It seems that Relapse’s and Palermo’s ideologies align regarding the non-specificity of quality music. “We’re music first,” says Jacobson. “We didn’t start this business to make money—we started this business to put out cool records. That’s what’s always guided us.” Relapse certainly pick up where Nothing leaves off in terms of their attitude in making music—Palermo says, “You’re never gonna make everyone happy. Honestly, I’d rather make people bummed out than happy. We write what we write. That’s it.”

Nothing don’t currently have plans to hit Utah, but be sure to check them out at wearenothing.bandcamp.com and at relapse.com, and catch the Relapse showcase at SXSW if you’re in Austin.

As far as the future of Nothing goes, Palermo would love to “ride this thing until the wheels fall off,” he says. “The band, for me, is an outlet. It’s a way for me to cloud the vision a bit so I’m able to wake up every day and climb out of bed.” It’s crushing.