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our interview is with Barney Ribeiro guitar player in the death metal band Nervecell...
AMC# 1: well before everything we want to thank you for giving us some of your time to do this interview ..
Barney: Your welcome my friend!
AMC#Q 2: the band resides in the UAE, the band members are from diffrent countries simply how did you meet and started in nervecell?
Barney: The band started with a couple of friends of mine back in 2000 when we were in university here in Dubai. Back then Nervecell started as a hardcore band but with death metal influences of course. We used to play a lot of events in college’s and schools like take part in band competitions etc. and thats how we started building a name for ourselves in the local scene. At about 2003 roughly we had a few members leave the band and so that’s when Rami and James both joined the band. Ever since then we started focusing on original material and began our quest as Nervecell to take things further and released our first E.P entitled “Human Chaos” independently which ended up getting us a lot of attention from both national and international press and media. The fact that we are all originally from different countries has a lot to do with the fact that we all live in Dubai, it’s a city with people from all over the world and we love that.
AMC#Q 3: What are the bands and metal subgenres that influenced nervecell?
Barney: Basically the whole old school wave of Death Metal and Thrash Metal bands from the late 80’s / early 90’s. We listen to a lot of the newer sub genres that exist in metal too but collectively as a band we have our roots in old school death metal more or less.
AMC#Q 4: A lot of metalfans says that nervecell musical style has changed from the death/thrash "preaching venom" to the brutal/death Psychogenocide do you have any comments on that?
Barney: Yeah I too believe we have stepped it up on “Psychogenocide” both in terms of the technical side of the music and the quality of writing as well. It’s a very dark yet brutal album. You can hear the aggression and anger in the music a lot more, I just love how mature and modern it sounds and all of us in the band feel it represents us very well today for who we are and what we all stand for and believe in as the band that we are.
AMC#Q 5: You have played in liveshows and tour before,and you played in wacken 2009 can you tell us how did you felt after playing in the most populaire metal festival??
Barney: Touring is always fun and its something we don’t want to ever stop doing as a band, be it in small venues or open air festivals. I believe that’s what makes a band successful! The fact that you are not afraid to play anywhere and everywhere as long as you are making the effort to reach out to your fans then you should take every opportunity that comes your way provided its safe! We played Wacken Open Air in 2009 for the festivals 20th year anniversary and that was a highlight in our career of course. It was a very humbling experience cause its something you always dream about especially being a Middle Eastern based band, it made the entire Middle East Metal scene realize that hard work does pay off in the long run. We were just thrilled that we got the opportunity, playing Wacken definitely made us feel all the years of hard work and determination finally paid off.
AMC#Q 6:What is the main ideas of the lyrical themes that the band use?
Barney: On the new album it’s more based around subjects such as social unrest, manipulation, corrupt organizations and brain washing of the innocent people to live in a controlled environment.
AMC#Q 7:your last album Psychogenocide released in 2011 it's described as a great production album that contains well written songs,can you tell us more about album writting and production in the band?
Barney: Yes that’s true, with “Psychogenocide” we had decided to handle the recording schedule at our studio in Dubai ourselves. We felt we were confident enough to do this and so we wanted to be comfortable by taking on the job, so Rami had taken care of the tracking and we out sourced the music to be mixed and mastered in Poland at Hertz Studios and it turned out awesome at the end! As far as the writing went Rami and I were working on the songs together for a period of 6 months where we would get together and spend nights just finalizing the song arrangements and get all the pre production of the songs done together before going into the studio and recording each track.
AMC#Q 8:as a extreme metal band from the middle-east what can you say about the middle-east metal scene ?
Barney: There is a lot of metal heads and upcoming bands in the Middle East with great potential! We as Nervecell are trying to do our best to represent the Middle East for Metal music and of course to play to all our brothers and sisters in this region. Wherever we are invited to play we will be more than happy to do so and spread our music to those who appreciate it!
AMC #Q 9 :This may be a personal question but have you ever listened to a algerian metal band?
Barney: I have heard of only a few to be honest but the only one that comes to mind at the moment is a band called Litham. I came across them a couple of years ago and its always great to see bands like that who have been doing this since the early 90’s. \m/
AMC #Q 10 : what you think is good for a extreme metal band is it the good producted albums or the good live shows ? or is it both? and tell us why exactly?
Barney: I think its important to have both, today you can record a kick ass sounding metal album at the comfort of you own home but the real question is can you bring that same energy and mood of the record LIVE on the stage? Thats normally where a lot of bands today fall off unfortunately, as a member of Nervecell we try and keep our albums sounding as organic as possible because we don’t want to achieve something on CD that’s totally impossible to deliver when we play live. We like our music to sound as realistic and honest all the time. When we perform live we want to completely bring the song out in a more aggressive and intimate way with tons more energy of course! In metal music I believe playing live and being tight is very very important and that’s what makes metal bands stand out from all the others.
AMC # Q11: so we would like to thank you again for giving us this interview, is there any comments and words you would like to say for the end.??
Barney: Thank you for reading this interview and do check out our latest album “Psychogenocide” which came out earlier this year! Nervecell have unfortunately not yet played Algeria but we sure as hell know there are tons of metal heads out there, all of whom we would love to meet and perform for in the near future hopefully.
Cheers to you all and stay strong guys!
