Bleak hardcore pack NUKK strikes at listeners’ hearts with intense gloominess

As we move into 2017 the pickings don’t get slim at all and it’s literally a tornment not being able to share every single band that deserves a proper coverage. On the positive side, I’m always thrilled to give time for artists such as these to earn their place in the spotlight. The indeterminably dense and atmospheric blend of various moods reflected by the amazing work of dark hardcore band NUKK seems truly relevant and worth our time. We caught up with them to talk about the amazing “Nukk” EP, their nihilist aesthetic, creative inspirations, and more.

Answers by Przemek

Hey guys! How are you? How’s this gloomy winter been treating you so far?

Hey Karol! It’s all good here. The weather can keep you down sometimes, but for guys like us it’s just another season passing. We speak with each other almost every day through facebook. You know, We don’t have so many possibilities to spend time together. Peter started his driving classes recently so we are counting on his new mad driving skills in future tours. I am between jobs and recently I got back to writing my shitty short stories. Lucas takes his daily dose of vitamins and funny brain pills to stay alive in Scandinavia, and John works hard in one of Breslau vegan food establishments.

Awesome! Sounds fun!

Your latest self-titled EP serves a perfect soundtrack to such weather and most of the worrying happening in the world’s social and political situation. Has it inspired you to write more devastating and thought-provoking tracks?

Maybe. We’ll see. Now we try to stay focused on creating new material whenever we got to spend some time together. And we still don’t know what it will be about, there’s so much going on that has its influence on us that it’s still to be decided what stories we will tell, what we saw more important than anything else and how we will express it in melodies, rhythms and screams. But in general the world is not changing so fast as we would like it to. People still chose comforting lies instead of hard truth that can lead to a real change. It’s so hard for so many people to cope with their real self that they constantly try to destroy others who say some real shit from time to time. Deep inside we have this dire need of belonging somewhere, of being needed. This pushes many of us into things that we never thought about earlier, and some of us end up in bad places. The smarter ones can see it, but the majority of those people just stand in their place, and wave whatever they are handed. They do it so they can just feel needed, so they can feel they belong at last. Until people start to think more about matters that affect our everyday life instead of just throwing around judgements we, as a band, or any other musician for that matter will have plenty of topics to write about. Fuck, people are crazy.

What impact did you want “Nukk” to have on the listener? Also, what do you want us to reveal about your stories and lyrical content?

I always wanted the lyrics to speak for themselves. I wrote them as stories that few imaginary people lived through. I can only say that you shouldn’t take them literally, I don’t want to say what they mean, you can interpret them freely, that’s what they’re for.

What impact we wanted to have on our listeners? Hm… There’ a story that sums it up for me perfectly: few days ago John told us that his friend was listening to our record in her house. And while it came to a close her son approached her and said: “Mom, can this music be on all the time? Because it is good for me to fight and it’s really sad” – I must say whatever that 8 year old dude was fighting, he made our day. That was the most genuine response to our work ever! Maybe that’s what this music is for, helping you go through whatever you’re struggling with. We are very grateful to Filip for his words, and we cheer for him in his upcoming fights! Stay strong dude!

Alright, so back to your initial moves with NUKK, what was the motivation for starting this band and bringing specific attention to both aesthetic side of your work, as well as the issues your have touched upon?

I can’t tell you what motivated John, Peter and Lucas to create Nukk. I wasn’t there. I can only guess it was a mix of their experiences and needs at that time. All of them were going through some hard stuff and they needed a catalyst, some way to express all the shit that went wrong or was about to do so. When I joined Nukk, the instrumental part of EP was already done. They even performed with those songs before. I remember going to one of their shows in Breslau, It was in august 2014. And man, I can tell you those guys were fucking awesome! I just stood there, taken away by all the sounds and noises they’ve made. Some time later we joined forces and after few rehearsals we had a talk about the idea behind the whole band, it’s name and what we want to express. The original concept was built around a person living in the far, cold north. His or Hers life out there. The crushing feelings of loneliness, helplessness and constant sadness in everyday life. The idea of that person grew on us and soon after that we’ve built a small imaginary city full of imaginary people feeling the same way but experiencing different hardships. Just like in real life, wherever you live, it’s always the same, same rules apply. And so I’ve wrote down few stories that made it to become those songs lyrics. The whole thing – the EP – involved much more people than just us. We had a great deal of help from Satanic Audio. Kuba who recorded us, shared his ideas and helped us feel comfortably in studio so we could spread our wings.. Haldor mastered the tracks and also was there in studio to share his thoughts on everything we were doing. Those dudes are the best! Next is our guitarist Lucas and his photo skills – photos he took on his many trips were one of the inspirations for EP looks, Katarzyna Kaczor created the basics of our cover, and later Łukasz Hajduk from TORN SHORE put the final touch to the graphic design of our EP. Last but not least, all of this would be a lot harder without help of Tytus from Unquiet Records who gave us a chance, thanks to him the EP was released in physical form.

How do you work with that notion today? Where do your inspirations push you next when you think about your next creative moves?

Well motivations can change but our need of creating won’t be easily satisfied, despite our changes as people we still hold on to that one thing that is most important to us: we all love playing instruments, hitting drums, pulling guitar strings and screaming our lungs out until they’re sore. There’s no more to that, and I think there never was.

As a band we don’t want to stop any time soon! We already got tracks for next recordings and there are still new coming in. I won’t tell much about it, because plans can change, I don’t want to spoil it. For now we just try to make it work and get all things together to book studio when we’ll be ready.

As you already mentioned, you’re currently split between several locations. Could you tell us about the sort of projects and local artists you’ve been inspored by recently?

We often post to each other with new bands that we’ve found or just heard somewhere somehow. Like every band we discuss what we liked and what was garbage. There are so many bands and artist we show each other that it’s really hard to tell and pick those one truly inspiring. All of them have some degree of influence on us, don’t they? You listen to Julien Baker who we all like (I can tell in secret that one of us has a little crush on her) and think – WOW that’s really good, check out that melodies, or lyrics. It goes like this in every direction. From bands that are part of our scene to those who are not. We also pick up things we don’t like from other artists so we will be certain we don’t want to do things this or that way. Most inspirational for us are people we spend our time with. Like other musicians from other bands that we are friends with. It’s always good to collide your ideas with other people who think differently. That can only lead to progress if you are opened to that. So listen to pop from time to time, jazz, tekkno, classical music, even rap. Try to stay open to new things, you can always quit when you’re sure you don’t like something. Don’t deprive yourself of new ideas.

Alright, so finally, could you give us a hint of what’s in store for NUKK and your possible other projects over the next couple of months?

For Nukk it’s a new recording for sure. For us as individuals? Well, everybody got their plates full at the moment. I joined TORN SHORE and we’re working on a new record. Me and Peter from TORN SHORE and our previous band DEAD DINGO work on a secret project that is almost finished. I know that Lucas and first DEAD DINGO vocalist created a band in Oslo. Nukk’s Peter and Lucas had loose plans about creating screamo band when both of them get back to Breslau. Lucas is constantly taking photos so maybe he’ll do some exhibitions when the time is right. So as you can see there’s a lot going.

Thanks so much for your time. The last words are yours. Cheers!

I think I’ve said enough. Thank you, it was a pleasure!

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