Metal Wani‘s Carl O’Rourke recently sat down with New Years Day guitarist Nikki Misery to talk about the band’s upcoming new album, ‘Unbreakable’, their upcoming tour with Falling In Reverse, how the band is perceived and if rock culture should be saved, as well as much more.
‘Unbreakable’ shines new light and sound for New Years Day, asked if this approach was difficult to pull off, Nikki said,
“Oddly enough, it wasn’t as hard as you would think. Of course, there are times you wanna pull your hair out and be like ‘F*c* this, I quit!’, I mean, you have to have that. If you don’t have these moments where you wanna quit everything you do, like, are you really writing a record? But really, like, it was so much easier and so much more natural, and it was really fun, it was one of the most fun times we had writing, recording and getting everything out.”
Nikki looks forward to the new energy the ‘Unbreakable’ track-list is sure to bring and shred some of his thoughts and memories on the band’s energy.
“Oh, absolutely. I mean, all songs have a live image. It’s a different kind of energy. I remember we had to stop playing ‘Malevolence’ live because I kept breaking my guitars. They had this one part where it kicks in from the bridge, I just can’t help it, I just exploded like a fire-horn and throw my guitar on the ground and start stomping on it. And, you know, after a while Schecter [guitars] are like ‘Hey, you’re not Paul Stanley. You gotta relax a bit.’ And I’m really excited now because come Saturday, only two days away, we’re starting the tour with Falling In Reverse, and we’re playing three songs off the new album. So now we finally get to see these things live and see how they gonna react.” Nikki concluded, “Of course you have this energy and this imagination of the show, but it’s nothing like when you’re feeding off the energy of a crowd and then you see how you really are with these songs.”
Speaking on the misconceptions both within and surrounding the band, Nikki generously shared,
“Ash [Costello] was like, ‘I did not think you were gonna like that song [Shut Up]. And I’m like ‘hey, that’s one of my favorite songs.’ But then you start hearing this ‘New Years Day is a pop band now’ and I’m like, dude we put out one f*c*ing song that sounds like that, I mean like calm your f*c*ing pants, you know? [laughs] and then you hear all this stuff like ‘New, New Years Day is going pop, [imitates wining] they’ve lost their metal edge [continues wining], they lost their rock edge.’ Which is even more so why ‘Come For Me’ is the first rack. After all the sh*t talking that this band has got like ‘Aw, they’re a makeup band.’ I mean what the f*c* does that even mean? ‘Ugh, they’re a Goth rock band’… like, do you even know what Goth rock is? Okay, no. Next.”
Like a Punk, Nikki was asked if he resonates with the words of Nick Cave, who doesn’t object to the idea of letting rock die for a while.
“I think Nick Cave said it perfectly. I mean that’s pretty much what Punk Rock did, it was a corporate rock that started to take over. You need to go back to those three-chord basics. Maybe that’s what needs to happen, I mean I never know what needs to happen, otherwise, I would start the revolution now. But for now, I’m enjoying the ride.”