Time has rendered Nervecell more brutal than ever, as the pioneers of UAE’s metal scene return with Past, Present… Torture, their first album since 2011.
The 13-track record is a far cry from the music they made as fresh-faced high school graduates (different line-up) back in 2000. Guitarist Barney Ribeiro describes it as: “Heavy, honest, purposeful and, most importantly, with zero compromises.”
The 34-year-old remembers 1990s Dubai, when access to metal music was limited; you would exchange numbers with any guy on the street wearing a Metallica, Slayer or Pantera T-shirt.
“It was such a rare sight,” he says.
The band’s first gig in Abu Dhabi in 2001 earned them Most Creative Band and Best Guitarist awards. Now, with a third album under their belt, the trio plans to embark on a Middle East tour, followed by Europe and Asia. We catch up with Ribeiro in a moment of downtime.
How would you describe this album, musically, lyrically, thematically?
Musically, hands down this is the most technically advanced, extreme and versatile Nervecell record to date. Lyrically, we’ve always written songs from a humanitarian/social unrest standpoint. On this album, James [Khazaal], who writes all the lyrics in the band, started writing lyrics based on ancient scripts and texts from the dark ages.
Is it a departure from your previous releases?
We definitely stepped up the game massively with the production and the actual songwriting, but we still maintained that Nervecell groove and sound that we’ve established over the years. This is a whole new level of brutality that we’re bringing to the table. In the lead up to this album, the band went through a lot of highs and lows in our career (disputes with past management companies, exiting past record labels etc.), but we never once thought to call it a day.
Why did this album in particular take four years to make?
We took the entire last year off to focus on recording the album. Being based in Dubai, we get to tour quite a lot being between Europe and Asia. We enjoy the balance of touring, coming back home and getting out there again. Hence the long wait between our albums, I guess.
Tell us a little bit about the title of the album — what is the significance behind it?
Past, Present... Torture basically is a statement about where we, as a human race, are eventually heading. One would argue that we should learn from our past, but are we really? We’ve seen and studied human behaviour for years and as they say, history repeats itself. I choose the word ‘torture’ to replace ‘future’ deliberately to create that sense of urgency and importance to act now.
To what do you attribute the growth in metal bands performing in Dubai?
We honestly have proudly put Dubai on the metal map globally. We go out there touring the world and quite often we find ourselves actually educating the masses that Dubai is a city like no other, and that it’s perfectly safe to be a metal band based here in spite of all the stereotypes they hear of. If you ask me, if there ever was a soundtrack to the Middle East with regards to the history, war and bloodshed that has taken place in this region of the world, that soundtrack would definitely be a heavy metal soundtrack.
*Nervecell are Rami H. Mustafa, Barney Ribeiro and James Khazaal. Their album Past, Present... Torture is out now.