NERVOSA

I was one lucky dog to have a face to face interview with thrash powerhouses NERVOSA at the Blades of Steel fest in Madison, Wisconsin this last summer. Many thanks to promoter Randy Kastner and tour manager Don for helping to set this up! Needless to say, it may have been the only time in my long lonely life that I got to sit at the same table as the three lovely ladies of NERVOSA...singer guitarist Prika Amaral, guitarist Helena Kotina and drummer Gabriela Abud (the band is rounded out by bassist Hel Pyre).

Once I found my tongue, I had the following interesting conversation with the ladies about their latest album “Jailbreak”, the first headlining tour of America and the current troubling political landscape...

WORMWOOD CHRONICLES: Here I am at Blades of Steel Metalfest and I’m lucky enough to be speaking to Prika and Helena from NERVOSA. Welcome to the US and Wisconsin! Where are you at on your current tour here, the beginning, the end or the middle?

PRIKA AMARAL:  This is actually the very first show of the tour!

WC: The first show! You’ll get a great response here. Have you toured America before?

PA: This is actually the fourth time for us and we are super happy to come back here again. This is the first time we are headliners and we are happy to be going out with LICH KING and HATRIOT, two bands that we admire a lot.

WC: Do you have a favorite place in America to play?

PA: It’s so hard to say because we are glad to play anywhere in the world. With America, it’s different because it’s so big and it has so many different regions. I have a very bad memory, too, so I want to be careful about what I say and not make a mistake.

(Drummer Gabriela Abud joins us)

WC: NERVOSA has had a lot of lineup changes. Is it pretty stable now and you can go ahead for a while with no further changes?

PA: I feel it’s pretty stable right now. I have to clarify that I never fired anyone. All the girls who played with NERVOSA before sacrificed a lot to live this kind of life. There’s a lot of tours, a lot of travel, a lot of practice. It’s hard to have another career besides this, there are a lot of challenges. For me, I gave up everything else in my life for this. I can understand others not wanting to do this.

WC: You have to be super dedicated to put up with all that.

PA: They knew it would harm the band by continuing, so they decided to go away. It takes courage to do that, too.

WC: I have a story to tell you that has a kind of connection to that. About a year and a half ago, I saw the band CRYPTA play in Belvidere, IL. That was the night the tornado hit and the roof fell in. They had just finished playing and ten minutes later, the roof collapsed right on top of the crowd. For the next few minutes, we didn’t know if the whole building was going to collapse. One guy was killed and I’m amazed it wasn’t more. The next morning, I called my PR person to see if any of the bands got hurt, especially CRYPTA. Everybody got out OK, but CRYPTA’s tour bus was trashed. That’s a heck of an introduction to the weather in the Midwest…

PA: Oh yeah, for sure!

WC: Having women in an extreme metal band is no longer as big a surprise as it used to be. Do you see yourselves as trailblazers who paved the path for others?

HK: There have been a lot of bands with girls in them recently, but there is still a long way to go. But it’s really nice to have younger girls coming into bands and saying NERVOSA was an inspiration. They will sometimes ask us for tips and advice. It has been a slow process but it is getting stronger!

WC: In the last two years, I’ve seen an explosion of women in metal. More than ever  before. There was one band I saw live called STABBING and a young girl is their singer. My God, I never heard a voice like that in my life! (laughter) If she tells you to take out the trash, you do it quick! (laughter) Now on the subject of your lyrics, I know a lot of them are rooted in real life. Prika, are you the main lyricist or does that get spread around?

PA: I always compose the lyrics. In the beginning, I did about half of the lyrics but now I do about 70, 75 percent of them. Helena does help me with them on some songs. She writes very well and I like to have some help with that. This is a band, not just me.

WC: Is there one song on your last album “Jailbreak” that means more to you than the others?

PA: I would say as far as the meaning of the lyrics goes, “Seed of Death” is a favorite. It’s about how everything in life is a cycle. Everything dies, but then is born again in a different way. So nobody dies… you just come back in a different shape or form. “Jailbreak” is also important, because that comes from all of us. We all kind of live in a jail. Like we in NERVOSA are all metal fans, but we have other jobs and we have to cover up what we are. We have to pretend. When we play our music, it’s like breaking out of jail and we can be ourselves. People can relate to that. That’s what “Jailbreak” is about.

WC: I wondered about that. I wondered if it had any relation to THIN LIZZY’s “Jailbreak” but I see that it’s different. That was a science fiction story, but your “Jailbreak” is about something more universal. Helena, do you have a favorite track from the album?

HK: Hmmmm, I couldn’t go too far from “Seeds of Death”, but another one I really like is “Endless Ambition”. It’s about people that try to control your mind, that try to make you think the way they think. It’s very much a current thing, something that’s in the news.

WC: Right now we’re in the middle of our political season and it’s crazier than anything I could have ever imagined.

PA: Everybody seems to be going crazy. There are people trying to take over everywhere.

WC: I know in Brazil you had a crazy man running things not too long ago.

PA: Yes, yes. That was a bad time for us.

WC: The thing that’s scary now, these dictators and Nazis don’t even bother to hide, they just come straight out and say what they’re after.

HK: People are so confused, they don’t know right from wrong.

WC: A lot of that is due to social media. Before computers, internet and smartphones, it was not as extreme as it is now. Do you have any ideas for the follow-up album to “Jailbreak” or is it too early yet?

PA; We are working on that right now. Now we are on tour, so it’s kind of put to the side while we do that, but we are thinking about that a lot right now.

WC: You probably get some good ideas just being on tour.

PA: I’m getting some right now. I bring a recorder on tour to record ideas, but I don’t have it right now.

WC: Well, just give me a name check on the next album. (laughter) Now you may have more than one answer for this, but have you ever had any Spinal Tap moments where things went crazy that you could share with us? (all laugh)

PA: My memory of the movie is not great, but one thing I remember is they had trouble remembering how to get on stage. (laughter) That always happens! It’s happened to us!

HK: There was one incident where I wondered, how the fuck did this happen? We were playing a festival in Germany. We were just hanging around and I think I only had one beer. I just wanted to go pee in the rest room, I tried to get to it and I wound up upside down…wow, like what the fuck? And then one of the guys who did the announcing said I was in front of his room, I had to go all the way across the place. It was freezing because it was Germany in mid-November. I followed the guy all the way to the restroom….I was like, man, I must be sleeping, this is nuts! (laughter)

WC: How about you, Gabriela? Have you got one?

GA:  Sometimes I lose control of my drumstick…I almost hit one of the other girls in the head!

WC: That can do some damage!

GA: Yes, it can! (laughs)

WC: Any last words?

PA: Go out and pick up “Jailbreak” if you haven’t already. And we are touring all across the US, we are in Minneapolis after tonight! Come out and see us, we will thrash hard!

NERVOSA