Nocturnus
Name Came From A Slayer Song

07.04.2015

Mike Browning is a true veteran of death metal, one of the originators of the genre. He co-founded Morbid Angel, put together absolutely innovative Nocturnus, and was the first in death metal to combine drumming with doing lead vocal parts. He has bravely endured the blows of fate, which he had quite a few over his musical career. How he is at the helm of the reunited death metal legend, which has, for legal reasons, to use the modified name Nocturnus, and in which he shares the stage with former members of Obituary and Brutality. An interview with such an interested subject can go from here to eternity, therefore we decided that this time we will ask nothing about Mike’s participation in such cult bands as Incubus and Acheron, as well as about the formation of After Death. We will focus mostly on the phenomenal Nocturnus instead.

Hi Mike, how’s life? What are you up to these days?

Staying very busy with my band Nocturnus A.D., we have been playing shows all over the place since the beginning of 2014! Things are going very well with it too, and we are writing new songs as well.

How did you start playing drums? Why did you choose this instrument?

When I was about 10 my mom had a rock band in the mid 1970’s and they rehearsed at my mom’s house, so I always liked watching the drummer, so when we started having band class in school when I was about 13 and in junior high school we had a jazz band where I started learning to play the actual drum set.

Do you have any "eternal idols", I mean, the drummers whom you respected back in the beginning and still do at the moment?

Yes most definitely, my early influences were John Bonham, Neal Peart and Tommy Aldridge and I still respect these same drummers just as much as I did back then!

Which fellow drummers do you appreciate most of all?

The new era of drummers is amazing these days, people like Derek Roddy (ex-Hate Eternal), Hannes Grossman (ex-Obscura) and George Kollias (Nile) are just a few of the incredible drummers that I like a lot these days.

And what about musicians playing other instruments?

That is a really hard question to answer because there are so many killer guitar and bass players out there now. I would more say Alex Webster is one of the best bass players and believe it or not I think Steve Vai is the most amazing guitar player today.

The same question about vocalists. Because you too were and is a vocalist.

I still like the classic singers like Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson.

You were one of founders of Morbid Angel. What were your reasons to leave?

That is a long story, but in short I caught Trey (Azagthoth, guitarist and songwriter) with my girlfriend and I beat him up pretty bad and that was the end of me being in Morbid Angel!

How did you become the singer in Morbid Angel?

I wasn’t the first vocalist in Morbid Angel, we tried out several different kinds of singers and none of them really understood what we were into and doing and we wanted someone who was really into the occult and the Necronomicon. I finally said to Trey to let me try singing and it worked out well, so I became the vocalist and drummer.

When you were putting Nocturnus together, did you decide from the beginning that you would be singing or did you discuss any other options for vocals?

I formed Nocturnus in 1987 and right from the beginning I decided that I was going to sing and play drums.

When did Mike Davis (guitar) and Louis Panzer (keyboards) join the band? As far as I understand, the idea to make the keyboards an equal part of the sound was not there at the band’s starting point, was it?

Mike joined the band in late 1987 and Panzer joined in September 1988. At first we just had Panzer do some intros for a couple of songs for the second demo we were going to record (“The Science of Horror”, 1988), but we ended up putting keyboards in the songs as well and made him a permanent band member.

This second Nocturnus demo was produced by Jon Oliva of Savatage. He even sang backing vocals. In which songs? How did it become possible? Do you think he was the right person to produce this type of music?

I have known Jon Oliva for many years and he was doing preproduction for the next Savatage record in a small studio, so he said that for 500 dollars that we could come in the studio over a weekend and record a demo with him producing and engineering it for us, so we did and he ended up singing some back ups and producing the demo for us.

Who is R. P. Roberts, who is credited as the author of the classic Nocturnus logo?

Ron Roberts has been a friend of mine since the 80’s and I still talk to him today. He rented an apartment that was part of my mom’s house and he did really cool artwork, so he designed the Nocturnus logo for me and redesigned it several times of the years that I was in the band. I even got him to design the new Nocturnus A.D. logo.

Who came up with the name of the band, what was it inspired by?

I came up with the name Nocturnus, the idea came from the Slayer song “At Dawn They Sleep” and in particular the line “Nocturnal specters hiding from the light”. I was gonna call the band Nocturnal Specters, but I didn’t want to steal it from Slayer, so I looked up the word “nocturnal” in the dictionary and saw the original Latin word for it was “nocturnus”. I thought that it was the perfect name for a band.

How did you get a contract with Earache, and for how many albums? What were your relations with the label? Did you get enough support from their side?

It was a 5 album deal with Earache, but after the second album (“Thresholds”, 1992) they dropped the band from the label after they kicked me out. At first we had a lot of support from Earache, but when the second album only sold 1/3 of what the first album (“The Key”, 1990) did, they started not helping us with support anymore. Panzer was bad mouthing Earache in interviews, so that didn’t help either!

From the very beginning of Nocturnus and until its first breakup the bass player’s position was the most problematic in the line-up. What is your vision of this situation?

Yes, for some reason the bass player has been a problem in every band that I have ever been in. Morbid Angel went through a few bass players as did Nocturnus!

As far as I know, producer Tom Morris was basically imposed upon the band by Earache for the recording of the debut album. You wanted to see his brother Jim or Scott Burns behind the console. Why did that happen? And Tom produced the second album, too. How can you explain?

It was as simple as that Earache was spending the money and making those decisions for us. I wanted Jim Morris to engineer the album because I really liked the sound he got for bands like Nasty Savage, but because Tom Morris did the first Morbid Angel, Earache said we had to use Tom if we wanted to record at Morrisound.

How did singer Dan Izzo join the band? As far as I understand, for you personally it was not difficult to play the drums and sing at the same time. Did you know him before?

That was another thing Earache said we had to do: to get an actual frontman because I was not able to be seen behind the drums and the rest of the band didn’t move around much on stage. So they told us we had to get a frontman or for me to be the frontman and get another drummer, and I didn’t want to quit playing drums, so we found a singer that was able to do the job. I didn’t know Dan when he joined the band and I was against doing this change, but the label insisted that we get a singer or we would lose our recording and video budget. I never really had a problem singing and playing, there are lots of live videos from when I was doing both and you can easily see that it was not a problem for me to sing and play. I have been doing it since 1986 in Morbid Angel and still today with Nocturnus A.D.

In the past you said that you were not especially fond of the second album “Thresholds”. Why? Do you still have the same opinion of it? It turned out calmer, more melodic, with lots of heavy metal elements. That excellent sound “turbulence” that the debut had was no longer there. What was the cause of those changes?

That is true, “Thresholds” was a good album, but to me I liked “The Key” much better, it was a lot heavier and more evil. On “Thresholds” we had everyone writing music and lyrics, so that is why there was such a big change.

Can you please clarify the situation with the cover artist behind "Thresholds". Some sources say that it was Pete Knifton, who previously designed the cover of Bolt Thrower’s “War Master” album), others attribute this artwork to legendary Dan Seagrave.

The “Thresholds” cover was not done by Dan Seagrave, he only did “The Key”.

Probably you don’t have any good memories over this, but how did it happen that were removed from the band that you founded, and its name was taken by Louis Panzer and guitarist Sean McNenney? The former was not even a fan of metal music, why did he want to steer a death metal band?

Lou Panzer was very jealous of me, so when he found out that I never trademarked the name, Panzer and McNenney went behind my back and stole and trademarked the name in 1992. Once Panzer had ownership of the name he talked the rest of the band into getting rid of me so he could secretly take over the whole band. He did end up succeeding in his plan, but he also ruined the band in 1993 and again he ruined the band in 2001 when they tried to do a reunion without me!

What do you think about the 1993 EP (“Nocturnus”) and the 2000 LP (“Etherial Tomb”), recorded without your participation?

The EP was only 2 songs and “Possess The Priest” was a song written by Nocturnus in 1987 with the first lineup. They also that song and used it to try and keep their contract with Earache because no one that was in the band in 1993 was even in the original lineup. The EP was really the demo they did for Earache for the 3rd album, but they were dropped, so they released it later as an EP on Moribund Records. About the album they did in 2000, it had no original Nocturnus members from 1987 when I started the band and it didn’t sound like a Nocturnus album to me at all.

In 1999 the band was recreated in the line-up that was nearly identical to the 1987 line-up, but under the name Nocturnus A.D. A while later the name was changed to After Death and back. Now you are the only original member in the band. How do you see its future? Are any new recordings possible, or is it just a nostalgia trip? I know that the most radical fans say, "You are Nocturnus, so go and make a new record".

Yes it has become a legal battle with the name, so I had to add the AD so that I could have a band by that name and still record and sell stuff. Nocturnus A.D. is the continuation of Nocturnus “The Key” era with the music and lyrics that I never got to do because of all the changes that happened between “The Key” and “Thresholds”.

After all these years, what do you think about the work and achievements of Nocturnus?

Yes it is still hard to believe that after all these years that Nocturnus has become what it has in metal history and hopefully I will be able to properly continue with my vision of Nocturnus that I had from the beginning!

Now when emotions have calmed down, what can you say about every member of the classical Nocturnus line-up? Do you know what Mike Davis doing now? I remember an interview by Trey Azagthoth in the early 90s where he said that Mike Davis was the only guitarist in death metal that he considered equal to himself in playing skills.

The only person I still have respect for is Mike Davis. Sean McNenney never wrote anything but a couple riffs on “Thresholds” and Panzer has continued to give me legal trouble over the years even though he only wrote some intros on “The Key “and a couple lyrics in “Empire of The Sands”. Panzer was the one who ruined Nocturnus! From what I hear is that Davis is still in Florida, but that he isn’t playing music anymore. I don’t have anything against him, he has always been a person that hated being around people and being in a band, he was just not a people person even though he was an amazing guitar player and song writer.

Thank you very much for your answers, Mike! What will be your final words of this interview?

I just want to say Thanks for the support from Russia and that it would be really awesome if we could ever get the chance to play there in your country. Soon there will be new Nocturnus A.D. music because we are working on new material that will continue with the stories on “The Key” with Nocturnus AD. So check out our Facebook page and website and hope to see you on tour one day soon!

Nocturnus on the Internet: http://www.afterdeath666.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NocturnusAD

Magomed Gadzhiev
March 19, 2015
© HeadBanger.ru