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The Gothsicles

DarkNES: I don't even know anymore. I'm actually trying to address that topic in song on the upcoming album, and I'm having a bad way of it. It is what it is. We listen to a lot of that stuff, like I'll put on Assemblage 23 or Bauhaus or whatever in my car, but I can't take myself seriously enough to actually make serious music. The Gothsicles is sort of a result of that.

Even though the band touches on other topics, many people do still perceive you as a Nintendo band of sorts.

DarkNES: Yeah, well, you write what you know.

On that note, with the advent of 'nerdcore,' a lot of bands are going back to old school Nintendo sounds and games for inspiration. Is it ever a concern for you that you may end up running out of Nintendo-related themes to talk about?

DarkNES: I never thought of The Gothsicles as a video game band. It was always about writing what you know, and I happen to really like Nintendo, so that's kind of the way that a lot of it went. Maybe if I have to, then some of the songs will actually deal with Nintendo games, but it's really not a concern. Like, I just played Bionic Commando on the clock today, so I could just write about that, but it's not too much of an issue.

Only about a third of the songs actually do deal with Nintendo games, because you also have 'English License 2.0' and 'Hey, I've Got That Font,' and you did say that you 'write what you know.' How much of that actually does figure into your daily routine?

DarkNES: I work in an office job—surprise, right? I do IT stuff, so I deal with a lot of electronics, and who hasn't had bad experiences on the road or whatever? That sort of thing. I want to write what inspires me, and I don't want to come across sounding like a huge ass, but a lot of industrial music deals with 'Fucking machines in my blood coming out of my eyeballs and the city's a fucking wasteland.'

I've seen The Terminator, too.

DarkNES: Yeah! I don't deal with that, and I don't have all that shit going on. I say that, and half of my CD case is stuff like that, so it can be a lot of fun, but it's just not what really grabs me or makes me sit down and say, 'This is gonna fucking rock!'

You mentioned that you're working on the new album. How's that going?

DarkNES: Oh, it's brutal! I spend a lot of money on equipment and that's all right, but every summer now is just putting up a fight. I'm working a lot more with Dan Clark, the guitar player for Stromkern, and he's got this awesome, awesome, awesome project called The Dark Clan. We're actually label-mates, so I'm bringing him on board a bit more. All the songs I'm working on now have a ton of shit going on them, and I don't mean to go audio nerd on you, but I'm just trying to EQ it all out to make everything fit. People keep asking me for it, though. It's the kind of problem that I like to deal with. I'd rather have people bug me for the new one than ask me to stop.

Working with Dan Clark, is it fair to say that the new material will be more guitar-heavy?

DarkNES: I'm kind of allergic to guitars. I listen to a lot of Cinema Strange and death rock and Tones on Tail kind of stuff, so it might be sort of like that, but I'm not going for super-chunky coldwave. That's even though I've been listening to Chemlab, which I never really got into before, but it's going to be mostly guitar-free. I'm probably going to write most of it myself, just to touch it up, since two heads are better than one.

On that note, your live member :EYG:...

DarkNES: Her name started out as Evil Young Girl because of that :Wumpscut: album, Eevil Young Flesh, and she's a DJ, but she doesn't really play :Wumpscut: so I have no idea why she took that, but that's the origin of that fucking name.

Does :EYG: ever contribute in the studio?

DarkNES: No, not really. I'll run stuff by her and she's my girlfriend, so she doesn't have a problem saying if something is horrible. Working with her does save on hotel room costs. [Laughs.]

:EYG: and I both play whatever we can in the band Caustic, and we played for this thing called Indoctrination, which is this power noise—power noise is kind of like a swear word nowadays, isn't it? Rhythmic noise, or whatever—but it was in Chicago, and it was just awesome: Terrorfakt, Prometheus Burning, and Enduser, and I had the best time, and so I came back so jazzed up on sequencing all this noise. The tracks we're working on now are a lot noisier than NESferatu, and it's a lot smoother because I'm using hardware.

So NESferatu was done on software?

DarkNES: Yeah, NESferatu was largely software; there was some hardware on it, but I had to stop partially because the keyboard I was using was also the keyboard that I played live in Caustic, and for Caustic shows, we'd go ballistic and trash stuff, so that keyboard died a horrible death, but that's all right.

On the subject of Caustic, what would you say you've learned in your time in Caustic that you've applied to The Gothsicles?

DarkNES: Blowjob techniques. [Laughs.]

Matt doesn't get these amazing shows because his music is good or people like him or anything, so it's all about the suction. But on the 'for real' tip, it's amazing how little you need to do to just get along with people in band situations. For whatever reason, some people can be just dicks, and Matt is always cool and open to people, and Caustic's really good. I learned from him, just seeing how he deals with people. That, and to write everything in capital letters.

You also worked with Eric Oehler of Null Device, and Null Device is obviously very different from The Gothsicles. How did you come to work with him?

DarkNES: He's a friend of mine, and he actually mastered the album, and he knows my style. I was a fan before I met him, so I knew his style. I was really happy to get him for that track in particular, the 'Hey, I've Got That Font' song, because he actually designed more than half the fonts that I list in that song. If you see a movie or a lot of video games, it was probably designed by the guy from Null Device. To work with him, I basically just called him and asked if he wanted to do some vocals.

Having played InFest recently, as well as Eccentrik and Reverence, and performing with the likes of Ego Likeness, Soman, Scandy, and Voltaire, what kind of new ideas do you see yourself incorporating in the future?

DarkNES: I wish I knew. It's always a consideration, but I don't know where to go. We started out using poster boards, and then went to two TVs, and then I finally broke out and bought a projector. We're having new uniforms made for this convention we're playing; we've kind of gotten into this con circuit, which is kind of fun but kind of weird at the same time. But it's pretty fun.