Continuing with the 'Album of Year' sub-series, Mosh Talks had the chance to connect with Nothing's Domenic Palermo to discuss the band's colossal fourth LP, The Great Dismal.
The success of the album has become increasingly evident as the title has become a consistent entry in many of the year's 'Best of" lists. The beautifully bleak record, combined with the band's subtle brand of articulate heft, make for a soundtrack that proved quintessential for 2020.
What Palermo explains however is that while the tunes seem to reflect the here and now, the music he makes is more indicative of the desolation that seems to unfold on the daily, even prior to the chaos that has been the last year.
In fact for Palermo, Nothing's inception started as a means to address the stark realities of life. The frontman and band's architect confides that 2010 proved to be especially pivotal, as the formation of the band would be catalyst for a necessary change. Prior to that, Palermo shares he endured a decade of disarray that included some time in prison.
The thinking was, Nothing would be a therapeutic means to work through the demons that had plagued Palermo and that the band's debut LP would provide a sense of closure - a completion of that dark chapter. Though Guilty of Everything proved an emphatic introduction, Palmero shares that the album never gave him the sense of fulfillment he had hoped the album would tap into.
In the decade since, Nothing has continued to thrive as articulate outsiders. The band's weighty brand of post-hardcore shoegaze has reverberated with a broad audience that appreciates the heavy adjacent of their albums and in that catalog of work, The Great Dismal makes a great case to be positioned at the top.
Enduring personal changes and an environment that would make it difficult for anyone to stay motivated, Palermo admits that arriving at a place where he could finally hit record for album's very first demos was tough. He likened the experience to the turbulence of 2010, when the project first began.
What was different this time around is that while the first of four LP was crafted with the hopes of finding a sense of completion, it was The Great Dismal that finally gave Palermo that gift. Explaining that while this time around the changes in the band forced him to do more of the creative heavy lifting, that sense of obligation resulted in a collection of songs that inspired Palermo to be especially honest with himself throughout the songwriting - regardless if whether that introspection made him cringe.
After a decade of basking in the bleak, it would seem as though The Great Dismal has afforded Palermo the kind of personal fulfillment that the frontman is still attempting to get used to.
Watch the candid interview with Nothing's Domenic Palermo on Mosh Talks below.
