NABERUS – Interview

07/05/2025

Dan snagged James from Melbourne melodic purple monkey dishwasher death nu groove metalcore band NABERUS for a catch up after shooting their EP launch show at the Leadbeater last Saturday

Okay first of all, tell us what you’ve been up to, it’s a hot minute since we’ve heard from you…

Life, Covid really put a halt to anything band related we were doing, then I got diagnosed with chondrosarcoma and had to get my knee and half my tibia replaced when that got cut out. The recovery journey has been long. To be frank it’s was difficult to get the motivation to put the effort in required to organise and have a release that meets the standard we aspire for while juggling our day jobs and relationships.

So the new EP ‘Dread’ is an absolute banger, not that we expected any different, we’d love to hear about the process, what was the most challenging part of getting this out?

I was left with a lot of half done songs that I had written, I’m really good at writing half a song and moving on to another one.

I sat down with Dan one day and sifted through them all and picked what stood out the most in the style and direction we wanted to go.

Getting that motivation to sit down and really finish songs I think was the toughest bit. When we decided what we wanted to do, the rest of the pieces fell together with the other guys.

Tell us about the evolution from Lost Reveries to Hollow to Dread

Lost Reveries we were very guitar focused, Hollow came with my switch to just vocals and the riffs became a bit more bouncy

With Dread and me switching back to guitar we wanted to find a balance between the two albums, as melodic and technical as the Lost Reveries and as hard hitting and groove orientated as Hollow while adding some modern production flavour.

What does the writing process look like for you?

Generally starts with me recording a demo by myself and sending it to Dan who adds some bits here and there or vice versa. We then tab it all out and take it to Shep and Dante to add their individual flair to the parts

Okay so now there a million and one sub genres in the heavy music scene there’s been a little bit of discussion about what NABERUS would classify as, could you clarify that for us because none of us can agree

I would say we probably fit the metalcore genre but even that has so many different sounding bands as a whole. We don’t really care what people call us to be honest, melodic purple monkey dishwasher death nu groove metalcore could be an option.

If the universe shifted and heavy music didn’t exist anymore what sort of music do you think you’d be creating? Or would you be still doing music?

Probably rap or pop

Everyone’s most annoying habits?

Shep is the standard drummer that always plays over us talking to each other

Dante would lose his head if it wasn’t attached.

Dan is a negative Nancy, like me

Plans for the year ahead? Touring? Anything we should know about?

We are playing borderline destruction at the tote, Collingwood on August 9th. We are open and fluid with plans for the rest of the year at the moment. Most likely vids and writing more.