Light This City – Talk About Upcoming New Album
The following article was originally posted over at MTV.com:
LIGHT THIS CITY’s Laura Nichol wants to clear something up, once and for all.
Two tracks on the Bay Area death-metallers’ 2005 LP, Remains of the Gods “Letter to My Abuser” and “Your Devoted Victim” are not about any skeletons Nichol has in her proverbial closet, although fans ask her all the time if she’d ever been abused.
“I have a great family, and I’ve never had that sort of experience,” she explained. “Those songs are more about religion and my struggle earlier on with finding faith and losing it. They’re about people I know who are just complete hypocrites, who use religion as a justification and rationalization an excuse. Those songs are about what I think about that, but really, they’re more metaphorical songs and people will have their own interpretations.”
Oh, and those constant comparisons to ARCH ENEMY’s Angela Gossow and LACUNA COIL’s Cristina Scabbia? Yeah, she doesn’t quite get that.
“I really respect them and I love to see women in music, but it is kind of frustrating when you take influence and inspiration from your idols like [AT THE GATES'] Tomas Lindberg, [CARCASS'] Jeff Walker and [THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER's] Trevor Strnad,” Nichol said. “And then people will go ahead and compare you to someone who has the same anatomy as you. And if you want to do that, it’s fine. I think Angela and Cristina are awesome.”
But to be fair, Nichol’s voice is more menacing, more intense and more passionate at times, which she said, “is what I’m going for.” And fans of the band can expect to be injected with a healthy dose of Nichol’s thunderous vocal stylings on Facing the Thousand, which hits stores September 19. She said the album’s material came to the members of LIGHT THIS CITY without much effort. Well, almost all the members.
“Our plan was to wait and tour on Remains for a while, but we just started pumping out songs like, no joke,” she said. “I couldn’t even keep up with my lyrics. I was just like, ‘Dudes, you need to slow down.’ It just kind of happened. They would all sit around, and we wrote this record in no time at all. We’re really proud of it, and I was able to learn so much from the recording of our first album, and I used a lot of that to completely improve my style. We also practiced the songs a lot more; when we recorded Remains, we didn’t have a lot of time to practice the songs. We wrote ‘em and went right into the studio. So this time around we were able to get the whole band together, practice the songs and perfect certain things.”
Nichol’s lyrics were inspired by Richard Adams‘ classic novel “Watership Down,” which follows a group of Berkshire rabbits as they flee from the destruction of their warren by land developers and search for safe haven, skirting danger at every turn.
“The new record is a lot about nature, and how f—ed-up it can be,” she said. “I drew inspiration from ‘Watershed Down‘ and applied it to my own life. And on the album, I talk about certain types of leaders. On our song ‘Cradle for a King,’ it’s about this plantation owner and how he treats all the people who work for him. I compare him to better, more noble types of leaders in other songs, and some of the tracks relate to each other while others relate back to songs on Remains.”
LIGHT THIS CITY are on tour with SUICIDE SILENCE, ALL SHALL PERISH, TOO PURE TO DIE and NIGHTS LIKE THESE through September 8 in Las Vegas and will head out with CALIBAN, THE ACACIA STRAIN and STICK TO YOUR GUNS September 25 in Roseville, California. On September 10 and 11 in Los Angeles, they’ll shoot a video for “The Unwelcome Savior,” the first single from Facing the Thousand. Metal video director du jour Darren Doane (Deftones, Every Time I Die) will be helming the clip.
Nichol said Doane would like to take the emphasis off the frontwoman for the video. “You can definitely expect to see intensity, and really, he wants to downplay the fact that I’m a girl,” she said. “You won’t see our faces for a while just a bunch of hair and in the middle of the video, you start to realize, ‘Holy sh–! That’s a chick and she’s kicking my ass right now.’ “
As for LIGHT THIS CITY’s future, Nichol said the band is hoping to land a slot on 2007’s Ozzfest. “That’s definitely one of our goals in our career,” she said. “When THE BLACK DAHLIA was on Ozzfest, I went to go see them and hang out, and it was just so cool to experience that backstage lifestyle. It’s huge, and it would be a great opportunity. We’d love to do it.”
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