Interview with Mike Browning, Nocturnus AD

- Hello, Mike! Just to begin with, could you please clarify what is the current status of the band? As I understand, Nocturnus A.D. is now your primary band. So what's gonna happen with After Death? 
- Since the same people are in both bands, we will still be doing both, but of course right now we are concentrating on Nocturnus AD.

- Recently, you had a couple of nice gigs and festivals attendance. In general, how active is the band in terms of concerts? Which live performance of the most recent ones could you highlight as the most successful?
- Pretty much everything we have done for the past 2 years has been a really good success, Maryland Death Fest, Hellfest, Dokkem Fest, Nuclear War Now Fest, Destroying Texas Fest, Lima Metal Fest, Krater Fest and some shows in the US and South America and they all have been great! Maryland Death Fest and Hellfest were really big shows!

- Once you mentioned that you cooperate with the Flaming Arts Agency and there are some possibilities for you to visit Europe with some concerts. How did it go and what are the chances that we could see you soon with a tour over Europe?
- We haven’t actually used them yet, but we are talking to them right now about doing a couple shows and Festivals in Europe in 2016, so it is looking pretty good that we will be back in Europe in 2016, although we were just in Norway last weekend playing Krater Fest.

- You are working now on the new album. How is it going so far? What can you say about the new material? 
- Right now we are working on finishing our 3rd song, the music is written, so just the lyrics, leads and possibly a keyboard intro for that one and maybe the other two may end up having keyboard intros as well. The first two songs lyrically pick up with the story where Empire of The Sands left off, so some of the new songs will follow The Key story and others will also be continuations of some of the other songs on The Key like Neolithic and Lake of Fire and Standing in BLOOD.

- The current line-up is exactly the same people you play with in After Death. How did it happen that you decided to reform Nocturnus and that now you have 2 bands in one? 
- Well we would always be asked to play Nocturnus songs with After Death, but we were tuned to D and the old Nocturnus stuff was in EFlat, so it sounded a little heavier but not exactly like The Key, so I decided to do more of an exclusive Nocturnus AD project that continues with everything that I wanted to continue with The Key, but never got to do and the old songs are all being played in the correct tuning of E Flat, so we really got all the old stuff sounding right and now are continuing with new songs in the same vein.

- Working with such great people in the same team, how could you describe your rehearsals? Who is the main songwriter? What is your team-spirit like? 
- We have had a pretty steady lineup for several years now and it has taken us that long to really get the right sound and playing to make this work, as far as the music I like everyone to be there with the writing process, so we all contribute to that, but the 2 guitar players come up with most of the riffs and we all add to it and I do all the vocals, since I am the one singing too. We have been through a lot together and traveled the world and we still get along pretty good, everyone has their ups and downs, but we do pretty well as far as all getting along now.

- What about the lyrical aspect? Do you still continue developing sci-fi/horror topics? What is your source of inspiration?
- That is another difference between After Death and Nocturnus AD, the lyrics for Nocturnus Ad are more sci-fi and horror and After Death is more occult oriented lyrics. My inspiration comes from many things, stuff I read about or study and dreams, lots of stuff really.

- Let's get back to the very early days. As I understand, Morbid Angel was your first band. Could you recall how did you meet each other and when did you come up first with that band's name?
- I met Trey in high school in 1981 and we started a band called Ice, which became Death Watch and then Heretic and then Morbid Angel, but it was Trey who came up with these names except for Death Watch which was Dallas Wards idea, he was our bass player at that time.

- Where was your first rehearsal place? How often were you able to practice? And where did you record your first Demo, "Scream Forth Blasphemies"?    
- We actually used to rent a generator and set up at the beach in Tampa or at certain parks and just start jamming and drawing a crowd, but the first place we ever practiced at was the back room in my mom’s house. Scream Forth The Blasphemies was never really a demo, it was some recorded rehearsals we recorded on a jambox! 

- Your last work within Morbid Angel was "Abominations and Desolation". Why this record wasn't released on time as your debut album? And how do you see this release, is it a truly first full-length or should it be still called a "demo"? 
- We signed a record contract with Goreque Records which was a label owned by David Vincent and his partner Mark Anderson and we went to North Carolina and recorded a full album in 1986, but before it was able to be released I got into a fight with Trey when I caught him with my girlfriend and beat him up really bad and that is when the band split in half, so the record was never released, but it definitely is not a demo!

- Tell us about your cooperation with Incubus and the Demo that you recorded together. Why didn't you stay in the band and moved further? 
- When Morbid Angel split in half Sterling the new bass player and myself stayed together and reformed his old band Incubus and recorded a 3 song demo with guitarist Gino, but that got into a fight and the band split up and never reformed again, so only a 3 song demo was ever recorded because the band lasted only less than 6 months and we never even got to play live either, very unfortunate!

- And here we are approaching to your masterpiece, Nocturnus. What were the first days of the band like? How did you find the right people for you to work with? 
- The first version of Nocturnus was in 1987, about a week after I left Incubus I decided to start my own band and came up with the name Nocturnus and got Richard Bateman on bass, he had just quit Agent Steel, so we wrote a couple songs just bass and drums and vocals and then we got Vincent Crowley on guitar, several months after that we got Gimo on guitar as well and recorded the first self titled demo Nocturnus. It was easy for me to find people because the scene was really starting to happen with Metal in Tampa.

- In 1990 you released your debut album, "The Key". Let me ask this questions: The Key from what? What was the approach while writing the lyrics and what is the main message of the album?
- The Key is the symbol, that the main character on the cover of the album, finds in a destroyed alien ship and it is the missing piece to make his time machine work, so that he could go back in time and change history by destroying Christ in the manger. When I started writing lyrics for the newer songs on the album, it was almost like the songs although separate at first started making their own story that all fit together.

- How did you come up with the idea of using the keyboards in Death Metal? Do you remember what kind of feedback did you received when the album was just released?
- I really just wanted to find someone who could create some cool intros for the songs, but we ended up trying out parts in the songs too and it sounded really cool, so we made the keyboard player a permanent member of the band. People were skeptical at first of course, but once they heard the way that we used them, it actually gave the music an atmosphere that it didn’t have before.

- Two years later you came up with "Thresholds" album. So here would be the similar question: the thresholds of what? How could you determine the lyrical aspect of this album? 
- You would have to ask the other guys that were in the band because the lyrics and most ideas on Thresholds were not my ideas, I only wrote a few things on Thresholds since I was no longer singing, so I just played the drums and that was about it.

- Why did you decide to stay focused on drums and leaving all the vocals to Dan Izzo? 
- It was all the record companies idea for us to get more popular with an actual frontman, I was against changing things, but I was out voted by everyone in the band, so we got a singer and I just played drums. I was not happy with this, but we all were under contract, so the majority wanted to try having a singer, so that is what we did.

- What actually happened next? After what I could find, looks like you are Steve Jobs of metal  underground. 
- Two of the guys went behind my back and stole and trademarked my Nocturnus name in 1992 and then they fired me from the band, so the same day they fired me I said fuck it and joined Acheron, the band only lasted about 6 months after that and was dropped from the label and then split up.

- Afterward, you joined Vincent Crowley and his band Acheron, where you recorded 2 albums as a drummer. How did it happen that you joined the band? What can you say about that period of your life?
- I had previously talked to Vince about doing drums on the next Acheron record anyway, so at the time I was kind of glad to be out of a band with people I didn’t like and in a band that  was doing things! I was practicing with Acheron the same day they fired me from Nocturnus, so I had no down time between bands, it was great being in a really Satanic band and just playing drums, there was not a lot of pressure and I got along good with all the people in the band, unlike how Nocturnus had become.

- Alright, thank you for this interview, Mike! Would you like to add anything in the end?
- I just want to say Thanks for the interview and the support and I hope to see you and all the other people reading this out on tour one day soon with Nocturnus AD!