Interview by Miriam Cadoni
It’s true when they say that after the storm it comes the calm. In this case for San Francisco based melodic death metal band Light This City, the storm is represented by the sudden break-up back in 2008 and the calm is represented by the comeback and the 5th album “Terminal Blood” released by Creator-Destructor Records in 2018. However, the icing on the cake is the upcoming European first tour who is slated to begin on the 12th September in Hamburg, Germany; now, dear European readers, if you wanna know more be sure to check out their tour but firstly, let’s discover more about this band together with the singer Laura Nichol.
Hi Laura, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine. First of all, how are you and how today is treating you?
Great! Drinking coffee and about to practice some guitar for Heartsounds’ show in Florida!
For the readers that aren’t still familiar with Light This City, would like you to introduce how the band got together and offer us some additional biographical hints?
Ben and I met when we’re 13 and 15 respectively, and we were both obsessed with music and going to shows. I knew Ben was a great musician, and I loved to write lyrics, so we combined forces and turned out to be a pretty good team!
Last year, on May 27, Light This City has released their fifth album “Terminal Bloom” via Creator-Destructor Records. Would you like to mind remind us of its overall production process?
Smooth as butter! I don’t think we’ve ever written and recorded a record so smoothly. We truly picked up where we left off with our fellow shredders, Frost, Hollywood, and Steve. We even wrote some lyrics and vocal patterns in the studio, which we had never done before.
The album “Terminal Bloom” got released after 10 years of apparent band inactivity, on the other way around what’s happened during those years?
My and Ben‘s other band, Heartsounds has toured internationally, was signed to one of our favorite labels growing up, and is still playing one-off shows when we have downtime from Light This City. We all tried out different careers but all decided that we couldn’t sacrifice playing music regularly, so we got back together!
In retrospect and if compared to the previous release “Stormchaser”, musically speaking what improvements you can denote in “Terminal Bloom”?
I like to think that it’s much more concise in terms of songwriting. In “Stormchaser”, we put everything we had into the music, but now we also have the added benefit of being able to reflect on our songwriting and see where we can edit and makes things more powerful and to the point. That always just comes with age and time.
By far, how do you think how “Terminal Bloom” has been welcomed by the press?
Seems like people really like it! I think it has lasting power, and I think people recognize that we still have the passion and determination to create music we love and that we think fans will love, too.
I’ve also learned that you and the drummer Ben Murray back in 2009, you have founded the melodic punk rock band Heartsounds with which you have already released 4 full-length. Once again, for our readers that aren’t familiar with to spend a couple of words of how Heartsounds got together? When composing for Heartsounds, how your approach changes?
Heartsounds came about when Ben and I were burned out on the metal scene back in 2006/2007. We wanted to play fun shows, sing our hearts out, and I wanted to learn guitar. We were in a really big punk music phase at the time, reminiscent of when we were teenagers, and we wanted to explore this favorite genre of ours that we had never really ventured into before. It was a blast, especially because Ben and I already had so much experience writing together. Ben is a great teacher and taught me the guitar in order to achieve our dreams of playing punk music together. Honestly, the approach to writing is still very much the same. If the process ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
As an opener for “Terminal Bloom”, it was released the single “Agents of Fate”. What insights you can share about this specific song and why did you choose specifically this song as a single?
“Agents of Fate” is perfect because of its forcefulness. The music is strong and driving, but there are some anthemic hooks. The lyrics are unapologetic–“Do you think you got what you wanted out of me? Do you know you’ve underestimated me?“. We loved the ballsy nature of the song and thought that would really draw people in and make them curious about the rest.
It’s recent news that this year Light This City will tour Europe for the first time. What are your expectations and what you are looking forward to?
Expectations are through the roof and we know we won’t be disappointed. One of my favorite Heartsounds shows was in Belgium–it was nonstop fun and movement and rocking out. We’re looking forward to meeting fans we’ve never met face to face before, seeing the sights, and accomplishing something we never did in the past career of Light This City: touring Europe!
Aside from this upcoming EU tour, what 2019 has in store for you? Do have already in mind a new plan?
We’re playing The Fest in Florida in October, alongside Heartsounds (pray for my voice please). Then we’ll start planning out next year! I can’t wait to get back to Mexico, Japan, and who knows where else?!
So, Laura, we’re almost at the end and with this please be free to say hi to your fans and our readers. Thank you so much for this interview!
Hi, thanks for reading! Please come up and say hi if you see us at a show in your city!