Livewire,
Industrial , Synth, EBM
Friday, October 6th 2006
W/Dj Flipps & Dj Shok

Friday, October 6th was the second LiveWire event @ Toronto’s Savage Garden Nightclub, featuring a performance by Toronto’s own Industrial-Metal legends Nanochrist! The band was a powerful presence on stage with pulsing electronics, loud angry vocals and guitar riffs that shook the walls!

Prior to the show, LiveWire’s DJ Shok had the opportunity to interview the band and get deep into the collective mind of the entity – Nanochrist:

Shok: Alright, so let’s get to the interview! The question I ask everyone, and am always curious about… How’d you get into music and why industrial metal?

Mike: How did I get into music in general? Or playing it or enjoying it?

Shok: Why don’t we go with ‘playing it’.

Mike: I found a guitar in my basement when I was a kid, and I’m the youngest of five, so there was a lot of crap left over and a lot of toys and things. So I started tooling around with the guitar and it was a lot of fun, and years later I started playing for real, when I was eleven.

Steve: I started when I took piano at a very early age and then sadly gave it up for far too long. And just recently within the past five/six years I’ve really been keen on rekindling it, really getting out there and performing! Music is probably the most fun medium I’ve ever performed in.

Shok: Do you do anything other than Nanochrist, any side projects?

Steve: Well, believe it or not the stuff I do by myself is almost new age and if you remember demo songs from the early 90’s when we were using sequencers and tracktors on Atari, and all that kind of stuff … it’s remarkably different from what was shown to me when I came onboard.

Scworm: I used to have a solo thing going just under the name Scworm, but now I’m pretty much just dedicated to Nanochrist. Plus we’ve all been writing together, a lot of interesting stuff is coming around and we’re starting to perform more cohesively as a unit, and it’s working out really well. We’re all pretty dedicated to Nanochrist now.

Shok: How’d you get into Industrial?

Mike: I think I was born into it.

Steve: I wasn’t really satisfied with a lot of stuff I was hearing on the radio and I started writing my own music. Music that I wanted to hear, and it started coming around that way. Then I met Mike and I was still young and impressionable, he was working along the same lines and it just sort of happened.

Shok: That kind of leads to my next question: How did you all meet and form Nanochrist?

Mike: I met Scworm when he was seventeen or fifteen, he was friends with my nephew. My nephew brought him over to see my studio, which at the time was like a four-track recorder and a guitar amp. But you know, it was a home to me (laughs), then years later I was looking for a singer and I thought of him because he could scream like no man I know! I met Scott through the bass player of my previous band, he quit the band and replaced himself with Scott. Which was very nice of him…. I don’t… hmm, how did we meet Steve?

Steve: We met through a common acquaintance named Heather. I got an email one day that said “Hi, I’m Mike. Heather says you’re a keyboardist looking for a band – we’re a band looking for a keyboardist.” Next thing I know Mike invited me out that thing at Edge102 and then over a couple of pints at a nearby pub they laid out Nanochrist for me. They asked me things like: “What do you say to things like odd timing, and unresolved chords …” and I’m like “I think I can deal with that”. Then, there was a show in three weeks from that point.

Scworm: He sort of dropped in our lap and fit like a glove, so I think we’re gonna keep him.

Mike: I’ve never known a glove to fit on our lap…

(all laugh)

Shok: It’s called a stripper as far as I know.

(more laughter)

Shok: So did you always have the same vision for Nanochrist as you do now? Or did it just grow and evolve?

Mike: It was my vision to begin with and I just worked with people that would work with it well. And it has grown and it’s changed, but there’s still a certain core aspect like heavy guitar, really ugly synth sound and ah –screaming- that I don’t think is likely to change. Though we’ve certainly evolved within that framework, and all the members had a lot to do with it – just being there to put their own spin on things. It’s certainly not what I expected, but it’s also not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

Steve: It’s great that we have so many different influences in terms of what we bring to the table, like I’ve always been more into the pads and fast synth sounds. Scott is the walking lexicon of musical theory and musical knowledge. This guy (points to Scworm) – lungs like a fuckin’ banshee. So like you said, it’s come a lot together, the more we perform. The more it becomes a group project and not a me project, the more intense it gets. And I’m very happy to see that.

Shok: Ok, now I have to ask: what’s with the name Nanochrist? What’s in it? What does it mean? How’d you come up with it?

Mike: It sounds awesome, end of story. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. I’ve had people reading all kinds of things into it. I’ve had people tell me it’s blasphemous and I’ve had people think we’re a christian rock band.

Shok: (laughs)

Mike: I prefer the blasphemous label. But it doesn’t mean a damn thing, it sounds awesome – that’s it.

Shok: So out of curiosity, have you ever gotten booked as a christian rock band?

(all laugh)

Mike: No, not so far.

Scott: Might be kinda fun!

Shok: What I was thinking.

Steve: Although truth be told, we did get asked to play a wedding reception or a wedding afterparty… And for the record one of our Nanogroupies, Sara came up with the best anagram for Nanochrist: Noir Snatch

(laughter)

Shok: So, do you ever get confused with other bands that have the word ‘christ’ in them? I mean it’s a pretty common word in music…

Mike: It is –now-. There was only one other band with the word christ in the name when we started out, and that was Velvet Acid Christ. It’s actually one of the reasons why I used our name, because I couldn’t find anything with the word christ in it, except that one band. Since then, mp3.com, before it went under had about 90 bands with the word nano in them, and since then a ton of bands with the word christ have popped up all over.

Steve: Ours is still the coolest name!

Mike: And we’re definitely the best of the christ bands! But I am a little biased.

Steve: It’s a name that sticks.

Shok: As long as there’s no Japanese dildo company with the same name…

Mike: That might be even better.

Shok: So what do you have planned for the future? What’s in the future of Nanochrist?

Mike: Many more shows. Another album hopefully soonish…

Steve: Global domination!

Mike: Hopefully.

Steve: Touring, touring, TOURING!

Scworm: And Scott talking more.

Scott: Very good?

Shok: Can you give us a little preview of the new album? What’s it going to be called? Any sort of giveaways?

Steve: Is it still secret?

Mike: We’re like 98% sure we got the title, but I don’t want to say anything.

Shok: You can tell me and then kill me, but then the interview won’t go up, so stay secretive. Anyway that’s all the time we’ve got. Thanks for doing the interview and for playing the Savage Garden!