Canadian rock band The Dirty Nil are set up for a huge 2021. They’re currently prepping their third album called Fuck Art, set to drop on New Year’s Day, and they’ve just wrapped up a “tour” where they played shows green-screened into actual venues across America and Canada. They’ve released three singles – “Doom Boy,” “Done With Drugs” and “Blunt Force Concussion” – songs that match equally honest lyrics with thrash, pop-punk and straightforward rock influences, respectively. We caught up with frontman Luke Bentham on how the band has spent their year and where they’re going next.
Allston Pudding: The Dirty Nil, it’s a very carefree mix of styles. I was wondering exactly how you define the band musically, since you don’t really stick to any sort of genre or anything?
Luke Bentham: When people ask me about our band, I just say that we are a rock and roll band. I think in the last few years, people get totally obsessed with titles and specific labels. But we haven’t, we have a very nimble sound that we are proud of, that we can mix things like Slayer and the Beach Boys and the Replacements, and things that we do ourselves but I don’t think other people have done before. I mean, we’re just massive fans of rock and roll and music in general. And I think the thing that separates us from other bands is that we don’t give a shit about being cool. And I think a lot of people do, and that’s their problem. I’m 30 now. I spent a lot of time in my early 20s, hanging out with people that desperately wanted to be cool. And all I’ve ever really seen happen from that is people just live their lives in fear and make minor protracted movements, in hopes that a small group of people will think they’re cool. And I had just an epiphany when I was like, 23, 24, and I said, “fuck all of you.” It doesn’t matter what you guys think I just want to have fun. And so that kind of became the battle cry of our band, which is basically “troll the world.” And our second battle motto is “confuse and amuse.” And that’s what we do, we don’t give a shit about being cool. And I take great pride that I don’t care about that stuff. Because none of my heroes ever did either. That’s what we are, we’re just ourselves, we make music to make ourselves happy. And, you know, we’ve built a team around ourselves to support that and not have to feel pigeonholed into making anything. We made “Master Volume,” which was more of like a classic rock, kind of Queen, Aerosmith inspired thing. But when we wanted to do the next one, we’re like, ‘well, what do we want to do this time?’ And we’re like, “Okay, well, we’ve been listening to a ton of Ride the Lightning and Reign In Blood, but also we like Sancho and Johnny instrumentals, like music from the ’50s and really pretty stuff.” And we made some songs that kind of flirt with thrash metal, but they also are pretty, and I’m super proud of our new record. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever made. And yeah, I’m just feeling on top of the world right now, man.
AP: That’s great. Yeah, like you say, I just turned 30 myself. And I feel completely like, everyone tried to be cool when we were 23. And now some people are, you know, doing nothing.
LB: Yeah, who cares? It doesn’t matter what other people think like. I mean, I only say that just because if there’s any younger people out there listening, like, don’t be paralyzed by these stupid and restricting opinions of others, because they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Do whatever makes you happy. As long as it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of other people, of course, I think that goes without saying. But when it comes to your art, or whatever you make, do something that makes you happy. That’s all I can say. Because you’re the only person at the end of the day that you should aim to please. The love of the Colosseum is a fruitless thing to chase. You just need to make yourself happy. That’s why we all make art, create things to begin with. It’s not for the appreciation of others. It’s to pass the time before we die and feel good about it, you know?
AP: Exactly. Going off your point about, you know, trolling everything, the new record is called Fuck Art. I was wondering just how that title came to be and how it feels kind of perfect for these lawless times we live in right now.
LB: Well, it came about in January of this year, because I had just started taking painting lessons with my mom and my little sister. And we’re like taking up the Community Center in downtown Dundas, Ontario. And, you know, it’s a really older crowd and I kind of discovered that I really liked it. I’m not that good at it, but I really liked painting and I got really into it right off the bat. But there was an older group of people. And I got to say that I always had this myth in my mind that older people, once you reach a certain age, you get your shit together and you suck it up, and you’re no longer like a whiner. That’s not the case. I can confirm that’s not what happens for a lot of people. So there was a couple old white men whiner dudes. One time this guy just kept whining about his painting, [how it] doesn’t look like the teacher’s, and eventually he put his brush down and said ‘fuck art.’ And he’s about 72 years old, probably. And I just thought it was the funniest thing. The next night, we played one of our only real life shows the entire year, and I told the guys and everyone howled laughing, we all looked at each other with this crazy look. “Fuck art.” So it was kind of a dare. And as I said, it matches our battle cry of “troll the world.” “Confuse and amuse.” But, ultimately, through the lens of our band, it’s a very jubilant, happy title. Some other bands, if they don’t have our amazing sense of humor, it’s going to look like pure nihilism. And obviously, there’s a hint of nihilism to it, but to me it’s a very celebratory title. You can’t say [it] without smiling, even my fucking senile grandmother can’t say it without smiling. So it was just a perfect battle flag. And, you know, we had to kind of fight a couple battles with our team. You know, our label supported us though, and even our US radio team supported us, which was amazing. But we had to kind of explain this whole thing to them also. And, you know, once the whole world started kind of shut down, it became the perfect title, because who cares? Not in who cares in a nihilistic way, but now is the time for total artistic freedom, because there are no rules, you can do anything you want. A lot of people are complaining about the music industry right now. And I agree, there’s a lot of things to complain about. It’s not good in terms of live music. But in terms of, like, expression, now’s an incredible time to be an artist, I think, because all of these old systems are falling apart. As they should, because they suck. And so you can truly make the art you want, for better and for worse. And we are really running with that opportunity with knives in our hands.
AP: Yeah, so bringing up, like, everything going on in the world, has COVID affected the album recording or anything?
LB: I mean, COVID shut down our recording sessions, just after we had finished the bass and the drums. So we did bass and drums, and then our producer John Goodmanson had to fly back to Seattle. And basically the studio told me, “alright, look, you have two days to do all the guitars and John’s gonna be gone so you just have to do it with the engineers.” So that was a really interesting learning experience. And I really enjoyed that. That was very stressful, but super fun at the same time. Two 15 or 16 hour days of recording guitar straight, which was amazing. And then we did the vocals in a shed over April, and sent the vocals out to John in Seattle, and he mixed them. So yeah, COVID faced us with the option of, like, ‘well, we can pause this and return to it. Or you can follow through with it and get it done by any means necessary.’ And that’s always been our style. You know, we’re not like an idealistic DIY band but we are a very work-focused band, we’re very focused on getting the biscuit in the basket, we don’t let anything stop us. So I mean, on that note, I’m kind of surprised and, dare I say, I have a little bit of a criticism towards some of my peers these days. I see a serious lack of hustle and imagination right now. I just thought I’d see more innovative things happening right now. So if there’s anybody out there listening who’s working on their art, I would urge them to try some things. And it doesn’t matter if you fail, but just try. Don’t sit back and wait for this to blow over. I think that’s the worst strategy you could possibly have. Just try something. Even though this year sucks, I’m busy all the time. So I don’t have time to consider the touring aspect. Sometimes it eats at me, or like, I wish I was playing shows, of course. But I don’t know, we’re just so busy, that you just got to find a thing, you know. COVID affected our record in the actual recording process, but not that badly. Like we just said, “Alright, well, we’ll do it in a shed if we have to.” And we did.
AP: So this unique tour you’re doing now, the Dancing 2 Thrash tour, I was wondering how that came about. How important do you feel it is to find something like that to stand out during all of this?
LB: I’ve spent most of my 20s on the road on tour. And, you know, in those travels, we’ve made a lot of friends that own venues and work at venues, and they’re really hurting right now, because they can’t have any shows. Truth be told, I love touring in Europe, I love touring in Canada, but my favorite place is just touring the States, period. And we just said, like, “what about if you guys host the ‘event’,” in air quotes, we’ll say we’re playing there, you send us photos of the venue, and we’ll green screen it. So it’s kind of like we’re in there, but it’s also kind of like the Tim and Eric show. Like it’s going to be absurd. And we’ll split the money with the venues so that it gives us something both to do. So the venues were super enthusiastic about it. We basically kind of looked back through all of our Twitter and Instagram posts where we would ask people what songs they want to hear and what cities [they wanted us to play in], and we took that and we applied those to the shows and tried to cater those shows to the cities in a real way, in a setlist way. And the banter as well. When it was first presented to me, by our manager, it seemed like a bit of a silly idea. I was kind of like, how is this gonna work? And [as] we talked about it more, like, it sounds great. I don’t know, it sounds great. Nobody’s doing it. And here we are. And that just ties back into what I was saying before. I’m kind of surprised by the lack of imagination happening right now. And I think that people are still wrapping their heads around the idea that this is going to last a while. And so the only reason why I’m saying this is because I would love to see more people doing more things. As much as it feels good kind of leading our field in certain ways, I’d like to see some other people making strides and writing the new book on how this is going to work for the next while. I want to see some more impressive stuff happening by people that are smarter than me, you know?
AP: Exactly. Yeah, it’s great that others can livestream from home and all that, but like you say, the venues have been hurting. So, yeah, it’s a great, unique idea.
LB: Let’s think of that, let’s think of the venues is what I’m saying – and the crew too, let’s not forget the crew, the reason why these shows happen. So you know, more efforts. It’s great seeing any kind of efforts by bands to support their crew. That’s all I’m advocating is more creative ways to interact with this new, strange landscape. And rather than just kind of like non-imaginative, you know, acoustic guitar in a living room bullshit.
AP: And because I have to ask – if tomorrow morning everything completely goes back to normal, world is repaired – what is the first thing you or the band would do?
LB: Book a full US tour. We miss you guys a lot. I miss your gas station coffees. I miss your interstate highways. I miss your cheap local beers, I just miss it all, man, I miss it all. I miss you guys. And we’re very excited to reunite physically whenever possible. But until then we have our Dancing 2 Thrash tour. Support your local venue, if there’s a nearby one. We’ve got many more surprises before the year’s over.
AP: Awesome. Well, we look forward to seeing you in person again whenever we can.
LB: Awesome!
Fuck Art is set to be released on Jaunary 1st, 2021, and is sure to be an eclectic mix of the band’s signature tongue-in-cheek humor and rock anthems. Their mostly-virtual tour concluded on November 5th “in” Toronto “at” the Phoenix Concert Theatre. If you’re able, please support your local venues.