Cold Night For Alligators is a respected and forward-thinking progressive metal outfit from Copenhagen, Denmark. Swaying the world with their innovative take on technical metalcore and playing numerous shows including Euroblast, UK Tech-Fest, and even the far east of India, these guys are no freshmen. Their upcoming sophomore album “Fervor” proves just that. “Fervor” is a further development of their brutal and uncompromising debut “Course of Events”, which was hailed for its edge and originality. Now three years later the band is stepping up their game with more focus on songwriting and showcasing a mature, more emotional take on progressive metal. There is a lot to love on the upcoming record “Fervor”. Whether it’s vocalist Johan’s passionate choruses about the darker things in life, or the out-of-this-world guitar work, you can be assured that if you like your music challenging and catchy, this album is for you. Coming out of a flourishing Danish metal scene, bringing that certain nordic noir to the table, Cold Night For Alligators bring forth a style that you might recognize, but you sure as hell haven’t experienced like this before. “Fervor” will be released through Long Branch Records on streaming sites and LP November 9th, 2018.
Show the boys some love and like them on Facebook and be sure to preorder the album here in your format of choice!
Drummer Nikolaj was kind enough to answer these questions for me. Thanks for being such an awesome guy!
Where did the name of the band end up coming from?
I’m actually not an original band member, so I’m not very familiar with the story, haha. But as far as I know, it came from the original drummer, Niclas, who found it online and thought it sounded quirky and interesting, like the music the band wanted to create. I think it might originally be from a font or something, so there’s no specific meaning behind the name other than that it caught the band’s eye and has stuck ever since. There’s also a song by Roky Ericson with the same title, but the band was completely unaware of this when choosing the name, though it might have changed if they were, haha.
We’ve had a lot of discussions about the name since I’ve been in the band as well. I personally like it because it stands out and doesn’t sound like any particular genre. To me, this is the two most important functions of the band name – it’s hard to have an interesting name that doesn’t end up sounding generic. It doesn’t come of too stereotypically “metal”, but hopefully people don’t find it silly either.
What made you want to form a band in the first place? What made you decide to stick to the progressive metal genre?
I can’t really speak as to why the other guys formed the band specifically, but I know that we have all been playing since we were quite young. Our guitarists have been playing together since grade school, and formed the band with the original drummer about 8 years ago. Our bass player and singer also played in another band before they joined CNFA in 2015.
The story of me joining the band actually begins back in 2010, shortly after the band was created, even though I only ended up joining two years ago. I played in a technical death metal band back then and I guess we were very, very few bands playing this sort of technical, modern metal in Denmark, so we got in touch through Myspace even though we were based in opposite ends of the country. Then I completely unexpectedly got the opportunity to join the band six years later and was really excited about this.
In terms of what appealed to me about the band, I really liked the challenging and playful nature of the music, and also I was very, very impressed with the work the guys had put into the band and the results they had achieved, even though I guess we’re still a quite unknown band. At that point the guys had released their debut album and played a bunch of tours in the UK, Europe and even India. At this point in my life I don’t really want to be in a band if it just means spending time in a rehearsal room and playing a few local shows here and there. I don’t need to play huge concerts or make a living as a musician, but to me it’s much more fun to play in front of 50 strangers in a foreign city than in front 50 of your friends in your hometown. Hometown shows are fun too, but they’re not the main draw for me, to be honest.
Speaking strictly about the genre, I don’t even know what progressive should mean at this point, but to me it means the freedom to experiment and challenge yourself. We have a very diverse set of influences, and incorporating these sort of fit well within a genre where you already have the freedom to go down rabbit holes in terms of odd-time, polyrhythms and experimental song structures. So the ability to be sincere about what you’re creating while also having a playful element to the music would be essential to me, I guess.
I know this isn’t exactly the answer you were looking for, but hopefully it’s worth something, haha.
What kind of lyrical themes or meanings behind some of the songs?
Again, I’m not the best person to ask about the specific lyrical themes, but overall, I would describe the lyrics as very dark and personal. As an example, our next single is about watching someone lose themselves in a way due to a traumatic experience and watching them being unable to better their situation as they’re sort of stuck with the trauma.
I would say this fits into the overall theme of the record, though it’s not really a full concept album. A lot of it deals with the struggle to improve a tough situation, both from the perspective of the person going through the ordeal and the people surrounding that person. As I guess most people have experienced, actually being there for people you care about going through difficult times can be easier said than done, so it’s about both these experiences.
However, it was also important for us to stress the hope that goes into personal struggles, so although I wouldn’t describe it as a happy record we were very conscious that we didn’t want to stress a feeling of hopelessness.
I guess this answer is a bit vague, but since I didn’t write any lyrics I only have my impression from discussing the themes of the songs and the record with our singer Johan, which we did to quite a bit throughout the process.
What are you guys currently working on? Hopefully writing some new tunes!
We’re definitely already working on a bunch of new ideas, but right now it’s still quite loose. When we work on the structure and progression of songs it’s actually quite collaborative, so right now everyone are sort of working on their own stuff, which will then become actual songs once we bring them together and start working on structure, vocals and jamming them out together.
Besides that we’re mostly focusing on the album release. We’re working with Long Branch Records, with whom we’ve had a very good relationship for a while now, so hopefully we will be able to bring the record to a much wider audience than those who are currently aware of us.
Also, we’re currently looking on tour plans for 2019, which will hopefully be hectic. Nothing confirmed yet, but we do have some cool stuff in the pipeline, so if you follow us on any social media channels you will get updates when stuff gets confirmed.
I don’t know when this will come out, but will also be releasing our second single, “Violent Design”, along with a new music video on October 12th. This is quite different from the first taste people got of the album with “Canaille”, but hopefully everyone will be happy with the material.
Who would you say are your biggest influences?
It’s hard to say for the band as a whole, obviously the whole “djent” genre has had an influence, but these days it’s kind of hard to pin down. We have very varied influences, but I guess we all really appreciate bands like VOLA, Leprous and Karnivool.
Beyond that, I think our guitarists draw a lot on more technical bands like The Contortionist and Between the Buried and Me, as well as some fusion stuff like Allan Holdsworth.
Personally, my biggest drumming influences probably change every week, but guys like Danny Carey, Gavin Harrison and Per Møller Jensen have been huge to me since my mid-teens. For the last few years, guys like Eloy Casagrande, Brooks Wackerman and Baard Kolstad have really inspired me to keep pushing, though I have probably plateaued a bit in my drumming ability, if I’m being honest.
What were some of your most listened to albums while writing/recording?
Hmm, this all took place over a period of 1,5 years, so it’s hard to pin down, but for, these have been in heavy rotation:
The Dillinger Escape Plan: “Miss Machine” and “One of Us is the Killer”
Ulver: “The Assassination of Julius Caesar”
Agent Fresco: “Destrier”
Vektor: “Terminal Redux”
Bad Religion: “New Maps of Hell”
If you could tour with any 3 bands, past or present, who would you tour with?
That’s really hard! Tool or Meshuggah would be a dream come true. I would also be stoked to tour with Karnivool or Tesseract. There’s too many cool bands to mention, obviously.
What’s your favorite touring memory or experience?
The band honestly haven’t really done any real touring while I’ve been a part of it, as we’ve been very focused on the upcoming album, but we have done a few cool shows. My first couple of shows with the band in Berlin and at Euroblast 2016 were obviously special.
We also played Irreversible Open Air in Switzerland this year, which was great. We played the same day as Tesseract, who we’re all fans of, and the guys arranging the festival gave us the best treatment I’ve ever received when playing anywhere, even though we’re not a big name and had never played Switzerland before. They did us a favor by just booking us, so all that was just icing on the cake. All in all, a pretty great weekend!
Anything you’d like to tell your current or future fan base?
I hope you check out our upcoming album “Fervor”, which comes out on November 9th! We worked our asses off on it and it came out really interesting as well as quite different from the first record. We’re very proud of it and look forward to sharing it with everyone.
We put up some cool pre-order packages, so if you enjoy the first two singles you will make us very grateful if you put in an order!
Also follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get updates on tour dates and other stuff – we will hopefully be very busy playing live in 2019 and hope to see all of you out there!
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