The Nocturnal Affair: Q&A with Brendan Shane

Paul: I’m joined here with Brendan Shane from The Nocturnal Affair.  Thanks for talking with me today.

Brendan: Yeah man thanks for taking time to talk with me today.

Paul: Let’s talk about your debut album (Meta)morphosis. It’s been out for a few weeks or a month now I believe.  It was supposed to come out about a year ago and you guys had to push that back due to the pandemic.

Brendan: Oh yeah it was supposed to come out two years ago. The record was finished in December of 2019 we had just wrapped up the finishing touches and the fade outs on “Doom Awaits.” Then covid was announced and it was wild.  It was like nothing we would expect. We’re sitting there seeing news clips about people falling sick and getting ill and the worlds going crazy and then three months after we write that song that’s literally what happened for two years, so we’ve been sitting on this record for a while now.

Paul: Yeah. How’s the reaction now that it’s out.  What’s the feedback from fans that have been hearing it?

Brendan:  The reaction has been insanely humbling. A lot of people have given us more feedback than I would ever imagine for our debut first full-length album. You know we’re on our second tour ever right now. I’m just very grateful for the opportunity that’s being presented to us. Our Spotify numbers have gone up out of nowhere. We’re getting people to watch the music video on YouTube the numbers on the channel are insane. You know it’s kind of silly, I don’t know. I’m very, very grateful and I’m definitely enjoying every second of it.

Paul: How was it like working on this album? I read that you worked with John Moyer from Disturbed and had it mixed by Logan Mader from Machine Head. How was that working with those two?

Brendan:  I’ve worked with Logan in the past with Nocturnal. He did a little mixing and, mastering and co-production with me on “Ghosts On The Horizon.” I brought that song to him back in 2017 and he made that thing sound phenomenal. I’ve done a few things with him since then and I just really love the guys work ethic. He’s extremely professional he tells it like it is and he brings the best out of me.  I’ve worked with John Moyer in the past also, he has amazing work ethic, works super-fast and brings the best out of me as well. I was like, I wonder, John Moyer heavily produces and makes things rad, Logan Mader can produce and mix and master, what happens if I put them both in the same room. Bring them some songs and see what we can do together. You know I’m always looking at these things aside from being an opportunity to make art and do what I love, I look at it as also a learning opportunity. I want to learn how to mix and master I want to learn how to produce. I want to learn how to do other things in the industry I love it all.  Working with them has been a fantastic learning experience.

Paul: I had read that your first single off the album “Beyond The Wall Of Sleep,” that Logan had approached you with the song.

Brendan: Yeah, that actually wasn’t even part of the record originally. There was a time when one of our managers was pitching us to a few different labels.  One of the labels was like maybe we can do a record with you, which producer would want to work with and so I mentioned Logan Mader. We talked to Logan about it and Logan goes let’s do a song.  This has to be maybe 2018, I think. Logan’s like, I got a few songs I wrote for other bands, and they passed on it they weren’t feeling it, what do you think of this one.  He showed me “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” what it was, it was just the instrumental.  I was like what the hell? This is fantastic.  I immediately had vocal ideas.  We sat there got the vocals done in 20-25 minutes.  I went in there and recorded everything in a half hour.

Paul: Let’s switch gears and talk about your second single off the album “Down” which to me had a totally different sound and feel than what your first single did.

Brendan: “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” was more of the sound I was going for with Nocturnal at first.  Although it was like, kind of a silently released single, I was just going crazy during covid.  I wanted to feel like I was working, and I felt like I was sitting still.  We were almost a year since the record was finished and I was like, let’s just release some content.  I don’t want to be sitting around with 3-year-old demos floating around on Spotify and we don’t even sound like that anymore you know. I’ve changed so much of my songwriting since then.  So, we dropped Wall of Sleep just to see what it would do without promotion just organically and it didn’t do fantastic of course.  That’s because we didn’t really work on it. It was just something to have later when people look back and see if there’s a single that we’ve actually worked on promoting. They can say oh look there’s more to listen to that doesn’t sound like 6 years ago. As far as “Down” goes that wasn’t even supposed to be a single. It was supposed to be “Exo-Skeletal” or “1000 Ways To Die” and when we did our showcase for Al Johnson, a friend of ours, Matt Pinfield was there. If you know Matt, you know what he’s done with his involvement with the music industry the past two decades. He kind of whispered in our managers ear that he thought we had something with “Down.” So, we ended up releasing that one which I wrote never thinking it would be a single. It was my artsy fartsy song so it’s kind of cool that happened. 

Paul: Which song on (Meta)morphosis would you say is the one you’re the most proud of.  That resonates with you the most.

Brendan: Well, “Exo-Skeletal” is the song that got me writing more stuff like that other than what we were releasing previously. There’s another song that we decided to save for the next record that I love.  We love that song, we love playing it, we loved recording it and it was just such a blast so I can’t wait to release that one. The team, Moyer and management love that record so much that they were like let’s save that for the second album and it’s going to be a single.  They didn’t want it to be shadowed out by the rest of the single’s that were releasing on (Meta)morphosis.

Paul: Talk to me about the process for (Meta)morphosis. What were the feelings and experience creating it?

Brendan: (Meta)morphosis was kind of the reflection of impatience.  I went through a divorce, I went through heartbreak, my father passed away, I went through a few different managers, I dealt with rejection from labels because we sounded too much like somebody or didn’t sound enough like what’s going on. (Meta)morphosis is just like impatience, frustration, heartbreak, loss all that shit.  Sporadic, my mind was just all over the place and I just had to get it out. 

Paul: What’s the next single coming from (Meta)morphosis? Do you have a next video coming out anytime soon?

Brendan: Well, here’s the thing myself and the team are pretty determined in releasing a single if not with a music video than with some type of lyrical or visual content just because I feel like it adds to the experience instead of just a song. So, we have a few prospects from (Meta)morphosis but I’m not too sure what we’re going to go with yet but on the road though we are getting an amazing response to 1000 ways to die so I don’t know we’ll see. 

Paul: So right now, you’re out on tour with Fozzy, correct? How is that experience?

Brendan: Hell yeah.  When I say this is the coolest group of gentlemen and ladies, I have ever met I mean it.  First off, we have Sam Abernathy who does sound for Fozzy and out of the kindness of his heart is doing sound for us. He’s friends with people in our camp and he digs the tunes.  He is the hardest working sound guy I have ever met, and he has us sounding like we are playing the Garden every night. This guy is insane.  Fozzy goes out there every night and leaves it out there on the stage. They’re one of the hardest working bands I’ve ever seen. Chris goes out there and he sings the hell out of everything every night. Then he goes out on his days off and he wrestles and films tv, he busts his ass then he comes back, and melts faces for five more days and works that whole time.  He’s one of the hardest working people in music.

Paul: It’s great seeing you guys on tour with someone like that. Like Chris, who has an incredible work ethic. He works hard and to be able to tour with someone like that and be able to learn from them must be such an incredible experience.

Brendan: It’s just such a wild situation because we’re just one of 4 bands, but when we play, we’re playing in front of mostly a packed venue which not many bands on their second tour ever get to do.  So, I got to pinch myself every night. Me and my guitar player just keep reminding the rest of the crew, bands don’t get this opportunity for their second tour all the time, this isn’t normal. So have a good damn time.  On top of it all at our New York show midway through the show the music stops.  We’re thinking what went wrong somethings going on, and Sony records comes out on stage and gives Chris Jericho a gold record. The dude released a song at the beginning of this tour that went number one on rock radio and got a gold record on tour and then wrestles on his off days.  What the hell man that’s amazing. Sorry I’m going off here I’m all happy about it.

Paul: What’s your plans for after the tour?

Brendan: We got about 16 songs in the bag so that could be another record or that could be 3 ep’s I don’t know how were going to do it. It depends on what the label wants to do with us. We’re currently looking at some tours and talking to some people but nothing exact yet. We do have a show lined up in Las Vegas early June. Probably at Count’s Vamp’d we’re going through an awesome promoter out of Vegas he’s really reviving the rock and roll scene out there.

Paul: If you could pick anybody to do a collaboration with who would that be?

Brendan: I have two answers to this. Someone still alive, since Prince and George Michael died, I would love to work with Trent Reznor but I feel like our music is really influenced by him and people can tell.  So, I think I’d like to work with someone I could learn from and grow from rather than sound more like because obviously I’ve been influenced by them since I was a kid.  I think something with Amy Lee would be amazing.  I would love to work with the Evanescence team. Especially because Will Hunt is one of the coolest drummers I’ve ever seen. I got to meet him at their Houston show which was wild.  There’s this new band called Plush that opened for them and their doing amazing right now. They are one of the hardest rocking bands I’ve seen in forever. Halestorm slayed it and Evanescence just brought it home. It was just such a great show and I think I would have a lot of fun working with Amy lee. 

Paul: Oh Yeah. She would be an incredible individual to work with and learn from, that whole team would be a dream come true to be able to work with them.

Brendan: Or maybe I’d want to work with somebody that’s in a genre that we don’t even touch. That collab between Halsey and Nine Inch Nails was amazing I loved that.  That was something that nobody saw coming and, in my opinion, just blew me away.

Paul: Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today I really appreciate you taking the time. I hope you guys have an amazing time on the rest of the tour and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you guys. 

Brendan: Yeah man thanks for taking the time out of your day to talk to me.