Hard-working, hard-living rock band Nothing brings the noise
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Left to right: Brandon Setta, Nicky Palermo, Kyle Kimball
Neal Santos
Neal Santos
“You just do what you can do while you’re here. And not go crazy as much as you can. And then you die and none of it mattered anyway.” That’s Domenic “Nicky” Palermo, guitarist and vocalist of Nothing. He says things like this a lot, usually with a smile, sometimes a chuckle, not because he’s putting you on (though he dabbles in that fine art) but because irony in the face of real pain is a way to tip the scales in favor of sanity. At 32, he’s seen and done it all.
Growing up in Frankford in the ’90s as that working-class neighborhood was decaying from joblessness, drug addiction and violence, Palermo lived in a single-parent home with siblings he describes as “maniacs” and a mother who “was a good mom” but “in over her head” after his father abandoned the family.
His older brother got him into punk. Little Nicky founded the beloved hardcore band Horror Show in 1999.
“It was kind of a violent time. We were going to shows and kind of, like, fucking shit up for the whole [hardcore] scene,” Palermo recalls. In 2001, he and some friends got into an altercation where they were outnumbered. Later, they returned to the spot with a larger crew and Palermo ended up stabbing a young man in the chest.
What followed was two years in prison and six years of near-madness in which tragedy followed tragedy upon his release, including the deaths of two childhood friends.
After making 2010 a wander year in L.A., a city he couldn’t stand because of “the overall brightness of the fucking place,” he returned to Philadelphia and started a new project, releasing a demo called Poshlost in 2011.
It was around that time that he bummed a cigarette off Brandon Setta outside of Woody’s Bar. Setta recognized him from his Horror Show days, and since Palermo needed another guitarist for his new band, they started playing together.
They shared similar socioeconomic backgrounds. “It was the same shit; everybody’s cursed with drug addiction and fucking unstable households,” Palermo says. As the assembled ranks of Nothing are unfolding their origin story, drummer Kyle Kimball jokes sheepishly about guilt over his middle-class childhood. “He still buys fruit snacks,” teases Setta.
What they all share is a love of noise. “We like to play really loud and pretty; we add some grimy stuff, too, but just make a big, pretty-ass sad sound,” Setta explains. His and Palermo’s vocals come drenched in reverb, sounding distant and airy. “It’s everything people say it is,” Setta continues. “It’s like punk, rock, indie, shoegaze. I don’t even know what happens when I pick up a guitar.” (You can decide for yourself March 2, when they play their album release show at Kung Fu Necktie.)
They locked themselves away and wrote and recorded their first LP Guilty of Everything (Relapse), due March 4, in what Palermo says was “a blur” in the spring and summer of 2013. “I don’t really remember anything specific about it. We would eat a ton of Adderall every morning, and then smoke packs of cigarettes while we [worked on the music], then we would have to get completely drunk off boxed wine just to get to bed so we could do it all again. By the end, it was just this white phase of nothing.”
You can hear this frenzy of creation in their songs, which often end in a cascade of swirling guitar noise that has the curious effect of feeling less like a sound that is projected toward you and more like something that envelops you. This creates a strange space where, however briefly, a roar can mimic silence, solitude doesn’t become isolation and pain resists despair. And that is not nothing.
