sym fera – A WONDERFUL CONVERSATION WITH NICK SIMMONS

sym fera – A WONDERFUL CONVERSATION WITH NICK SIMMONS

By Ralph Beauchamp

Photo: Francis Bean Cobain

The astral sym fera have just released a new single titled “Mob” while announcing a new EP, Ghoulish Machinewhich will drop on 10/25. We last spoke to the cheeky duo last March. At that time, sym feraHis true identities were still shrouded in mystery. They wanted their music to speak for itself. The two finally emerged from the darkness. sym fera It consists of Nick Simmons (son of famous Kiss member Gene Simmons) and Vinnie Fera.

Vinnie Fera is a composer, musician, producer, musical director and tour director. He and business partner Johnny Stiegler own and operate The Beehive, an LA-based touring and management collective that directs, plans and manages entire touring groups for artists such as Halsy, Lizzy McAlpine, Eden, Gracie Abrams, Madison Beer, Remi Wolf, Blackbear. , and Skylar Grey.

The duo always planned to reveal themselves at the right time. They didn't want their fame to affect how people felt about their music. sym feraIts sound is a true testament to their superb songwriting that effortlessly captures rich texture and exotic vocals. Their tracks are mystical in nature with intense orchestrations and palettes of addictive riffs. Just listen to the new single “Mob”. The dark soundscape matches rich vocals and carries beautiful musical elements that shimmer and are eerily cascading. “Mob” is galvanic and full of emotional depth. All from sym feraHis songs are huge in quality while still resonating with the listener.

Nick Simmons was kind enough to sit down with AMP once again for this intimate chat.

AMP: We last spoke earlier this year in March and your identities were still shrouded in secrecy. Why reveal yourself now?

NIKOS: I think in order for secrecy to be covered, there has to be someone wondering about the secret in the first place. We were really kind of invisible, like any small band just starting out, and I think that suited us really well. Both Vinnie and I have connections with people who get a lot of attention, and both Vinnie and I are, as counterintuitive as it may seem, a little shy and exhausted by the attention-seeking culture.

But we still want to make things and put them out there for our own satisfaction, and that requires some attention-seeking, so we're hypocrites. We just tried not to mention it or show our faces, and slowly I think the people we talked to about it got fixated on secrecy as a gimmick, so we kind of leaned into it, a little bit. But we weren't trying to be “mysterious”, we were just trying to focus on the songs and not our big stupid faces.

AMP: Your new EP Ghoulish Machine falls on October 25. Can you give us a little insight into the release?

NIKOS: We've been releasing singles for it this year and we've been talking about how happy we are with how the first EP went, so it was always kind of in the air that maybe 'coming out' was something we were comfortable with. now. We were so pleasantly surprised by the way the first EP was received, I guess we feel a little less shy now. But I think I'll miss the anonymity, even though it was hard to get things out there effectively without a personality or a face in front of it. The new genre EP marks this new beginning.

AMP: What is it about your music that makes you feel passionate?

NIKOS: We're just trying to create things that we would listen to and save if we listened to them 'reverse' – you know, that place on Spotify or a streaming service where you listen to something on purpose and then the algorithm drags you to other things that it thinks will you like them It's the modern equivalent of blindly perusing a record store and choosing something based on the artwork or someone's recommendation.

I found some of my favorite artists that way – Ry X, Julia Jacklin, Half Moon Run, Moses Sumney, Pale Jay. Algorithms do a lot of bad and a lot of good in the world, but this spirit of discovery is definitely with the good. Finding an artist this way is like finding buried treasure and I love that feeling.

AMP: Do you feel that your family's reputation and the Fera's music business acumen give you an edge in the current music arena?

NIKOS: I think my whole life gives me an edge, and that's not something I can control even if we started anonymously. Just having the time to pursue a career in the arts is a tremendous privilege and luck, let alone all the other advantages I've just been born with. I think it would be ridiculous to try to play it down or deny it, and claim that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps or something.

Jack Quaid did an interview about this recently and he basically said that he's working really hard to earn the advantages that he has by default, and I think he's on target. And yes, I'm incredibly lucky to have Vinnie as my partner, he has an amazing amount of resources at his disposal. I have learned a lot from him and still, he leaves me in the dust. He is a wizard in the studio.

AMP: What is your creative process like?

NIKOS: We record the last song together, but we write demos like we live in different countries. We send each other little voice memos or production sessions via email and Dropbox and go back and forth until the idea is a full demo, then we take it to Vinnie's studio and make it shine. But until the last phase, we are completely alone.

AMP: How would you describe the internal energy of the band?

NIKOS: Antisocial, probably. We write a lot without ever seeing each other, like I said, and when we finally get together it's like a reunion. Quite the opposite of how bands wrote songs, which was an inherently connected activity. I think it has to do with what we write. We're both pretty dark, cynical bastards, and we write a lot of sad bastard music, and the ideas and lyrics are pretty personal. But we are not sad people in general. Purgatory is a positive experience, so it's more like that. Vomiting in the dark dark stuff makes you feel refreshed afterwards.

AMP: What do you think makes sym fera unique?

NIKOS: I don't think there's anything new under the sun, and we definitely wear all our influences on our sleeves. I just hope it makes someone feel something and be able to sustain themselves, that's all. Anything more than that is essentially rectangular.

AMP: How important is an artist's social media profile in today's music market?

NIKOS: Very important, unfortunately. And we're terrible at it. We were deliberately terrible at it.

AMP: Your official photoshoot was done by Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. How did this happen?

NIKOS: It happened because Frances is a very good photographer and those who follow her already know that. She is very honest, raw and real. She was shooting her friends and generally interesting people in preparation for a project of her own (which I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about yet) and I was lucky enough that she wanted me to be one of the subjects, and that she allowed me to use some of them for the project my.

She also shot us while very, very pregnant, which was amazing to see. She's kind of unstoppable. She's younger than me, but I look up to her, in many ways, and I've gotten to know her ever since. Francis has navigated a very strange, hostile world of showbiz with far more grace and authenticity than I, or many other people I know who are in similar positions, have done in the past. And she really doesn't care what people expect of her, or how they perceive her. She pursues her own interests and does whatever she finds interesting, unapologetically. I wish I had her strong sense of self. I'm working on it.

AMP: Any plans to tour the new EP?

NIKOS: Absolutely. But that's TBD.

Views: 1