Cold Night For Alligators: In A While, Crank Down The Dial
Reeling from the idea that COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS are gaining listeners from random Spotify radio stations, Nikolaj Lauszus is as nerdishly humble as his Instagram bio would have you believe, “World’s okayest drummer”. “It’s weird to think that people just stumble upon us and actually explore and listen to our music,” he says. “I’ve been playing for so long in all these weird metal bands, so in my mind, people that listen to us have maybe seen us live or just know us a little bit.”
COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS are Nikolaj Lauszus and vocalist Johan Pedersen, a Danish experimental metal two-piece who are about to embark on a tour with their fellow countrymen, the critically acclaimed blackgaze band MØL. They have traversed the progressive tech metal landscape in various shapes and lineups for almost two decades, but four years ago landed on a softer, more emotionally yielding sound that struck a much louder chord within the metal world. “I usually joke that our singer became a father, and it got a little more sensitive after that, but honestly, it’s nice to have those dynamics to play with. If I want to turn the intensity up to 11 on a song, to me it has more of an impact if it’s not heavy the whole time,” Nikolaj says.
It wasn’t just creative preference that inspired COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS to turn down the tech metal dial of their first two albums and ramp the experimentation. “When we started writing 2022’s The Hindsight Notes, we had no label, and the record before had received zero attention and zero opportunities,” Nikolaj explains. “So we were like, we are going to write something we think is cool. And I mean, it’s not like it blew up, but way more people listened to us after we released that album. With All That’s Left turned out to be even more experimental. I don’t think it’s a quantum leap, but it does have more trumpet.”
“With The Hindsight Notes, we saw people who were clearly connecting to our music in a different way. We started having more experiences of people crying and singing along in the front row. We also saw more women. So it wasn’t just, you know, dudes who came to compare their guitar chops to ours, which was fun.” Having said this, Nikolaj admits he IS that guy at concerts, “I stand with my arms crossed or with my beer next to the sound guy and I watch what the drummer’s doing. If I can impress that guy next to the front of house checking out my drumming, that’s fine. But that’s not really my goal.”
“This is going to come off weird, but I want to hit people right in the guts, right between the eyes. I want to feel that what I’m doing is translating instantly, and then they can critique it, like it or dislike it (I mean, hopefully they don’t completely dislike it). It’s kind of like having a conversation. You can be free to disagree with me, but at the very least, I would like my point to come across as I intend it.”
Alongside the release of their first album as a duo, they put out four music videos, one of which (With All That’s Left) inspired a YouTuber to boldly query in the comments section if it is “a legal requirement for a ridiculously-talented Scandinavian prog drummer to go shirtless?” Nikolaj laughs. “It was required by Johan and Cornelius [Qvist, videographer]. They told me, ‘you’re going shirtless in this’. It wasn’t the most fun to be drumming shirtless in that weather.” The video for the album’s title track is set in a forest, features a shirtless Nikolaj with Johan in all black, and dances in an aesthetic realm somewhere between The Blair Witch Project and the blood-red finale in Evil Dead. “They just decided that we were going to go out and use some really simple lighting and film in a forest at night. And then it started raining and snowing, and I think everyone involved had in the back of their mind that this is gonna be cool, but it might also fail completely,” Nikolaj says. “It was the most black metal thing I’ve ever done.”
“I think it’s also ironic that we chose the song that has the most extra stuff going, this whimsical prog metal thing, for a video that is just two guys playing drums and singing,” Nikolaj says. There was also an element of logic behind this particular video’s creation: “We wanted at least something that was just the two of us, because otherwise it was going to be like: who are these guys?
“I’m an IT consultant,” Nicolaj reveals, as, alas, COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS is very much not his nor Johan’s sole profession. “My colleagues think it’s hilarious. One guy used to be a pretty high level professional footballer and talks about playing against Zlatan Ibrahimovic and then there’s me, ‘I have this tiny metal band that I play drums in’.” What to music fans is the metal version of the Clark Kent / Superman effect, is to many musicians’ colleagues a “hilarious” little hobby. “That’s why you start playing metal, right?” Nicolaj points out. “It’s because…you’re an introverted nerd who can’t play football. So you have to get it out somehow.”
And to anyone wondering if people bid Nicolaj and Johan farewell with a cheery, “see you later, alligator”, the answer is yes. “Many, many times,” Nicolaj laughs, before needing a quick prompt to offer up the only appropriate response to such a farewell, “in a while, crocodile.”
With All That’s Left is out now via Prime Collective. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS128 here:
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