Mental Cruelty: A Matter Of Perception
German deathcore standard bearers MENTAL CRUELTY slingshotted themselves into the upper echelons of the genre with the highly applauded release of A Hill To Die Upon back in 2021. The spotlight was almost completely torn away from them when very serious allegations surfaced regarding their now former vocalist. Fortunately, the remaining members acted quickly and justly, removing him from the band. This left the band in an unenviable position of finding a suitable replacement, thankfully, the arrival of vocal powerhouse Lukas Nicolai was just around the corner.
“I initially was applying with an audition video and I did two covers, one was King Ov Fire and the other was To The Hellfire by LORNA SHORE. I sent these videos to some of my friends and one of them was a colleague of Marvin, our guitar player, so he was sending him the videos directly. It was like I was applying twice! The guys reached out, we met up and started writing music together. I came prepped with a lot of lyric ideas and they were really impressed by that. We clicked right away and now we’re fellow musicians, friends and brothers!”
Having set the bar so high with their previous effort, what we now know to be the follow-up Zwielicht has smashed and exceeded all expectations. This brought Lukas a significant level of relief. “If I said I wasn’t nervous or feeling some pressure I’d be lying. I really tried to incorporate the ghost of MENTAL CRUELTY and stay true to their legacy whilst still bringing in some of my own personal inspirations. Symphony Of A Dying Star was the first track released and kind of my unveiling as the new singer. It is a different track to what listeners may have been used to as it has clean singing and is a lot more symphonic so I was nervous to see the reactions,” explains Lukas.
“I’m glad to say I never received one bad comment in my DMs. There were a couple of people on YouTube saying they weren’t sure whether I was the right fit but that was a minimal amount. I sat and read every comment, positive or negative and the criticism was actually really constructive. I am not used to the internet being like this! I really have to give props to the fans for making me feel so welcome and now I’ve got my foot in the door I can relax a bit.”
Lukas brought onboard his wealth of skills and slotted into the band like he’d been present the entire time. The other members were evidently impressed by his eagerness to get stuck right in, letting him grab the ball and run with it. “I was given complete freedom with my vocals, I think the first impression and me coming prepared with lyrics and everything could have attributed to this and that was great. They knew what to expect as they’d heard my recordings with my other band, SUN EATER, and knew I’d fit with the vibe,” says Lukas.
“They asked me to bring everything to the table and go from there and it was very much a collaboration. There are some huge, gnarly breakdowns with a lot of free space and I was given the freedom to just go nuts. My lyrics are inspired by mythical figures. An example is that Norwegian tribes were afraid of the Northern Lights and thought they were evil ghosts coming to cut their heads off. The Vikings perceived it as a depiction of the fallen dining in Valhalla and having a party so it was based around the concept of perception and what can be scary to some can be beautiful to others and that really spoke to me. There are a lot of metaphors in the lyrics for the fans to discover and interpret in their own way. The MENTAL CRUELTY fans are a different breed and really pay attention to the lyrics as well as the music and want to uncover the messages.”
Zwielicht has ushered in a fresh and exciting chapter for MENTAL CRUELTY, allowing them to experiment with their sound without deviating too much from the original blueprint. This approach has been graciously received by existing fans and newcomers.
“The guys were listening to a lot of CHILDREN OF BODOM, WINTERSUN, DIMMU BORGIR, BEHEMOTH and I think those inspirations worked their way into the music,” explains Lukas. “We like to write music which inspires us and what we’d like to hear as a fan too. We also want to make sure we don’t create any boundaries for ourselves and always want to keep things fresh and exciting, nobody wants to listen to an album which sounds exactly the same. I feel like the sky is the limit with MENTAL CRUELTY and I’m excited to see what direction we will take going forward. The response so far has been tremendous. All the reviews I read were like 9 or 10/10 and that’s overwhelmingly good, especially for me as ‘the new guy’. This is my first album that I’ve written with a band of this size. We had hundreds of messages on our social media accounts and I spent about two hours responding to them all, it was a lot of work but also a lot of fun!”
Zwielicht is out now via Century Media Records.
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