Rivers of Nihil: A Life’s Work

The passage through life is often romantically painted as a journey where the experiences along the way matter much more than the destination. But the cold, hard reality is that that journey is filled with moments of loss and grief; moments of pure mental chaos and stress, where all that seems real are the distressing thoughts inside the mind. It’s full of moments where friends and those we love will fall away and be let down; hurt by our own actions. It’s a hard thing, living. It’s struggle. It’s work. It’s a sobering philosophy, but one that Brody Uttley, guitarist and songwriter for Pennsylvania tech death darlings RIVERS OF NIHIL, explored to his very depths this past year and a half.

“We were coming off a massive tour cycle and had been all over the world, and then we were forced into a blunt reality,” he explains, detailing where the band found themselves when COVID hit. “A lot of people in the industry, including us, went through an identity crisis. You go through your twenties forming your identity around the fact that ‘I’m a musician, this is what I do’ and now I can’t do that. It removes a part of your personality that you’ve become very familiar with.”

RIVERS OF NIHIL had become one of the most celebrated metal bands of the past decade after the release of the now seminal Where Owls Know My Name, a wildly thrilling and inventive record that expanded the band far beyond the bounds of their tech death label; weaving melancholic reflections on isolation and memory with fantasy, world building, monstrous riffs, and now the most famous use of saxophone on a metal record. But after reaching the heights in the metal press, the world began to crumble around the band as they reflected on where they could go, and how they could top themselves creatively, on their next record. The band found that after the adoration they had all received, they had many new eyes upon them, full of anticipation. But they also found that their newfound audience would be more willing to go on a more cryptic and wild ride as the band paved the road to the new record.

“It was wild to see this album catapult us into a different class of bands. It was a new perspective on the whole industry,” says Uttley. “We were now this band that people cared about and wanted to see. Going into writing the new record, we didn’t feel pressure, but we were aware of all these facts, and that allowed us to take liberties and be more mysterious and strange. We knew people would be excited about any curveballs we’d throw at them. Musically, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do on this record after Owls, but I think my ultimate goal was to create a piece of music that was more like you were stepping into a place as opposed to you listening to a death metal record. I wanted the listener to feel like you were going through a door and what you hear is what it sounds like there.”

What resulted was The Work, a record full of wide open spaces and unexpected and chill inducing reinvention. It’s a much more colloquial record than the band’s last, with the lyrics speaking in plain language about the struggles of poverty, panic, and living in an anxiety filled mind and world. It feels deeply cathartic and prescient; delving to an even deeper level of dark introspection. It was born from an upheaval of mind and spirit from Uttley and his bandmates, and one they channelled to an expert degree using brand new experimentation from synthesizers and from field recordings from abandoned factories and passing trains in their native Reading, Pennsylvania. The record takes on an even more progressive metal structure in its construction, and even strays into moments of pure pop rock sensibility and structure; moments that will certainly surprise and expand the ears of fans.

“I wanted to focus more on what wasn’t being said, and not what we were saying,” says Uttley. “I wanted to leave sections open and have cavernous walls of sound. We certainly didn’t box ourselves in. Everything you year is everything I wrote over the past two years and I didn’t leave anything out. Being the winter album in our sequence of seasons, winter is brutal, and I wanted something that sounded enormous in every possible way, but with warm moments as well. Just like winter, you have weeks and weeks of storms and sub zero temperatures, but every now and then there’s a break in that.”

The cold, bitter throes of winter are an apt metaphor lyrically as well, with the band collectively finding their most personal explorations and darkest trials found amongst the lyrics penned by bassist Jason Biggs, and Uttley, though distanced from lyric writing, found himself drawn in to his bandmate’s writing more than ever before.

“It’s a very honest record. It’s the human experience,” Uttley explains. “Panic and confusion about the journey through life seems to be a common theme on this record, trying to handle everything that’s thrown at you. I think these songs have some of the most direct lyrics we’ve ever written. I find myself looking at them and knowing exactly what it’s about, whether it’s something only we would know as a band, or in a more personal sense.”

When pressed further about where the darkness of the lyrics comes from, Uttley pauses before revealing the overwhelming changes and soul searching he and the band had to endure to create The Work. “I know some people in the band went through really insane lifestyle changes; relationships falling apart or relocating to new places to start new lives, all while the world is shutting down and you have no sense of previous identity,” he says. “In a lot of ways, it was forcing us to look at ourselves and ask questions like ‘Are we good people?’ ‘What have we really learned thus far?’ ‘How are we treating the people in our lives outside of the band?’ ‘Have we been distracted with the work we do as musicians and ignore the other parts of our lives, and let things like substances sneak their way in and make things worse than they were?’”

He continues, “this album taught me about how I can let my guard down creatively and have it yield a positive result. I’m a pretty anxious dude, and I don’t know if I’ve gotten any better at it, but through the musical trip on this record, I’ve just really had to look at myself closely and acknowledge my faults. In the past I’d be less willing to admit I had these character flaws, but this record was assembled during a wild time in history and in my life, and I don’t know if the music was responsible, but it forced me to accept my faults and that I haven’t been there for everyone in my life maybe the way I should have been, and though I’ve done this music thing, it doesn’t need to be the only thing in my life.”

And perhaps that’s the real beauty beneath the ugly truth of life’s journey: the work we do just to exist is cathartic. It excises our demons and hones us into better versions of ourselves with every step, if we look inward and allow ourselves to change; to heal and love. The coldest winters are followed by the warmth of spring and new life, and longtime fans of the band will hear some familiar sounds to end The Work. They’re the sounds of spring, which open the band’s first record The Conscious Seed of Light. The cycle begins again, but it’s a reminder that darkness doesn’t last forever. And it was The Work that brought the light back for Uttley, and for RIVERS OF NIHIL.

“If this record hadn’t happened, I would have been in a worse place than I am now. This record reflects the most difficult time we’ve been through as a band. But it does end with hope.”

The Work is out now via Metal Blade Records.

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