We're once again excited to bring you an interview with one of our favorite bands here at TZEEEAC, the emotional punk doomsters from No Omega (Swe)! Daniel, bassist/guitarist for the band, has been kind enough to answer some questions about their many concerts, the places they've visited, the food they enjoy and the music they play. Read on and then head over to their Bandcamp page and listen to their crushing tunes!
1. Hey, boys! We really appreciate you talking with us! How are things in Sweden? Are you even at home?
In Sweden we're experiencing a lot of weird far right/nazi shit going down at the moment. People are really standing up against it though, which is really cool to see. Also, the weather is fucked up, we barely had any winter and now we change from sun to snow over a few days every week... climate change is scary as fuck.
We've been home since December actually, taking a few months off from touring, which is nice for a change, catch up with life and stuff.
2. 2013 was a full year for you and I have always thought your touring schedules are insane. How does it feel to tour the world and be on the road constantly? What are some of your favorite places to visit in Europe?
The fact that we could tour so much last year amazes me. It was a really rad experience, and I got to see so many places I'll never be able to visit again. Our shows in Ukraine and Russia were really cool, both the shows and peope were really cool, and it was really interesting seeing all those countries in Eastern Europe leading us up there. A few of the shows in Spain and Portugal late last year were some of the best we've ever played, for example Porto and Madrid. Hamburg is always a really good time for us, and the last two shows we've played in Örebro, Sweden have been great.
3. You guys seem pretty young! How long have you been playing music and how did No Omega came to be? Are you still in school or do you have jobs and you piss off your bosses constantly by asking for 6 months off to blast beat your way across Europe? :)
Right now I'm the youngest, and I'm turning 24 in a couple of months... Andreas who used to sing is 21, but I think we all just don't look that old haha. No beards or anything usually. We've all basically been playing music since our early teens, and that all turned in to what No Omega is now.
Oscar's been studying at university for a while now, and the rest of us have just been jumping around between jobs and short stints at school. I've been working the front desk of a hotel for a couple of years now, and they've let me go on tour as much as I want pretty much, which is rad. We never have any money, but getting to tour is more important.
1. Hey, boys! We really appreciate you talking with us! How are things in Sweden? Are you even at home?
In Sweden we're experiencing a lot of weird far right/nazi shit going down at the moment. People are really standing up against it though, which is really cool to see. Also, the weather is fucked up, we barely had any winter and now we change from sun to snow over a few days every week... climate change is scary as fuck.
We've been home since December actually, taking a few months off from touring, which is nice for a change, catch up with life and stuff.
2. 2013 was a full year for you and I have always thought your touring schedules are insane. How does it feel to tour the world and be on the road constantly? What are some of your favorite places to visit in Europe?
The fact that we could tour so much last year amazes me. It was a really rad experience, and I got to see so many places I'll never be able to visit again. Our shows in Ukraine and Russia were really cool, both the shows and peope were really cool, and it was really interesting seeing all those countries in Eastern Europe leading us up there. A few of the shows in Spain and Portugal late last year were some of the best we've ever played, for example Porto and Madrid. Hamburg is always a really good time for us, and the last two shows we've played in Örebro, Sweden have been great.
3. You guys seem pretty young! How long have you been playing music and how did No Omega came to be? Are you still in school or do you have jobs and you piss off your bosses constantly by asking for 6 months off to blast beat your way across Europe? :)
Right now I'm the youngest, and I'm turning 24 in a couple of months... Andreas who used to sing is 21, but I think we all just don't look that old haha. No beards or anything usually. We've all basically been playing music since our early teens, and that all turned in to what No Omega is now.
Oscar's been studying at university for a while now, and the rest of us have just been jumping around between jobs and short stints at school. I've been working the front desk of a hotel for a couple of years now, and they've let me go on tour as much as I want pretty much, which is rad. We never have any money, but getting to tour is more important.
4. Speaking of traveling, in which parts of Europe did you eat the best food? Ever try some fucking mamaliga (Romanian polenta)?
We usually try to have food that we don't have in Stockholm when we're out, or just stuff that sounds good for the day. We're all vegan or vegetarian, and usually make sure we get to have lunch before we leave town every day, if there's anything vegan around. Germany generally havs good food, but we found a few really good buffet places in southern Spain and Portugal, which was great. One place in Valencia was an Asian buffet, WITH BURGERS AND FRIES. For no money at all, so cool.
5. No Omega has some really cool merch! Do you design your own clothes? Also, your e-store is currently running out of a lot of stuff, meaning people like your merch. Do you plan on refreshing your stocks in the near future, especially patches? Cuz if not, I'm ordering a Shame tshirt right now!
For the past couple of years our friend Christian from Kids Artwork and Reason To Care (German melodic post-hardcore band) has designed everything for us. He's really talented, and we've been happy with everything he's made for us!
We usually only print merch for tours, and then sell the leftovers after. We always reprint a lot of stuff, but now I guess we'll mostly do new stuff along with whatever releases we do this year.
As a touring hardcore band you really rely on merch sales to have van rentals and food secured, so we'll probably never stop printing tshirts, even if we wished we could.
6. Not sure if you're gear dorks or not, but do you feel like taking us through your guitar/bass rigs and tell us how you achieve your hard-ass sound?
Since I used to play bass and now play guitar I'll try to run through what we've got.
For guitar, we play through an Orange Thunderverb 200 and a Orange 4x12 cab, which is pretty much the No Omega sound in a nutshell, with lots of mids and not a lot of distortion. Then we use a delay pedal for some songs, and just drown most songs in reverb.
For bass, lately we've used my Orange Rockerverb, which is a quitar amp really. Then we play through classic Rat distortion pedal, and some songs incorporate a Digitech bass synth wah (heard when the vocals come in on Vacants for example). I used to use some more effects on the bass, mostly for noise and ambient parts, but I don't really remember any names or anything.
7. Probably should have started with this, but what is the current lineup of No Omega? I couldn't keep up with the changes.
Now we are Daniel, Oscar, Joakim and Tal. Tal used to play in Goodtime Boys and We Came Out Like Tigers, and Joakim is a close friend of mine and Oscar, and we have both played with him in other bands before. We'll see what happens with the band and the lineup, but this is the band that’s writing songs and played the last show we did.
8. Your band photos make it really hard to tell what the weather was like in the picture -- most of the time, half of you are wearing shorts and tshirts while the other half is clad in jeans and hoodies. I find it very confusing! How do you comment?
Haha... I think you've seen some of the photos we took on our two tours last Autumn. It's in that vague shift between summer/spring/winter, and our group never agreed on if it was tshirt weather or not haha. Also, it's always different who in the group is sick, so that adds to it... And it's really funny that you and other people have noticed. We strive to mess with minds.
9. Five obscure hardcore bands we should be on the lookout for in 2014?
Hardcore, obscure, I don't know... Shirokuma from Söderhamn, Damaged Goods from the US. Just did a show for Totem Skin from Falun last weekend, and they are really cool. Our good friends in This Gift is a Curse from Stockholm will release a new record soon that is going to blow minds I hope. And This Routine is Hell from Holland put out on of the best records of 2013, so I hope they put out something new soon!
10. Last question: when are you hitting the road again? Have fun and be safe, guys! Cheers!
We're focusing on writing new songs now, but we'll be out this summer. We have a couple of things that we hope will come through, so it might be more than just the few weeks we have booked for this summer. I hope we can play a lot this year, but you never know.
Thanks for being interested in our band, cheerio(s)!
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