On Wednesday (May 6), Brendan Shane of the Nocturnal Affair joined Loudwire Nights to celebrate his band’s latest song, “Oxygen,” and dive into the journey that has led them here.
Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.
“I was in a few metal bands before this one and growing up, you have a dream to be all you can be in the music industry,” Shane shared with Loudwire Nights‘ Chuck Armstrong.
“You meet friends and various other people in your scene. Mine is in Vegas and everybody has their great big ideas of what they think making it big is and their lavish plans and everyone posts online, big things coming soon. You put a band together and everybody believes we’re all equal and it’s going to be a democracy.”
Shane said he learned quickly that wasn’t the case. Bandmates fighting for the spotlight and stepping on each other’s toes helped him figure out what he wanted in a band.
“My last metal band was a lot of fun, we were produced by John Moyer from Disturbed,” Shane said.
“We had a killer EP and then we ate each other from the inside out of just what we believed we thought was right. You know, trying to skip steps and jump ahead thinking if you build it, they will come, as far as shows go. Trying to jump on big tours and festivals when we weren’t building the foundation at home. I kind of got sick of nobody listening to my ideas.”
From that experience, Shane put together another project to lean into one of his musical interests, goth rock. As he started it, he was writing and recording everything for the new band.
“We were called the Feels, even the name was kind of a joke because it was like, ‘Oh, this music hits me right in the feels,'” he admitted.
“We got one show at the House of Blues out of nowhere; we were anonymous at the time. Our local rock station was playing us every Sunday and nobody really knew who we were.”
Even so, Shane got a message from the talent buyer at the House of Blues that invited him to a corporate event. There was a Duran Duran cover band playing and he wanted the Feels to open the show. And for good or bad, the talent buyer wasn’t interested in taking no for an answer.
“He goes, ‘Well, here’s the deal. You’re either going to play the House of Blues or I’m going to tell everybody at the station that it’s you and the secret’s going to be out,'” Shane recalled.
“So I got my metal band and I was like, ‘Hey guys, we get to finally play the House of Blues’ … We all put on hoods and half masks, I put on a wig and those Ozzy round glasses. We did the whole thing.”
The show was a huge success and helped Shane realize he was onto something. Unfortunately, the metal band was jealous. So, he started his own thing.
“One night, I’m rehearsing in our lockout studio and the guitar player and bass player for my metal band come into smoke a joint and they walked in on me rehearsing with the Feels,” he said.
“It was like I got caught cheating … The time came, I actually got management and they were like, you’ve got to change the name. 1,000 other bands in this country have a name called the Feels. So I was like, alright, the Nocturnal Affair, because that’s kind of what it felt like.”
What Else Did the Nocturnal Affair’s Brendan Shane Discuss on Loudwire Nights?
- Whether or not there is a new full-length album on the horizon: “I mean, we sure as hell have enough tracks for that. I know we’re scheduled to be releasing a track, I think it’s like every six weeks until the end of the year. We’re going to be spending some time out in Europe with Fear Factory, so I don’t know what our release dates are like for that, but we just released ‘Oxygen’ and I think we’re going to release another song coming up here shortly before we leave.”
- How he ended up working with John Moyer of Disturbed: “That was through the drummer of my metal band. His uncle went to high school with the guy. We were making demos, his uncle reaches out, Moyer comes into Vegas for something with Disturbed…he shows up at my buddy’s house and he hears a demo and he goes, ‘Okay, I’ll help you develop your sound.’ During that process, he and I just hit it off and became really good friends and a lot of our interested aligned.”
- What he was doing before he got into music: “I actually dove face first into special effects makeup and horror stuff. I worked in the haunt industry for 11 years. I sold loose leaf tea for like a decade and made a killing off of that until the company kind of folded. I really thought I was just going to work in film and television. I worked production. I worked for UFC for a short period of time, I worked for ESPN … The music thing kind of came shortly after I got divorced. I was like 25, 26, and I’d done the special effects makeup thing. I’d worked for Warner Bros. for a little bit. And as much as I loved it and as much money as I was making, I wasn’t happy. I was like, what am I doing here? I almost had a quarter-life crisis, you know what I’m saying? That’s when I really kind of dove into music. It was right before my father passed. He had a conversation with me where he’s like, ‘When are you going to cut the shit? When are you going to do this, man?’ He could see it. That’s when I dove into it.”
Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below or the Video at the Top of the Page
Brendan Shane joined Loudwire Nights on Wednesday, May 6; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.
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