Nothingface's 'Skeletons'
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Let me take you back to April 22, 2003, in the United States of America. The number one movie in the country is Anger Management. The number one song is 50 Cent's "In Da Club." The number one song on the alternative charts is Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong." And the ratings juggernaut on TV that night is the second season of American Idol.
April 22 is also new-release Tuesday. Headlining the slate of new albums is Madonna's American Life. The metal side of the CD store is packed with new arrivals: Aborted's Goremageddon, Opeth's Damnation, Sleep's Dopesmoker, and Usurper's Twilight Dominion. I had all those albums, but I was about to become infatuated with Death By Stereo's Into the Valley of Death. That one didn't age so great. However, another album that made its way into my CD booklet that day did: Nothingface's Skeletons.
Skeletons is the follow-up to the Washington, DC, quartet's killer fourth album, 2000's Violence. Its single "Bleeder," an absolute scorcher, landed into the US Mainstream Rock charts. Violence also received glowing reviews, a rarity for a 2000s rocker as the mainstream press grew ever more hostile to alternative and nu metal. But, despite its chart impact and well-earned plaudits, it didn't do the right numbers in the epoch of first-week platinum plaques. "The soundtrack to the end of the world," per the band, pushed 87,000 units. That would make Violence a world-beater today. At the time, it was a pebble crushed by the monoculture's boulder.
Still, since it was a minor breakout, Nothingface could've done what a lot of rock bands did and made a simpler Violence, capitalizing on "Bleeder"'s success. It could've streamlined its sound and courted a broader audience. It tapped Bill Kennedy, the producer of Morbid Angel's Domination and a run of mediocre Megadeth records, to helm Skeletons.1 Kennedy and company turned in an aggressive album, an angry album. But, crucially, it is not Violence.
Where Violence is an aggro onslaught, Skeletons is eclectic, harrowing, and heavy. Instead of wallowing in the simple solipsism of popular post-grunge, it lives in the grey. And that grey area is grief. Not performative grief but the roller coaster of real, unpredictable grief. Indeed, Skeletons vacillates between extremes, the numbness and fury, that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced loss. Numbness, when life cruelly feels too real, and the overload of stimuli is so overpowering that you just want to shut down. Fury, that blinding rage that floods your body and seizes your brain. And thus, by broadening its experience to encapsulate this very-human duality, Skeletons captures the emotional turbulence of time better than most.
In the years between Violence and Skeletons, Nothingface has been through some stuff. Drummer Chris Houck has health issues, leaves the band, and is replaced by Tommy Sickles. Singer Matt Holt's house burns down. Guitarist Tom Maxwell's mother dies. Bassist Bill Gaal goes through a divorce. Some of Skeletons explores this internal turmoil. "Lost in the catacombs," Holt sings on the standout "Scission," "somehow I'm feeling at home."
"Scission" is everything about this period of Nothingface distilled down to a 45-sized three minutes. Yes, it's one of the better songs about addiction in the 2000s. And, yes, it does have a grim aura considering Holt's real-life struggles. But, in contrast to any of the misery-porn bands that commercialized downcast dirges, Gaal and Maxwell's composition is clever and engaging, giving the hook a glum, Beatlesque grandeur. Likewise, Holt's harmony is achingly gorgeous, the medicated euphoria of an opiate high. But it also throbs with an anesthetized pain. It sounds like someone ripping the bandages off their fresh wounds and not understanding why they're not healing. "Scission" is a gem, a pure nugget of rock popcraft. But it's also real, truly affecting. Nothingface didn't have to try this hard, but they did. Nothingface didn't have to plumb the darkest depths of its soul, but it did. More than anything else, that's the Nothingface story to me.
Nothingface's story also aligns well with the first wave of nu metal. Initially written off as a Korn clone, Nothingface actually conceived its sound through independent discovery like many of the early nu metal bands. In an interview with Planet Sound, Maxwell also described the band's music this way: "Very heavy, very aggressive, very passionate. It's very emotional music, very lonely music."
Yet, this lonely music is woven from varied influences with threads pulled from many sources. Maxwell namechecked the Beatles and Led Zeppelin as core components of the Nothingface sound.2 In a now-archived profile in the Baltimore Sun, Holt went deeper and IDed his favorite Maryland bands like Spirit Caravan, Dog Fashion Disco, Clutch, Compression, and, holy heck, Meatjack. My friends, when I started putting this together, I was not expecting a Meatjack sighting.
Nevertheless, the diverse DNA makes sense given that Skeletons sounds like a record made by musicians with a multitude of backgrounds. "Tom, our guitar player, comes from the metal scene in Baltimore," Holt explained, "whereas Tommy and I, we came from more of the DC indie, straight-edge kind of thing, where we'd go and see Fugazi and all those Dischord bands. Really, instead of there being just a Baltimore thing or a DC thing, there's a combination of the two."
The sludgy Tad-isms of Meatjack plus the hook-laden progressiveness of Shudder to Think? That's Nothingface. I can't help but hear that all over a song like "Incarnadine" that shifts from bouncy bellicosity to an extended acoustic guitar passage. The musicianship is exceptional. The songwriting is progressive. But there's something else happening on Skeletons that has kept it in my rotation.
In fact, a lot was happening in 2003 when Skeletons was released. Weeks before, on March 20, the Iraq War kicked off, becoming the third active front of the so-called War on Terror. Ten days earlier, the Dixie Chicks, now The Chicks, criticized President George W. Bush in front of a London audience. The backlash was immediate. The country trio was blocklisted on the increasingly monopolized and homogenized Clear Channel radio stations. This was the post-9/11, boot-in-your-ass, "you're either for us or against us" ethos in action, something The Suicide File would later point out in the 2002 song "Ashcroft" as those in power "using tragedy to advance [their] own narrow moral crusade." As the country grieved, caught between numbness and fury, the monoculture was hijacked by zealots pretending they received a mandate from an imaginary majority. At the time, this enforced patriotism felt suffocating. It still does.
Now, Nothingface makes lonely music. And, during this era of narrow moral crusades, the band could've opted out and turned inward, focusing on its pain. Instead, the grief the band personally experienced radiates outward. "Here Come the Butchers" targets the still ongoing sexual abuses by the Catholic Church. "In Avernus" grapples with American foreign policy as the country medicated itself with exceptionalism. "I Wish I Was a Communist" is a furious condemnation of an iniquitous music industry that didn't realize it was killing itself while screwing over its artists. These events felt suffocating. Nothingface wouldn't go down easy. It thrashes its way out of asphyxiation, empowered by its inner unrest.
That's the thing: Nothingface's personal grief feels more universal when applied to current events that affect others. It gives its grief gravity. Conversely, Nothingface's grief makes these songs about a moment last longer than the news cycle. Like any expert storyteller, Nothingface knew that the feelings would last.
A decade before Skeletons, Zack de la Rocha whispered “anger is a gift” while fronting another politically-aware band. I think Nothingface realized that grief is similarly imbued with power. The question is, how will you channel it and where do you point it? Do you point it at yourself? Or do you use it like a spotlight to illuminate the world? "What if it all came crashing down around you?" Holt sings on "Beneath." "How will you save yourself?"
I actually reviewed Skeletons at the time.3 I wish I could find it. Kids, save your clips. Here's what I remember about the write-up: I thought Skeletons was good. Nearly 20 years later, I still think it's good. It's a document of a band going way harder than it needed to and talking about more stuff than it had to. I think, objectively, Violence is a better album. But Skeletons is my favorite. It's a snapshot of 2003. But, more than the other cultural markers I listed at the start of this spiel, it's still a portrait of who we are today.
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I'm required by metal law to mention that Kennedy mixed Infernal Majesty's None Shall Defy, an album I've thought a lot about.
Maxwell also confirmed that the band's name resulted from their original singer nodding at Voivod.
I remember that I burned the promo to a CD-R that I filled up with tracks from another DC band, Darkest Hour, who would release a similar album, Hidden Hands of a Sadist Nation, in May of that year.