Post-Hardcore Heroes Nervous Light Return with ‘A Lotus In The Mud’
When he’s not adding his melodic vocals to Wildheart‘s heavy hits, Jordan Olive can be found in his first project Nervous Light – a post-hardcore group of emos hellbent on having their message heard in Brisbane’s alternative music scene.
Today they’re launching their new single ‘A Lotus In The Mud‘ and if you’re a simp for bands like The Used, Story of The Year and nothing, nowhere this should be right up your alley. Commencing with a doomy introduction, it’s not long before the rest of the band kicks in and we’re taken to two-step town with a bouncy beat and whiney vocals that implore you to sing along.
On the song’s inspo, Jordan shares:
“Thematically, and sonically this song is an expansion on and something of a continuation of the themes covered in the title track of our debut EP, Bury What’s Left Of My Heart In Your Backyard (noted in the lyrical callback in the chorus). It delves into themes of guilt, frustration and struggle of feeling left behind or inconsequential around your contemporaries, along with the eventual triumph of the personal growth of growing out of this way of thinking. Rich wrote the bulk of this song and notes ‘I try to approach things from a transcendental perspective to create a barrier of not being too literal whilst still painting a picture with simple lines and using metaphor- this song utilising that of an almost religious sacrifice.'”
We started pulling from a lot of the bands we loved in our younger years (and still do to this day) like Underoath, The Used, Silverstein and Senses Fail. Our goal is to take all of these eclectic and varied influences and styles and create something that is reminiscent of all of it, but also entirely of our own.
But, for the ill-informed, the song almost didn’t see the light of day following issues in the studio which resulting in the track having to be re-recorded.
“We began recording the song back in October and had completed it shortly after Christmas/New Year. Unfortunately, upon bouncing out a mix revision the hard drive suffered some kind of, as described by a professional ‘catastrophic physical drive failure’. So, bad. But to make things worse the contents of said drive had not yet been backed up so the song was effectively gone. We sat on our hands for a few weeks while the possibility of data recovery was looked into, but as we had already shot the music video off of an older bounce and our originally planned release date and shows were quickly approaching, we were left with two options; -give in to the voice in my head saying ‘just quit music brother, this sucks’ or; -go back in for another round and record the song a second time.
So we did, having to meticulously make sure every string stroke and vocal note replicated the original so as not to cause further headaches when slapped on top of the music video. At last update, the other works contained on said hard drive have wound up overseas for some kind of intense data recovery attempts.”
Given what ‘A Lotus In The Mud‘ has been through, you should give it a listen out of principle.
If you felt something from the song, you can catch it live when Nervous Light hit the stage at Greaser in Brisbane for a free show on June 22nd. Get out, support the local scene and catch a hidden gem you didn’t know you were missing.
Stream ‘A Lotus In The Mud‘ here
