Nailed To Obscurity – Interview met Jan-Ole Lamberti (guitars)
Jan-Ole Lamberti: “More clean vocals, I think that is maybe the biggest change for us on this album”
Nailed To Obscurity hoort bij het beste wat je in het aanbod melodieuze, maar potige death/doom metal kunt vinden. Van bij het begin voelden we dat we hier met een groeidiamant te maken hadden en we keken dan ook telkens uit naar hun volgende stap en nieuw werk. Deze keer was het wat langer geleden – maar liefst zes jaar – dat het vorige album ‘Black Frost’ (2019) uitkwam, maar de vijf sympathieke muzikanten uit het noorden van Duitsland hebben niet stilgezeten. Wanneer het sublieme ‘Generation Of The Void’ dan het resultaat is, kunnen we alleen maar toejuichen dat de band alles tot in de puntjes wenst te verzorgen. Gitarist/medeproducer van het eerste uur Jan-Ole Lamberti doet voor ons alles uitgebreid uit de doeken. Na een praatje over het weer en wanneer we elkaar voor het laatst gezien en/of gesproken hebben, steken we van wal.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 23 september 2025
When did the carousel of going on tour come back for Nailed To Obscurity after the pandemic?
Actually 2022 was the heaviest touring that we ever had. We played North America for eight weeks, so that was one tour. Then we came back and most of the tours were still cancelled. We had a European tour planned for April, but by the time we were touring in the US, we weren’t sure it would be allowed to do the same thing in Europe and then, when we returned, it was exactly the time when everything opened up here. So we were basically one of the first bands to tour again. That was with Dark Tranquillity, in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands and two shows in Germany I think. At the end of the year we toured with Eluveitie and Amorphis in Europe. So that was quite a lot touring right after covid-19, even a little bit when covid-19 was still there, in Europe at least.
I learned from the info sheet that the new album ‘Generation Of The Void’ was recorded between 2021 and 2014. When did you write the material then?
That is probably not 100% true I think. I don’t remember when we started recording, but we started writing in 2020 when covid-19 started basically. Then we recorded the first three songs in 2021 and those were ‘Liquid Mourning’ and ‘Clouded Frame’, which we then released when we started touring in 2022. The third track that we recorded back then, still hasn’t been released until now on the album. That is the opening track on the album: ‘Glass Bleeding’. That one was done already by that time, but we did not see any reason to release it that early. So we released the other two songs for the tours. At that time we had not recorded the rest of the album, so that is why the time span is so long. The rest we recorded in 2023.
You did a lot of the recordings yourselves and with eminent producers. So we are going to shine a light on that. How was it to work with Jacob Hansen and V. Santura?
Viktor is a friend and we already worked on three albums together. He even played shows with us when we needed a step-in on bass. I think it was in 2019 that he played over a week with us, so that was not really new to us, but exciting and nice as always. We were used to that process. What was different, was that we did not record the vocals there. So we recorded all the instruments with Viktor and that was great, but the approach was different this time. Usually we go very, very deep into the sounds and prepare everything cautiously, but since he wasn’t the one supposed to be the person who mixed it, we just worked differently this time, more like a live set. We used the sounds that felt right to us and that we are used to and then we took these recordings to Jacob and re-amped the guitars and the bass and worked on the sound after we were done with him, because he was the man of the mix and mastering and it just makes more sense and also we wanted to try something new. Then we recorded the vocals also there. I think there was only a tiny part on guitars that we wanted to change, and then we could record the vocals with Jacob. That was great, because it was a new approach, another input as well. That felt nice and different and Jacob is a super nice guy as well as Viktor and nice to work with. It was fantastic! We had an idea how it could be, but it was exactly how we hoped it would be.
And it is a new environment, maybe inspiring as well.
Yes, we were in the south for a part of it and in the north for the rest. That was a nice contrast.
Why the decision to call the album ‘Generation Of The Void’?
At first it was just the title of one of the songs and when we were in Denmark, recording the vocals – only Raimund and me were there in a shared apartment where we were staying – there we just started talking about the album, what the title could be. We started talking about this specific song title when looking for an album title. We saw a more global and political meaning in this, while the original ideas for the songs – as they usually are – there is always a political side, but usually it is very intrinsically motivated and very emotional and personal, but open for interpretation for everyone, so you can make the song your own when you listen to it and listen to the lyrics. That is also something that we – and especially Raimund – always wants. He would never tell you what the real meaning of the song is, because it is so personal. But the way I interpret this specific song and the title was very political. Just look at the world and how things have developed and then think about this title again. The original idea of this planet was generation in terms of generating a void, the possibility of generating something and not the generation as the social concept. That’s when we realized ‘okay, we can basically do that with all the songs’. They all have this certain level where you can see, not only human emotions, but also social aspects, political aspects and problems we all are facing, now and in the future. That was the moment when we said: ‘Generation of the Void is the perfect album title’.
Long time bassist Carsten left the band. What happened? Why did he leave?
That was a long process. Even before covid-19, things did not feel like they used to feel and we had different ideas how we wanted to precede and there was the pandemic, which was difficult because we had to change the way we write music. In the past we did a lot of the work together in the rehearsal space and were just jamming, and now we were kind of forced – which I really liked and embraced, because that’s what I always wanted – now we had to work here, mainly in this room with the studio set-up and working. Not playing live as a band, but basically creating the songs in our minds and use the gear that we had here, which I like, because it can be very creative and you can take your time and try out things, new things, which I think you can hear on the album. We had a lot of time to work on these details, what we just skipped in the past, because the process was different. Then for Carsten, our former bass player, that did not work at all, because he is not into this technical stuff. He wants to do it the old school way. I say this in the most positive way, he is old school when it comes to that. He wants to be in the rehearsal space and jam his ideas. That process was just different and that’s where we drifted apart a little bit. He says that he likes the music, but he felt that he is not really involved anymore, because he just couldn’t contribute, because he did not have the skills, the technical skills to do that. So it was all kinds of things like that, where he just at some point said he felt that it was time for a change. It was pretty tough after such a long time. He was in the band for 17 years. We started as teenagers and went through all this and had all these experiences together. That was tough, especially for him I am sure, but the coolest thing was, the most amazing way that can happen is right after this decision, everything felt better for everyone. There was more room for the friendship again, while before there were too many conflicts all the time. He became our booking agent. He’s been working as a professional booking agent for a nice agency. We were at that agency basically, just had a different agent. Then he said he still wants to work with the band. It is still his baby, you know, but in a different way. Now he is our agent. It’s never been better, you know. On many levels. It is a real nice solution and I think also for him. He made the right choice, for all of us I think.
Where did you find the new guy, Lutz Neemann?
That is a long time friend who went with us through all this as well. He has been friends with our old bass player forever, even before we met them. In the past they had another band and in theory it still exists, it just hasn’t been active for many years, but there was a long time when both bands were co-existing side by side for sharing stuff and things like that. So we know him for a long time and then quite a while ago, it was maybe 2018 or so, Lutz, our new bass player, joined us on tour to do the lights. So he was our lightning designer for many years. He was the obvious choice. He is a very good guitar player, he already started playing bass a while before we knew him. We also involved Carsten. When Carsten left, a while after that we were ready to talk about our view on a few things, we asked him if it would be okay with him and he said ‘that’s the only good option’. It seemed like such a big problem, but then all fell into place in a way.
Now we are going to focus on some tracks. We start with the longest one, ‘Echo Attempt’. It has a bit of a progressive, psychedelic touch, isn’t it?
Yeah. We are not so much in progressive rock, I mean totally progressive, but we like bands with a prog edge. You can hear that pretty clearly in that track I think. I agree, but I think that just happened, it is not super intentional.
In general there is more clean vocals on this album. I think it is a feature we can promptly mention and that is a nice development. For instance we have the song ‘Allure’ with only clean vocals…
With more clean vocals, I think that is maybe the biggest change for us on this album. We have done it before, but this was the first time we wanted to add a more dynamic range and we felt that if you growl all the time, you always keep it to this level, you know. I am not saying that overall growls are getting boring, but you get the same intensity all the time. We have so many mellow parts in our music, why don’t we do the same thing for the vocals, take it down? And then when the growls come in, they really hit you hard. We just wanted to have this contrast, more dynamic, not only for the vocals, but on the whole album. I hope it turned out more dynamic than anything we did before, like going for very heavy parts to very mellow parts in the songs. That was just kind of what we had envisioned but also, the music has always been so melodic, that it just sometimes screams for clean vocals. It screams for not screaming (chuckles). In the past we usually added lots of guitar leads and more leads than songs maybe need, because we wanted to add that layer, but now that we had less layers we got a lot of room for the vocals, and still had the leads of course, but give them a prominent spot in the song when the leads can shine. Not everything on top of each other, that was the approach and I think it kind of worked out, even though it is not always exactly like that, but those are the reasons why there are so much clean vocals on this album now.
Raimund is a very good singer!
Yes and that is the other thing. Since we had the studio situation now, we actually got the time to work on the vocals, on developing the clean vocals. We never had time and the setup to do it properly like this. For the vocals when rousing, it was easy, because we know how they sound, and basically we need the phrasing and text and then we know how it sounds. But for the melodies and the harmonies, you actually have to compose that and try and change, even change the guitars behind the vocal lines if you feel that there is something missing in the harmonies, and that is a whole new level to song-writing when layers get added. That is something we also had to learn, I have to say, it was a steep learning curve, but that is also the reason that this was the first time we had the possibility to go that deep into surprising vocal melodies.
That is always more delicate before you reach the goal. It demands a lot from the voice…
These are two completely different things to do. Writing for growls or writing for clean vocals and also the phrasing… The words you chose are even different, because you want a different effect, a different sound. If you chose the same words for the clean vocals, then it is sometimes sounds awful. You want words that sound nice. It is a very different thing and it was actually very interesting part and I think very benevolent for us.
On the other hand we have a kind of eerie atmosphere in ‘Overcast’… almost apocalyptic…
Indeed. That is awesome that you can see that, because it was the basic idea for the song. We wrote this song and said: ‘this sounds like the apocalypse’, afterwards Raimund used that theme for the song. We are really happy that you can feel that atmosphere.
The chorus from the title track keeps on haunting me, it is very catchy…
I think – and that’s another reason why we made it the title track – ‘Generation Of The Void’ is in a way the most outstanding song, because it is so different from what we did before. It is just a very different approach. We said: let us do what we always did, but let us try to make a very standout chorus that basically hits you in the face, but it is also atmospheric and even though we are not really that much into this band, for the chorus we had basically in mind something like Bring Me The Horizon. They have such strong and catchy choruses that even though we are not a huge fan of the band, they have good ways to create these strong effects. They have song-writing skills, that’s what we respect and appreciate. That was what we wanted to do for this song. We wanted a song that sounds like us, but the same approach, the same kind of hard-hitting chorus in a way. Maybe it is because I know this background story, but it feels this song stand out a lot.
Nailed To Obscurity already exists for twenty years this year!
It doesn’t feel that way. The thing is, we founded the band in 2005, but it took a long time until we became really active. The first seven years were more like very local. We played local shows only, learning a lot of things, making mistakes, learning to play our instruments basically (laughs), so it was more like a hobby. In 2012, that was the mark that it was getting more serious I think.
What can you tell about the artwork, done by Giannis Nakos?
We are also very happy with it. It was really not that easy to find a way to display the title. How do you paint a void? That could be everything and nothing. That was actually the challenge and we tried a few things, discussed many things and there were some approaches that we did not like that much. We always liked what Giannis Nakos did and we thought that he would probably be the one who could do it in a way that it works for us and that also suits the vibe and the atmosphere of the album and this was the result. We really went into details and discussed these things with him and tweeted a lot of things, but basically he was the one who just hit the nail from the beginning.
This year you will do your first real headline tour, don’t you?
Yes. Soon we will be embarking on a European tour and there will be more shows next year. We are working on that and since it is the first one, we wanted to keep it to a length that is doable and not taking too many risks. So instead of having one super long tour, we have tried to spread it a little bit so that we can constantly tour and always in different markets and cities in a way that makes sense. We need to keep the distances short, because when you have to drive 700 kms to the next venue, it just gets too exhausting and expensive. This just makes the most sense, but it doesn’t mean that we want to exclude any of the other markets, they will just follow at a later point.
