Welcome to the world of the All-American clean-cut rockers, NURAL.
This gig was the opening night of their UK tour, which is actually the last leg of a gratuitous 2-year long succession of tours that have taken them across the USA, twice to Japan, and now the pinnacle for any band's career I'm sure...Camden.
My heart went out to them as they came on stage, on a rainy Tuesday, to an insubstantial audience, in the sweaty and grimy dive bar that is the Dublin Castle. A lesser band would have acted like Prima Donnas and given up from the outset, but not Nural. The ever-professional troopers treated onlookers to a high-octane, powerful, and highly polished performance which, even if Nu-Metal isn't your preferred genre, you had to admire their skills, their unabated enthusiasm, and their power ballads.
Fronted by singer/charmer Kyle Castellani, this five piece have effectively grown up together, and the current line-up has been in place for 3 years. They are clearly designed to play packed-out stadiums, their sound is synonymous with corporate sponsorship, and one can see them making the soundtrack to some ultra-high-action blockbuster Hollywood movie. Theirs is the music of extreme sports, endorsed by Nike.
They are loud and hard, they have the right credentials and influences (I'm sure I heard snippets of Metalica's beautiful classic "Nothing Else Matters" at some point) so they're cool enough to start out relatively underground within their genre. But they are also totally inoffensive and seemingly lacking in controversy - cleverly setting them up for life in the mainstream pop. And I would be very surprised if we don't see this band becoming commercial heavy-weights in the future. But until that happens they continue to drive their own tour van, for which they have my utmost respect.
There is a smidgen of "Boy-band-ism" about Nural, they're the sweet boys next door. I don't really see them rolling on the floor of some hotel room in a filthy threesome with a couple of porn stars after a massive blizzard coke binge. These guys appear more likely to ask you to the prom (or local youth club), turn up with a bunch of flowers, and try to impress your dad. If you're a girl of course.
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They are entertaining performers, I really enjoyed watching them - and by the end of their set they had the initially reluctant audience clapping in time to the music, with their hands in the air, like they just didn't care (sorry couldn't resist that one), concreting my belief that they originate from planet "Stadium ROCK".
Given the obvious commerciality of their music, I asked Castellani what film Nural would like to do the soundtrack for, to which he answered: "It would have to be a good movie, something with a lot of senseless action. And explosions." I love being proved right.
But its not all skateboarding and fighter jets, as Castellani explained, "I don't write [songs] on tour, it's when I get home that I take it more seriously,
"Things that happen to my friends and family, those are the things that really affect me."
So it's your catharsis then? "Yeah, yeah that's right," smiling to himself, "I guess it is."
Nural rock. And they come across as genuine chaps without any trace of ego or arrogance. So what if they are somewhat on the contrived side? I thought they were bitchin', and I really hope they succeed. Dude.
(Nural's album "Weight of the World" is released on Hopeless Records. )
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