This Friday, NOTHING will release their most remarkable album yet. Unpacking everything that’s gone into a short history of decay, we join frontman Domenic ‘Nicky’ Palermo for a typically deep and candid chat about his search to find peace, tackling new topics lyrically, and why his life story will never define him…
In a dark corner of a Brooklyn bar on a frigid January day just after a snowstorm, Domenic ‘Nicky’ Palermo is sitting at a high top table sipping a Guinness. It’s a few minutes after four in the afternoon, and the cream foam on the NOTHING frontman’s moustache – well, the part of his slightly scraggly beard that’s above his lip – is the brightest part of the room. The darkest area isn’t far away, hidden in a small sling bag that hangs across Nicky’s shoulder – an almost invisible mass of jet-black fur that belongs to his tiny dog, Bug.
At various points throughout our interview, Bug shuffles in the bag, resting her head on her owner’s leg before withdrawing once again into the sanctity and safety of her makeshift home. It makes for a compelling family portrait, especially as the tenderness that Nicky shows towards his pet is one clearly inspired by pure love. Nicky’s affable, caring demeanour isn’t entirely at odds with his image, but it does make for a striking juxtaposition – here’s this tiny, cute canine in the arms of a heavily tattooed ex-con.
Not that the people in the bar – or, for that matter, most people in general – are necessarily aware of Nicky’s life story, or that he’s been to prison. But for those who do know who he is, the story of his incarceration has been told many times before. After all, it happened a quarter of a century ago. Nicky, who was in a hardcore band called Horror Show at the time, stabbed a man in self-defence after getting jumped. He still spent two years in jail, however, for aggravated assault and attempted murder. That spelled the end for Horror Show, but, after a good amount of time lost in the artistic wilderness, eventually led to the birth of NOTHING in 2010. Or perhaps 2011. Reports vary, but it was around then.
It was also the beginning of a string of bad luck – perhaps trauma is a better word – for the frontman when it came to his health, which included getting a fractured skull from a 2015 mugging, being diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and developing a traumatic cataract. The last two were likely knock-on effects of the blunt force trauma from that 2015 attack, but he also managed to separate his rib cage from his chest plate while carrying a Twin Reverb amp “on tour in 2021 or 2022”. He thought he was having a heart attack. Perhaps most scary of all, though, was after he lost his Medicaid coverage in 2020 and had to come off the pills he’d been taking. That had disastrous consequences.
“I was hearing voices,” he describes matter-of-factly. “I thought that there were aliens or demons in my house. But I think it wasn’t because I wasn’t on the medication, I think it was because I was on this medication and got off of it. Because I’ve never had any issues like that before. I had full-on psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar, anger outbursts over the fucking dishes being in the sink. I was hearing voices, I thought that there were people – like, interdimensional people – trying to come into my house to kill me. This all spawned right after I got that head injury and then I was put on all these different antidepressants and fucking benzos. They had me on so many different medicines, and then they took me off and I was like a bottle rocket whose stick was cut off. I was spinning on the ground, fucking going mental. So I decided then I was going to just lay off mostly everything I could.”
Those effects, thankfully, are in the past. More recently, though, he’s been experiencing essential tremors, a neurological condition that causes uncontrollable rhythmic shaking, usually in the hands. It’s not – he happily demonstrates as he lifts his pint – too bad today, even though drinking does exacerbate it, but it’s yet another issue to add to a long list of unwanted life experience. Needless to say, ever since starting NOTHING, Nicky has always had a lot to write about. But with new, capital letter-less album a short history of decay, he’s putting himself on the line more than ever by writing about a subject he never had the courage to confront before: growing up with an abusive father. Or rather, it wasn’t so much a lack of courage as it was the absence of his physical ability to do so.
“I could barely get out of bed and function before NOTHING,” Nicky explains. “Like, post-prison. So how the fuck am I supposed to write about something like that? But I always wrote a lot of poetry, and I figured there were slick ways that I could write about it. And I try to still write that way, but I could be more vocal about what I’ve been through. I don’t have anything to be ashamed about in my life, I don’t think I’m a piece of shit, I think I’m an alright person that’s always trying to better themselves and do the right thing for the next person. That’s all I really want to be remembered as: someone who got put through a grinder a little, and didn’t let it affect how he felt on the inside.”
Nicky sounds somewhat sad when he says this, but that’s just the way he sounds. He isn’t sad. He’s in a healthy relationship, and he has the most adorable ball of Vantablack fur on his lap. Meanwhile, Slide Away – the multi-generational shoegaze festival he started in 2024 – is going from strength to strength, and NOTHING have genuinely made the album of their career. It’s a tender and contemplative treatise on life and all of its pains (and some of its joys), and you can feel that in each of its nine stunning songs. Having released a full-length every two years since 2014 – that year’s Guilty Of Everything, 2016’s Tired Of Tomorrow, 2018’s Dance On The Blacktop and 2020’s The Great Dismal – this one feels long overdue. And were the band to end today, a short history of decay would be a truly remarkable swansong.
While it’s centred on, well, Nicky’s own short history of decay, it’s also a fitting soundtrack for a world that’s descending into political and environmental chaos. Those aren’t subjects the frontman tends to write about directly, but what’s been happening lately hasn’t escaped him.
“I'm not a super socio-political guy,” he admits when the conversation turns toward ICE and how things have been in America over the past few months. “I don’t know enough and the world has enough opinions of people that don’t know what they’re talking about. But I can tell what’s wrong and what’s right. And obviously what’s going on now is really scary. I don’t even feel comfortable releasing stuff into the world, or promoting anything. Sure, people need entertainment and music, but it just feels so awkward. Like, ‘Here’s my tour flyer’ when someone just got their head blown off in the street by a secret military.”
It was, Nicky says, similar with The Great Dismal, which he found himself promoting when the George Floyd protests were at their height. This leads him into a stream of consciousness digression about government forces on the street and Palestine and AI warfare before he slams on the brakes of his brain.
“It's overwhelming,” he sighs, “and I struggle with self-promoting.”
The darkness of NOTHING’s music has always also kind of reflected world alongside the trials and tribulations of Nicky’s own life. But ultimately, the band’s songs – and, in particular, the ones on this album – are the sound of him navigating his own tortured existence. And thankfully, he is getting better.
“I’m definitely imbalanced still, definitely neurotic, definitely hysterical,” he admits calmly. “But I’m more focused, and I’m more at peace with myself, which is a big one. I had a hard time looking at myself in the mirror for the longest time – bad decision on bad decision, embarrassing decisions, moments of weakness. I didn’t think too highly of myself. I still don’t – don’t get me wrong, I haven’t turned any narcissistic corner or anything – but I’ve become at peace more with myself. And I think it’s getting better every day. I’d love to be able to enjoy my own company eventually, rather than being at war with myself, the way I have been over the past two decades, or maybe my whole life.”
Does that mean you’re… happy?
“I’m never not happy,” Nicky answers immediately, before running back his enthusiasm. “I mean, I have a lot of moments where I enjoy what I’m doing. It’s the wee hours where I’m by myself and I’m faced with looking back at my history and things that I’ve done – mostly things that I’ve done, it’s never things that have been done to me – to betray myself and who I really am that have always been the hardest struggle. That’s always a goal: to get closer to being at one with myself, I think. And I don’t mean by having conversations with myself (laughs).”
A little later, with Bug bundled up on Nicky’s chest, we head outside into the blinding glare of the New York daytime snow piles. The metaphor is almost too obvious – that with this record, he’s taking another step out of the darkness into the light. But he kind of is. And despite everything, it seems there are plenty more steps to follow. There would be another metaphor, too, had Nicky placed Bug on the snow – a perfect representation of how, with NOTHING, he navigates through a world that’s never really known his pain – but he doesn’t. He just makes sure she’s covered by his jacket before walking them both home.
a short history of decay is released on February 27 via Run For Cover. NOTHING tour the UK and Ireland in April, and then return for Outbreak Fest Manchester and ArcTanGent in the summer.
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