ROAD TO THE HOLY NOISE BATTLE OF THE BANDS: NIGHTMARE OVERDOSE

With the 2013 Holy Noise Battle of the Bands in Dubai coming up in two weeks, Metality decided to check out the six bands that will be competing with a series of interviews. One of the bands will win the opportunity to play a show in India! There will also be a panel of judges, composed of Barney Ribeiro of Dubai's death metal powerhouse Nervecell, Fawwaz aka DJ Storm, founder of Holy Noise and organizer of the 2013 Dubai Rock Festival, and Czarina Soriano from Rock Radio UAE.

We decided to start with Abu Dhabi's metalcore act, Nightmare Overdose. Kareem C caught up with vocalist Ahmed Ghonim, who is excited for the band's debut EP release at the end of the summer.

Hey Ahmed how's everything going?

Everything's alright, just keeping the band members locked in my basement until they perfect the songs.

Tell us a little bit about how Nightmare Overdose came to be.

It goes a little bit earlier before Nightmare Overdose, me and Nizar (lead guitarist) are old friends and we've been in several bands before this one. However we started Nightmare Overdose with the intentions of taking this more serious than ever. We composed a few songs, gathered the band and started our long long journey of trying to record our EP haha.

As the band's vocalist and lyricist, what themes inspire you the most when you write?

My main influence is my own personal experiences along with events of which occurred to people I knew. Part of the lyrics I write is derived from certain events i witness and feel attached to one way or the other. For example one of the tracks is entitled "Blood Inheritance" and its mainly taken from when I was raised in the red zones of palestine, massacres and bloodbaths were parts of daily life there. So you can get the drift.

Nightmare Overdose had a recent lineup change with Alicia joining in on clean vocals. How did that happen?

Well here how it happened; most of my band members fill in for Obselion in pretty much most of their gigs. Another fill in member was Alicia. They played a show in battle of the bands months ago and the guys told me how good she was. We asked her to fill in for us since our old singer left to Australia. She managed to learn the songs in a very short time which was impressive. Also she added her own touch to each songs which made them unique and different. Right after the gig we asked her if she wanted to be a permanent member and she agreed.

"We're All Strangers" is the band's upcoming EP release. What can you tell us about it?

I can tell you that each song will tell you a different story, send a different vibe of emotions, and you will notice a variety of styles in each track, the EP was written back in 2009 and we kept changing riffs and adding or taking down parts until it became what it is today. We had several attempts to record it, but we had a series of unfortunate events with each producer we've dealt with. Now we're tracking with Mohamed Bailouni and Liam from Coat Of Arms, and let me tell you these guys know for sure what they're doing and I believe we will have our EP finally released by the end of this summer.

Does the band have any pre-show rituals or traditions?

Yes of course, I panic and become a very annoying person to deal with for I keep nagging everyone to perfect the songs haha. But mainly we don't have anything in specific. We just get on stage and let the rockstars in us take it from there.

Which of the other bands are you most looking forward to checking out?

Personally I have a pretty good idea about most of the bands that will be taking part in this BOTB, but I've always wanted to share the stage with Coat Of Arms and I finally have the chance to do so.

Any last words to Metality's readers?

It is YOU guys who are the very foundation of the metal scene in this country, we all know that the scene here lacks support. Of course everything has its ups and downs right? But whats more important specially for underground bands out there is CONSISTENCY! Keep doing whatever you can to keep your band up and running, invest and never give up because we all face setbacks every while and then.

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