Cold Night For Alligators - the Hindsight Notes Interview

What’s in a name? For a heavy band, it can be a hell of a lot, it can make or break you. It can have a deep, symbolic meaning, or no meaning at all. It can have a funny or interesting story attached, or just something one of the band members pulled out of their proverbial on a drunken night together trying to think up a name.

For this underrated five-piece from Denmark, their rather enigmatic name comes from a former, very short-lived member of the band, and from a desire to have an unusual name and not to be pigeonholed, stylistically.

Members Nikolaj Lauszus (drums) and Johan Pederson (vocals) join us for a chat about the band, its name, its history and the fabulous new album The Hindsight Notes.

“I would like to say it’s a funny story, but it’s not that funny,” explains Lauszus. “Neither of us were there when the band started. The first bass player of the band, I think it’s like a turn of phrase that he came upon, and he thought it sounded funny. He left the band after two months, so no one really remembers how it came about.

“But we like it because it stands out a bit, and people have no idea what to expect. I think that suits us well.”

After fairly inauspicious beginnings, their origins stretching back to the late 2000s, the band crystalised their lineup and became more of a serious concern by the mid-2010s, releasing two albums and touring extensively. Now, in 2022, their true opus has arrived. The Hindsight Notes is a spectacular, highly ambitious slice of melodic progressive rock/metal and, given Covid’s hold over the planet over the past two years, it’s had quite the journey from early imaginings through to the finished product we hear now.

“When Covid hit, we had almost finished the writing,” Lauszus recalls. “We said we’d spend about a year writing it, at that time. Before that we were writing a bit but mainly playing shows and promoting our last album. We set 2020 aside for writing and recording, and we spent the first half of 2020 writing it, and the second half recording it. We had a much bigger ambition in terms of the production this time, we put in a lot of effort, we worked with some really cool people. I think there’s 40 session musicians on this record.

“So there was a lot of coordination and back and forth, and the mix took a lot before everyone was happy. So it was about a year, the full year of 2020, finishing up the record and doing the production.”

However, with the album finished, the dreaded Covid would have far more to say when it came to the actual release of the record and their approach to it. “We actually had it finished by December 2020,” Lauszus goes on, “and then we signed with our new label, Arising Empire, and we agreed with them that we would postpone the release of the full album at least a year, so we’d have more of a chance to promote it, playing live shows.

“That’s also why we’ve been doing this slow approach where we’ve been doing a lot more singles than usual. Usually you would put something out and then go out into the world and promote it, right? But we weren’t really sure what might be possible for us. So we wanted to have a lot more of an online presence, and a part of that is just putting out more content. Not to complain too much, but this last year has been all of the not so fun parts of being in a band, we haven’t been recording, we haven’t been playing live, we’ve just been doing practical stuff, creating content, shooting music videos, marketing, all the fun stuff (laughs)! So it’s been a very slow build to the release date.”

And it wasn’t just that it delayed the album’s release and caused the band to postpone its touring plans, Covid turned out to be a major factor during the recording process as well, especially since there were so many people involved in the creation of this grandiose and visionary piece of art.

“We just got one session musician in at a time,” Lauczus says, “we couldn’t get all the musicians into the studio at the one time. and we all had to get tested, and then someone would get Covid or was close to someone who got Covid, so we had to postpone a few things.”

The end result of all the waiting and all the trials and tribulations has been well worth the wait. The album is quite unlike most things the average heavy music fan, even the average progressive heavy music fan, will have experienced in their time. The songs are highly idiosyncratic, although extremely listenable at the same time. Being a fairly unknown quantity to most listeners in Australia, Pederson is only too happy to give Aussie heavy music fans an insight into what they can expect from the album and the band in general.

“We’ve had quite a bit of discussion about this, actually,” he says. “I’d say, we’re definitely still a metal band, but we’re not a very metal, metal band, if you know what I mean? I’d say we’re alternative metal, we sort of come out of the prog metal scene, but I don’t think we sound like most bands in that scene. We’ve sort of progressed away from trying to be flashy and confusing, for lack of a better description (laughs).

“If you like stuff that is catchy and approachable but still able to push boundaries and take you on weird detours, that’s definitely us. The new album is a little bit softer, so if you’re a full-on metalhead, you have to expect that parts of the album will make you happy, but other parts might expand your horizons a bit.”

With Covid still a major factor affecting bands’ touring plans, combined with the fact that Cold Night for Alligators are still relatively unknown Down Under, an Aussie tour from the band looks to be an uncertain proposition for the foreseeable future. At the same time, the guys are far from ruling it out. Much will depend on the reception the album receives here.

“We haven’t got many offers,” Lauszus says with a little regret. “I’ve been to Australia myself, a couple of times and I absolutely love the place. If we get offers that make even the slightest bit of sense, we’ll be right on it.”

“I see we’re getting some responses over there,” Pederson continues the thought, “obviously we’re talking to you, we‘re getting some PR down there. Some people are writing to us and pre-ordering our album. If we can make the case that people are noticing us down there, we’d love to come and play for you guys.”