In this interview, 9 o’clock Nasty dive into the emotional core of “BEAST,” unpacking regret, vulnerability, creative tension, and how Chaos channels both intimacy and bite into their evolving, genre-blurring sound.
1. “BEAST” feels more melodic and reflective than some of your previous material—was there a specific moment or experience that inspired this more intimate and regret-driven direction?
It’s rare for one of our songs to come from a single place or event. We collaborate and argue over songs and we don’t tend to explain a lyric but instead layer new parts around how we each interpret what the other wrote.
Beast has got a bit of a breakup song in it on a superficial level but it also draws on that pull between desperately wanting to be part of something and belong against the need to retain a sense of being a unique individual.
There certainly is a theme of regret. Of the fog clearing and leaving you with that moment of clarity when you think “how did I allow myself to get here?”
2. The song explores love, betrayal, and the risks we take when we drop our guard. How do those themes connect to where you are as a band right now?
Beast is about those themes on a personal level. About life that is up close and personal and lived within the minute.
Those same things run through the rest of our material but just on a bigger scale. A lot of the album is about a loss of faith in politics and the media.
Except for We Got The Yip, the song that closes the album. That’s about dancing until your feet bleed. But obviously in the context of love, betrayal and the loss of personal autonomy.
3. You describe BEAST as revealing “a different side” of 9 o’clock Nasty—yet the acid still rises when the drums kick in. How do you balance vulnerability with that signature bite?
I think we’re seeking to do the opposite of that. The best music doesn’t worry about balance.
You express what you’ve got to without fear or holding back. Balance is what you seek when you try to please everyone. That isn’t possible.
When the drums land you get to your feet and feel it. Emotional intensity and vulnerability can take you to some dark places. Or maybe that’s just us…
4. As the eighth track from your upcoming LP Chaos, how does BEAST fit into the larger emotional and sonic journey of the album?
It stands out quite a bit lyrically but musically it slots right in, but it wasn’t always like that.
We’ve gradually refined our approach to writing and recording and as we get more confident we try new things. Beast started as pure vocals on top of a wicked drum loop. The first demo was pretty much a poem and beats We got really stuck on how to finish it and gave up on it more than once. We probably have as many songs for the album that we parked and didn’t complete as ones we took through to the end.
For Beast, Pete found that piano line and remixed the whole song on his own one night and he found the tune that was trapped inside all the noise.
That’s the great thing about working as a team who can all write and play and record. We can collaborate, but equally we can just sneak away on our own and come back with a surprise.
We like to think of the album as a whole very much like a live show. You need an opener and a big closer and then there is the song two thirds through that has more space to breathe before you lunge for that emotional; peak at the end.
Beast is that key song before the final act.
5. From By All Means Necessary to This Is Crowland, your sound has constantly evolved. In what ways does Chaos push your genre-defying identity even further?
We began as a garage band. Simple bass, guitar and drum kit recording on analogue tape. We had this really clear idea. We were listening to a lot of 60s stuff through lockdown and wanted to try to recreate that. But once you get to work on a song, it doesn’t always take you where you expected it to. Our job is to follow it and take it to the right place, not hold it back.
Gradually over the records we’ve rediscovered a lot of things we love about hip hop and electronica and gone more in that direction. We don’t defy genres, we love them. Too much. We just don’t want to settle on a single one if it isn’t right for the song. The song always comes first. Right now we’ve come full circle and have started new recordings that are very guitar driven because that fits the music that’s in our heads.
6. Leicester has always been part of your story. How does your hometown continue to shape the attitude, energy, and satire that define 9 o’clock Nasty today?
A love/hate relationship with our home does shape what we do, but we set out from day 1 not to be a “Leicester band.” We have all been very much part of the local scene in other acts over the years but with 9 o’clock Nasty we wanted to reach people from all over and not limit ourselves. Our biggest audiences are in countries like the United States and Brazil.
But of course you can’t escape Leicester. It has its own gravity. It has a unique sensibility and some really cool people to bounce ideas off. There are so many things going on and musical oddities that we can’t help taking inspiration from what we see and hear.
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