Courtesy Andrea Roberts
Audio By Carbonatix
Narcotic Wasteland started as a thrashy side project of longtime Nile guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade in 2011. In the beginning, he focused on the band only when he had downtime between touring and recording with the legendary ancient Egyptian-themed technical death-metal outfit from South Carolina. But it was obvious early on that he’d tapped into something with Narcotic Wasteland. As the group grew in scope, Toler-Wade left Nile in 2016 to focus on his new act full-time.
“I wanted to scale it up after we wrote about four songs for the project. It was something that I was going to do when Nile wasn’t busy,” he says. “It just kind of organically turned into this other thing. I just kept plugging away at it and having ideas for this particular style. The rest is history.”
Narcotic Wasteland showcases Toler-Wade’s penchant for writing killer riffs, which he did for a decade as a member of Nile, in a manner that’s reminiscent of early 1990s metal – when the lines between the “thrash” and “death” tags weren’t as rigidly defined, and everything just sounded fast and heavy as all hell.
“To me, it feels a lot like the stuff that I was doing before Nile, in some ways. But also at the same time, I really love the guitar work of the thrash era, if you will,” Toler-Wade says. “There was still a lot of insane guitar work and not just necessarily technical, but also a lot of heart, soul and guts.”
The North Carolina native adds that he always aims to lock into that innate type of playing, whether he’s writing by himself or performing at a festival in front of thousands of metalheads.
“That’s just it: No matter what project or band I’m a part of, I just try to play from the gut, play from the hip,” he says.
It sounds simple enough, and maybe it is after doing it for so long, but for anyone who has heard Toler-Wade destroy a fret board, the question of how he, or anyone, does that, exactly, is still a bit of a mystery. Of course, as he says, practice makes perfect, and having a solid foundation built on general musical knowledge helps. But at some point, an aspiring guitarist has to take it upon themselves and own the instrument.
“While I’m not like some super music-theory guru, I do know a few things, and I definitely studied it and am a practicing guitarist. But at the same time, we all sit there and widdly-squiddly on our scales and all that. We definitely get some gains from that, but at the end of the day, that shit is all out the window and you end up just chugging the low E string,” he says with a laugh.
Toler-Wade adds that he typically hears these raging riffs in his head before they physically manifest in the real world. “As a guitarist, sometimes you just pick it up and start jamming and come up with something cool. In a lot of cases, for me, it’ll be something that I hear in my head, and I may even hum it out, some melody or something like that,” he explains. “It’s a good combination of experimentation, just jamming around, hitting the wrong note and discovering it’s the perfect note. There’s a good bit of that, but there’s also just things that you hear in your head sometimes and you just try to get it out.”
Okay, so not everyone who picks up a guitar can play exactly like Toler-Wade, but anyone in Denver who’s interested in hearing and seeing him shred live can check out Narcotic Wasteland’s headlining spot during Denver DeathFest on Thursday, April 20, at Trailside Saloon in Thornton. The three days of musical mayhem run through Saturday, April 22, and include Triune, Divine Torture, WarCrown, Gravedancer, Occults Verum, Harvested, Human Paint, Maul, Venom & Valor, Gorgatron, I Am Destruction, Parthian, Eyes of Perdition, Intestinal Dissection, Cathexis, Poontickler, Rottenness, Atoll, Crusadist, It’s Always Sunny in Tijuana, Angelic Desolation, Fetal Embalment, Yotuma, Embryonic Autopsy and Pyrexia. Phew, now that’s a shit ton of brutal metal.
Toler-Wade is looking forward to making his way back out to Colorado, the homeland of Narcotic Wasteland touring drummer Joseph Howard, and a place where he says there are a lot of “metal motherfuckers” in general. Plus, being part of a bill like the Denver DeathFest is further proof that this type of extreme music is still popular. He takes a moment to ponder the cyclical nature of the metal genre and its many subspecies, including how early acts are still influencing modern bands, likening it to some sort of delayed reaction.
“Me and the missus one of these nights were having a couple drinks and listening to music. I popped on some Candlemass, and I’m sitting here going, ‘Oh, my God, this is insanely ahead of its time.’ I feel that way about all the different genres and subgenres of metal,” Toler-Wade says, adding that some musical ideas are “way, way ahead” of its time. “Even when I listen to older Nile stuff that I did, I’m like, ‘Man, we had no idea what we were even creating.’ It’s kind of like a mind-blowing thing when you think about it in those terms.” (For the record, Nile is still underrated when it comes to the forefathers of American technical death metal.)
And maybe that’s his secret: He’s just always been one or two or ten steps ahead of everyone else trying to emulate his guitar work and style.
Narcotic Wasteland, 2 p.m. Thursday, April 20, Trailside Saloon, 10360 Colorado Boulevard, Thornton. Get tickets $25-$60, here.
