With the proverbial 15 minutes of fame growing shorter and shorter with every passing day, anonymity hardly seems the key to success in the year 2001. In fact, scan popular music charts and look at the names that clutter at the top, struggling for that last scrap of attention, making every effort to appeal to as many people as possible, and going out of their way to make sure no potential fan is out of earshot. That's something No One know nothing about.
Unlike many of the new bands to come out of the Windy City hard-core scene, the four local musicveterans known as No One took a different approach to landing a record deal--they focused solely on songs.
The results are a band that got signed by Immortal/Virgin Records not because of their name, but because of their music. Music that sears the soul with passion and fury, surges through the system with an unbridled intensity, and slams the spirit with heavyweight melodies. The sonic force of Machine Head, laced with the seismic sensibilities of Alice in Chains. "If I could point out bands that are doing exactly what we're doing, there'd be no point for us," says frontman Murk, hesitant to grasp for the immediate recognition of similar-sounding bands.
"We want to do something new and different, something that people can get into, not something that's already been done before. We're blending the old-school sounds with the new-school stuff --Slayer, Korn, Pantera, those real intense bands are what influenced us, and I really don't see a lot of that in music right now."
You don't have to look too long or hard to find bands doing exactly what Korn are doing, but you will find yourself at a loss to find bands putting their own twist on the sounds that have become heavy metal conventions in the new millennium.
In No One, we have a quartet that have fused the musical past and present into a sound fixed on the future. Intense vocals that ride a power groove so deep, it's almost possible to lose track of just how heavy No One really are! Diabolically heavy, and they savor every moment of it.
Lacerating guitars slice through their self-titled debut's lead track "Down On Me," an opening show of brute force that not only takes a lyrical look at dealing with the pressures that weigh on all of us, but was written under those same constraints.
No One were signed on the strength of a three-song demo, the label assuming that they had an entire album's worth of material ready to be recorded --they didn't. The band had three songs, and found themselves under the gun to write more. "We were completely under pressure, and that song came as a result of it," says Murk. "This is our first album, and we had to make it sound good. If it wasn't good, there wouldn't be a second chance. The song was a result of that pressure."
Longevity is key for No One, who chose Immortal Records as their home because they were impressed with the grassroots job the imprint had done with Korn and Incubus. A career was their goal, not fleeting fame and fortune. "All we wanted was a good, solid chance with a reputable company," the frontman says of their label. "We want to start a buzz and keep that buzz going and going. Immortal works their bands from the street up, rather than going right to radio and being hit or miss. It's all about touring and word of mouth, because those are the bands that last longer."
No One pride themselves as a live band, but their performances are no doubt enhanced by music that cutsdeeper than most of their metal-minded brethren.
"Chemical" is riveting, employing a rhythmic thrust not far from the tribal feel of Soulfly, albeit with cleanly pronounced lyrics, as Murk's delivery takes the lyrical overture of dependency to embattled heights. At the other end of the spectrum, "Again" pads the wounds as an anthem of hope, a track that shines a spotlight on the darkness before the dawn, assuring that the best is yet to come. "That song is about a time in my life when I was at a low and I felt like I was a loser," recalls Murk. "It was at that point that I started rebuilding my life piece by piece, and I've been aggressive ever since. I promised myself that I wasn't going to do anything half-ass again."
The insanity mounts with "It's Real," a song written about little more than getting onstage with the goal of kicking an audience square in the ass. "It's about releasing all of your energy into the audience, it's about the rush, the force you can't see, but you can feel in the air."
Then the band plummets to the pained depths of "Breathe," written after Murk sat at his grandfather’s side and watched him breathe his final breaths.
"At their deepest level, our songs are about everyday, ordinary people and the problems that we all have," says the singer, who started No One with longtime friend and bandmate B-Larz in early 2000, South Side veterans of a music scene they often thought they'd never rise out of. "We came out as No One because we all came from bands that had broken up and no one knew who any of us were. We looked at each other and said 'we're no one, nobody cares who we are'." Murk pauses for a moment, then continues... "A lot of times people feel like they're no one in life, and we want people to know that it's okay to feel like that, because we feel like that, too. Even now, we're still No One, and we're no better than anyone else."