Of all the regional scenes making a name for themselves in Hardcore music, Ohio has to be one of the most impressive. There’s a glut of good music happening there right now and a scene that is absolutely thriving.
One of the newest labels to come from the area is Nerve Damage, whose first three cassettes are all rippers and totally worth checking out. Here’s a quick rundown with Nathan and Drake from Nerve Damage about the start of the label, current releases, and what’s in store for the future.
When did you start Nerve Damage and what did that entail?
We started Nerve Damage back in October of last year because we had fully finished tapes for GUN LEASH and FOGBANK that we wanted to come out, and nobody wanted to pick them up. We were out at a bar chatting about what we were going to do since nobody was picking them up, and from the start, we did not want to self-release under the bands. We were talking about how hard it is to start a new project in a scene that is uncharted to us as creatives, since Nathan comes from a weirdo punk/ post punk background and Drake came from a shoegaze/garage rock background. While they are intertwined, the crossovers of those genres are pretty minimal. One thing led to another, and we bounced around the “what ifs” of starting a label. We essentially needed a place that followed a similar view of what is important about releasing music and what is relatively arbitrary to the fact. It wasn’t until a few friends had told us how great of an idea it was that we decided to move forward with it (shout out Sam and Ben). Nathan is a huge fan of cassette tapes, so we said that is where we could start. They are cost-efficient, raw, and a cool medium for physicals to be made on. We both agreed that we needed to release stuff that we liked and nothing short of that. We both know that starting Nerve Damage will take a lot of work and effort with little to no kick back, but those labor pains feel worth it to provide bands with the opportunity to get physicals for their music.
What were the first steps of getting things going?
We started by bouncing around name ideas. After we had landed on a name, Nathan started working on some logo designs, and in the meantime, we made the Instagram and the Bandcamp page. After that, we started shooting around to some homies that pointed us in the right direction for press and the actual tapes. We decided we wanted both the first two releases to come out on the same day, so we picked the date and threw together a weekender for GUN LEASH and FOGBANK, and then we pretty much sent the tapes off to get made for the debut. It moved way quicker than we thought, but after that, we started to look for places to send the stuff off to.
How do you choose what you release?
We both have a very similar perspective to hardcore, and we both share similar ideas of what we want from this label. So knowing what we like and what we don’t like comes easily. Usually, we will listen to a demo or a tape a few times over, and by the time we are on our second or third play through, we know whether or not we have an interest in pursuing it. We also would prefer to see the band live before we move forward with a decision, but usually, this comes before the demos are sent over. On that weekender, we met the STRUGGLE SESSION crew and were super hip to their live set. They didn’t have any tapes made for their demo that came out back in October of 2024, and that’s how we stumbled on NRV-003.
Any upcoming releases folks should be on the lookout for?
For the future, we are looking at having (hopefully) 3 more releases before the end of the summer, but it very well may be more than that. We can say that there are new FOGBANK and GUN LEASH tapes in the works that will soon be on the way. We have also been chipping away at something important that will be announced sometime this summer, along with some possible other separate things in there too. If anyone reading this interview has any recorded demos or things they want some tapes made for, bang our line because we want to hear them.
You can reach Nerve Damage at NERVEDAMAGERECORDS@GMAIL.COM and check them out on Instagram @NRVDMGRECORDS.
