sym fera – AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH NICK SIMMONS
By Ralph Beauchamp
Photo Credit : Frances Bean Cobain
The astral sym fera have just released a new single entitled “Mob” while announcing a new EP, Ghoulish Machine, which will drop on 10/25. We last spoke to the brazen duo this past March. At that time, sym fera‘s true identities were still cloaked in a shroud of mystery. They wanted their music to speak for itself. The twosome has finally come out of the darkness. sym fera is comprised of Nick Simmons (son of famed Kiss member Gene Simmons) and Vinnie Ferra.
Vinnie Ferra is a composer, musician, producer, musical director, and tour director. He and business partner Johnny Stiegler own and operate The Beehive, an LA-based touring and management collective that directs, designs, and manages entire touring teams for artists including Halsy, Lizzy McAlpine, Eden, Gracie Abrams, Madison Beer, Remi Wolf, Blackbear, and Skylar Grey.
The duo have always planned to unveil themselves at the correct point in time. They didn’t want their notoriety to effect how people felt about their music. sym fera‘s sound is a true testament to their sublime songwriting that easily captures lush textures and exotic vocals. Their tracks are mystical in nature with flaring orchestrations and palettes of addictive riffs. Just listen to the new single “Mob”. The dark soundscape is fit with lavish vocals and carries beautifully composed musical elements that are both shimmering and eerily cascading. “Mob” is galvanic and full of emotional depth. All of sym fera‘s songs are massive in quality while still resonating to the listener.
Nick Simmons was kind enough to sit with AMP once again for this intimate conversation.
AMP: We last spoke earlier this year in March and your identities were still cloaked in secrecy. Why reveal yourselves now?
NICK: I think in order to be cloaked in secrecy, there would have to be someone wondering about the secret in the first place. We were really just kind of invisible, like any small band just starting out, and I think that suited us fine. Both Vinnie and I have connections to people who get a lot of attention and both Vinnie and I are, as counterintuitive as it seems, a little shy and burnt out on attention-seeking culture.
But we still want to make stuff and put it out there for our own satisfaction, and that requires some attention-seeking, so we’re hypocrites. We just tried not mentioning it or showing our faces, and slowly I think the people we talked to about it kind of fixated on the secrecy as a gimmick, so we leaned into it, just slightly. But we weren’t trying to be ‘mysterious,’ we were just trying to focus on the songs and not our big stupid faces.
AMP: Your new EP Ghoulish Machine drops on Oct. 25th. Can you give us a little insight into the release?
NICK: We’ve been releasing singles for it this year, and we’ve been talking about how satisfied we are with how the first EP went, so it was always kind of in the air that maybe ‘coming out’ was something we were comfortable with now. We were so pleasantly surprised by how the first EP was received, that I guess we’re feeling a little less shy now. I think I will miss the anonymity though, even though it was difficult to get the stuff out there effectively without a personality or face in front of it. The new EP kind of marks that fresh start.
AMP: What is it about your music that makes you feel passionate?
NICK: We’re just trying to make stuff that we would listen to and save if we heard it on the ‘upside down’ – you know, that place on Spotify or a streaming service where you listen to something on purpose, and then the algorithm just sweeps you away into other stuff it thinks you’ll like. It’s the modern equivalent of just blindly perusing a record store and selecting something based on artwork, or on someone’s recommendation.
I’ve found some of my favorite artists that way – Ry X, Julia Jacklin, Half Moon Run, Moses Sumney, Pale Jay. Algorithms do a lot of harm and a lot of good in the world, but this spirit of discovery is definitely on the good side. Finding an artist that way feels like finding buried treasure, and I love that feeling.
AMP: Do you feel that your family’s notoriety and Ferra’s music business acumen gives you an edge in the current music arena?
NICK: I think my entire life gives me an edge, and that’s not something I can control even if we did start anonymously. Just having the time to pursue a career in the arts is an immense privilege and stroke of luck, let alone all the other advantages I have just by being born. I think it would be ridiculous to try and downplay that or deny it, and claim I pulled myself up by my bootstraps or something.
Jack Quaid did an interview about that recently and he basically just said that he works really hard to earn the advantages he has by default, and I think he’s right on target. And yes, I’m incredibly lucky to have Vinnie as my partner, he’s got an amazing amount of resources at his disposal. I’ve learned a lot from him and still, he leaves me in the dust. He’s a wizard in the studio.
AMP: What is your creative process like?
NICK: We record the final song together, but we write demos as if we live in different countries. We send each other little voice memos or production sessions through email and Dropbox and go back and forth until the idea is a full demo, then we take it into Vinnie’s studio and make it shine. But until that last phase, we’re total loners about it.
AMP: How would you describe the band’s internal energy?
NICK: Antisocial, probably. We write a lot without ever seeing each other, as I said, and when we finally meet up it’s like a reunion. Pretty opposite to how bands used to write songs, which was an inherently connected activity. I think it has to do with what we write about. We’re both fairly bleak, cynical bastards, and we write a lot of sad bastard music, and the ideas and lyrics are pretty personal. But we’re not sad people in general. Catharsis is a positive experience, so it’s more like that. Vomiting up the dark gooey stuff makes you feel refreshed afterward.
AMP: What do you feel makes sym fera unique?
NICK: I don’t think there’s anything new under the sun, and we definitely wear all our influences on our sleeves. I just hope it makes somebody feel something and is able to sustain itself, that’s all. Anything more than that is orthogonal to the point really.
AMP: How important is an artist’s social media profile in today’s music market?
NICK: All-important, unfortunately. And we’re terrible at it. We’ve kind of been deliberately terrible at it.
AMP: Your official photo shoot was handled by Kurt Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. How did that happen?
NICK: It happened because Frances is a really good photographer, and those who follow her know this already. She’s very sincere, raw, and real. She’s been shooting her friends and generally interesting people in preparation for a project of her own (that I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about yet), and I was lucky enough that she wanted me to be one of the subjects, and that she allowed me to use a few of them for my project.
She also shot us while very, very pregnant, which was pretty amazing to watch. She’s kind of unstoppable. She’s younger than me but I look up to her, in a lot of ways, and have since I’ve gotten to know her. Frances has navigated a very strange, hostile showbiz world with a lot more grace and authenticity than I did in the past, or a lot of other people I know who are in similar positions. And she really doesn’t care what people expect of her, or how they perceive her. She pursues her own interests and does what she finds interesting, without apology. I wish I had her robust sense of self. I’m working on that.
AMP: Any plans to tour off the new EP?
NICK: Absolutely. But that’s TBD.
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