Interview: Nospūn
North Carolinian progressive metal band Nospūn took the prog scene—and, indeed, The Subway—by storm with their 2023 debut album, Opus. Now with another EP under their belt and ever-growing popularity, the band (vocalist Phillip Rich, guitarist James Nelson, bassist Cole Millward, and drummer Paul Wood) sat down with Claire at the second annual ProgStorm festival in Montreal to discuss Pitbull, their creative process, and how it feels to be a meme.
I know how to pronounce your band name [“no spoon”], but I don’t know how you came up with the name. What’s the backstory for that?
Cole: We are fans of sci-fi movies, and we’re just nerds in general. And one of my personal favourite trilogies is the Matrix trilogy. In the first movie, there’s this scene where the protagonist goes to a sort of guru’s place, and he meets this little kid who’s bending a spoon with his mind. He’s curious, and the kid explains: don’t try to bend the spoon with your mind, instead realize that there is no spoon. So that’s just a fun little reference for us.
Does it bother you when people pronounce it wrong?
Cole: It was something that we considered when picking the name. Like, people are definitely gonna mispronounce this. But I think there’s an idea that prevailed like, people who become interested enough in the band will learn how to pronounce it right. If you’re in the club, I suppose, then you know how it’s supposed to be pronounced and it gives a greater sense of ownership of the fandom.
James: And with the spelling, too, when you Google it, we’re really the only thing that’s going to pop up.
You’ve got the SEO nailed.
Phil: I’m gonna tag on an addendum. We wanted the name to reference something that was indicative of us as a group. When we were recording our first album, Cole was running his little studio out of his bedroom. One day, we walked into the studio, and there was a three foot by foot-and-a-half giant silver spoon, hanging on an empty space in the wall of his bedroom. And we’re going about recording and eventually it gets to me and I’m like, “I have to ask, Cole, what the hell is with the spoon?” And he turns around like a villain from a James Bond movie and goes, “There is no spoon…”
How long have you been playing music together, the four of you?
James: Uh, since 1987.
[laughter]
Cole: James, Phil, and I all met in 2009 when we were teenagers. And Paul came along a couple years later in 2011. We’ve been making music together in various different capacities under different names with other members cycling in and out here and there, but this has always remained the core group. And then it officially turned into Nospūn when we released our debut album under this name in 2023.
You guys have two releases as Nospūn: the full album Opus and the EP Ozai. As I understand it, that material from the EP was written before, and then you went back and re-recorded it. What was the experience like, after you had this debut album that got a lot of attention, to go back and re-record and release this older material?
Cole: Opus famously took a long time to make. It took seven years from the initial idea to actual release date. It wasn’t entirely because the process [itself] took that long. It was various life circumstances getting in the way, making things take longer. At some point, James developed tendonitis from playing. And so that slowed down his ability to work on it. And then COVID happened as well, and we weren’t able to get together nearly as much. So, there was a lot of waiting in the process of making Opus. And as part of that waiting time, we decided to start rerecording this much older material now that we were more experienced in self production. The original Ozai EP was the first thing that we ever recorded ourselves. So we were quite green at it. And the product, though we loved the music, didn’t sound terrific. And so we were like, “Let’s go give this music that we love a much needed makeover”.
Phil: If I recall correctly, we were originally intending for that just to be a self-fulfilment project. I think when we set out, we didn’t really intend to release it. As it went along and it started coming together, it sounded—to us anyway—too good to just keep in-house. Somewhere about midway through the process, we decided we should rerelease this.
The EP has a heavier, grittier sound than the album. There’s a lot more harsh vocals. Where do you go from here? Like, obviously, you wrote it prior, but does that give you the itch now? Like, “Let’s write more stuff for people to mosh to”? Or are you going to stick with the sound that you cultivated on the full length album?
Phil: I think the goal wasn’t to pigeonhole ourselves. We definitely were having sophomore record anxiety, which is I think why, for us, releasing the EP was actually very necessary. We needed to break the expectation of there being an Opus II, because that was a concept record. The new record we’re working on is not. And we’re not leaning into the harshes. But I think that showed that we have the range to do all kinds of things, and I hope people think we can do it well. The next album definitely has a little bit of whimsy to it. You know, that’s kind of something we’re known for; we’re in touch with our humour and our references. And we’re not afraid to dabble a little bit. It’s definitely progressive metal, but it doesn’t lean as hard into the djent aspects as the Ozai EP. When we wrote that, our influences were Periphery, The Contortionist, Tesseract, Intervals. That’s when djent was kind of taking over the scene, so that was our influence. We’re not leaning as hard into that. [The new album definitely has] a lot more of the traditional progressive trappings. I think as far as vocals go, I’m playing more to my strengths. I don’t have, as of yet, any harshes on the new record.
It’s interesting what you said about whimsy. I don’t know to what extent you guys are aware, but your whole band, actually, became somewhat of a meme on our blog. The review that our blog founder, Sam, wrote of your debut album, became one of our most viewed articles, with a ton of comments, and internal discussion and jokes amongst our writers. Do you like being a meme? To what extent are you comfortable being goofy?
Phil: So, have you seen the ad we put out for ProgStorm?
Well, I was going to ask about the t-shirt.
Phil: Cole is wearing a t-shirt that is a merch representation of an ad we put out for ProgStorm. The managers of the show asked everyone to basically do a little ad blurb for the show [for social media]. We were coming down to the wire. We hadn’t done anything yet, but that’s because Cole was really waffling with this idea. He finally had the gumption to propose it last minute, and we all decided that’s too good not to do. Essentially, we did a cover of Pitbull’s “Fireball”.
Cole: At some point in the process of trying to come up with something, I said the word “ProgStorm”, but in the way that Pitbull says “Fireball” in the song. So I sort of put together a little track that sounds like a prog metal version of [the song]. I tried to throw in as many prog metal tropes as I could: your keyboard lead sounds, the metric modulation on the drums, the guitars that are heavier than they have any business being. And that’s when I brought it to the rest of the guys, the night before this was due. We sort of quickly came up with something that we could film in about thirty minutes, and just threw that together to send. And to bring this around to your question, we do have a history of coming up with dumb ideas, and the group deciding to run with them, just because it’s funny. And the amount of effort that we’re willing to put into a bit just for a little chuckle, I think, says, we don’t have a problem being a meme.
We love to hear it.
James: We take our music very seriously, but it’s still not safe from our sense of humour.
This is Nospūn’s first time in Canada, right?
James: Correct.
Welcome. How does it feel to check another country off the tour list?
Cole: It feels really cool, of course. We didn’t expect to be able to get this far. Ever since we first started doing music as teenagers, we got to see our idols, bands like Dream Theater, and Haken, and the like, touring and everything. That was always very inspiring to us. But again, as a local band, we didn’t necessarily see that as a realistic thing that might happen to us. So being able to begin to check different countries off of the list, to say “We have been here as a band”, is very cool. I will say, driving up near the border, there was a very strange feeling where it felt like we were nearing the edge of the earth. There’s kind of nothing for miles, leading up to the border on the US side for like 80 to 100 miles.
Was that Vermont?
Cole: We were coming up through New York, the Adirondacks.
Paul: It was just woods.
Phil: Woods and… rock faces. It was absolutely stunning, but you definitely understood that you were in the middle of nowhere and you hoped you had gas and a spare tire.
James: It felt like playing Skyrim and reaching the edge of the map.
Phil, you alluded to the new album. You don’t have to give too much away, but what’s going on in that camp? What can fans look forward to?
Phil: The progress is steady. It’s just probably slower than we thought it would be. We’re well over halfway. Cole actually has a chart of the music, the concepts, the lyrics, and he has it graphed out in colour form, how far we are in each aspect of each track on the record. Well over 75% of the instrumentation for the record is composed. For the lyrics, we’re well over halfway, and we do lyrics and melodies at the same time. That’s how our process works. When the lyrics are written, that’s the final form you’re gonna get on the record. There’s just a couple of songs that need more love and attention, because we don’t really move on in our process until we’re 100% satisfied with the direction. And there are some songs where we’ll write something, we’ll let it stew for a week. We’ll come back the next week and we’re like, “Yeah, that’s garbage. Let’s try something else,” and we have to go back to the drawing board. The last few songs are what’s kind of sticking for the record right now. We want to make sure that they’re up to snuff with the rest of the record. The other part of our process is the writing and the recording are taking place at the same time. Our demos are nearly finished products. So essentially all we have to do is go and do a double take on it, and it’s done. So after we’re finished with the writing process of the album, it might take us a month or two to get the finished recordings of everything. So as far as the completion of it, that’s about where we are. But I would be hesitant to put any kind of deadline on it, because I don’t want to set fans up for disappointment.
Paul: We don’t want to rush anything. That’s the one of the benefits about us doing everything by ourselves, we don’t have anybody giving us a timeline. And so if we feel like something’s not ready, we’re not going to push it out. But the con of that is, anything that we have to do, it’s on us to do. So, you know, to get up to Montreal, we’ve got to figure out all the logistics. And life has been life-ing this year. I fractured my fibula earlier in February, so I couldn’t really do anything for two or three months. But, we’re excited to be here. And then when we get back, we’re gonna be going full force on the album.
James: I think it’s safe to say that our next album will come out sometime in 2032.
[laughter]
We’ll stay tuned. I reviewed a South American power metal band for the blog, and they had 30 years in between their first album and their second. Twilight Aura was the name. And it was a good album, but yeah.
Paul: Let’s not wait 30 years. I won’t be able to play drums at that point.
If you could go on tour with one or two other bands, but they cannot be prog, who would you pick?
Paul: Gloria Estefan. “Turn the Beat Around!”
Phil: My musical man crush right now is a set of older gentlemen from the UK, called Pete & Bas, short for Basil. And they are a drill rap duo in their 70s. And they are effing killing the game. They are so good. I adore them. I would love just to meet them. So that’s my answer.
James: Have you guys heard the song “Taste the Biscuit”? It’s a husband and wife duo, and they recorded in a department store. That’s what I want.
Cole: Talk about being a meme.
Do they have other tracks? Does it matter?
James: I mean, I just want them to play that one song for thirty minutes.
What releases from 2026 have you guys been enjoying the most?
Phil: From this year, my favourite release is either the drill rap group. Or, oldie goldie, Protest the Hero.
Ah… you’re speaking to a huge Protest the Hero fan.
Phil: [PtH vocalist Rody Walker] definitely has more of a power metal thing going on in his older years.
He struggled with vocal cord damage a few years ago, and he came back so strong. It’s incredible.
Phil: Fortress, just that record alone, big influence. That and Scurrilous, I mean, holy shit, how do you do those records and survive?
James: I have two answers, just because I don’t know if one actually counts: for a new release this year, The Moth, by Devin Townsend, I’ve been enjoying quite a bit.
I like that you’re in Canada, and you’re listing all Canadian artists. That’s very clever.
James: And this other one, it technically came out in, I think, 1993. “Powers of Ten” by Shawn Lane. He was a groundbreaking guitar player from the 90s. He died real young in the mid 2000s, and that album was pretty much lost. And you could only find, like, 144p versions on YouTube, and it wasn’t a complete album. So for the first time, this year, it was re-released. And it’s absolutely fabulous. So that’s my cheat answer.
We’ll allow it.
Cole: I wish I had a legit answer. I’m kind of the audio guy of the group. I’m the one who does the mixing and stuff for our records. And because of that, the majority of what I listen to on a day to day is the stuff that we’re working on: listening to the changes that we’ve made, any mixing that I’ve done. If I’m driving from one place to another, I’m usually listening to that in the car. And the real downside of that is that I miss out on a lot of stuff that comes out currently. It is enjoyable, but it’s also work. So, unfortunately, I don’t have a real answer for any 2026 releases.
Paul: At least you have a good excuse. I’m notorious. [These guys will say] “You gotta check this band out.” Six years will pass. Then I’m like, ”Have you guys heard of these guys?” and they say “yeah, we tried to get you to listen to them like seven years ago”. So, I’m so far behind, and I have a cheat answer, I guess, Catch Thirtythree [by Meshuggah], the re-release. That’s the newest thing that I’ve listened to the most.
I’ll ask you again in six years.
Paul: Yeah, and then I’ll have a good answer. It’ll be six years too late again.
Anything else you want people to know before we wrap up?
Paul: Be careful walking down a slick ramp because you can fall and break your leg.
James: I also play in The Reticent. We are playing ProgPower USA, and then Euroblast, and then ProgPower Europe. I’m gonna do so much travelling that I won’t be able to walk again.
Cole: We’re working on the new [Nospūn] album. At the same time, some of us are working on another release that is tangentially related to that. So, I predict that some new music from us could be coming out later this year. So Nospūn listeners will be getting a healthy chunk of music from us in the near future.
We’ll keep an eye out for Yes Fork.
[forced laughter]
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