Narcotic Wasteland slays in Nashville

It was a cool fall evening as I headed downtown to experience a night of head-banging and devil horns, since Narcotic Wasteland had made their way into Nashville for a stop on the German metal legends accept’s Too Mean to Die national tour. Narcotic Wasteland made their first appearance on the metal scene as a side project of ex-Nile frontman Dallas Toller Wade in 2014; eight years later, they are still going strong, with Dallas now making Narcotic Wasteland his full-time music project. With a string of new singles to follow up 2017’s album Delirium Tremens, it looks like things are starting to get rolling again for these metal titans!

I walked into the Brooklyn Bowl Friday night eager to hear some good old-fashioned metal tunes and the venue was already rocking as Lost Circus was finishing up their set. I only had the chance to catch two of their songs, but from what I heard, they definitely rock.

They were a good appetizer for the mayhem ahead. 

Narcotic Wasteland, from my perspective, seemed to have one main objective while performing and that was to play pure unadulterated metal in its purest of forms. They blasted through their all too short set, but as each song ended, the roar from the crowd increased. It was the type of performance that you just knew they were hooking the crowd. As the night went along, I couldn’t help but wonder how a longer set would have sounded…? In some ways, it felt like a tease, but such is the world of opening slots on a large tour. Dallas seemed to have the crowd in the palms of his hands and was loving every second of it as he ripped into some killer guitar solos. I absolutely love this band and cannot recommend them enough to all of our metal readers out there!

Narcotic Wasteland, in my opinion, represents that pure vein of Death Metal that we rarely see anymore.

They don’t water their music down with anything they don’t need. You won’t find any extra nonsense — they just keep crushing skulls in the most brutal and pure ways possible.

Photography by Derek Jones

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