BRICK BY BLACK
For years they watched other bands get the breaks while they didn’t, but The Dirty Nil’s one-step-at-a-time climb has finally paid off.
Words: Dannii Leivers
The Dirty Nil have always been outsiders. “We’ve never given a shit about being cool,” says vocalist and guitarist Luke Bentham defiantly. “Our fans love us not because of a fashion or for how trendy we are, they’re into the universe that we built bric k by brick.”
The band have a few mottos, and ‘brick by brick’ is one of them. Another is: ‘If you’re not bleeding, you’re not trying.’ Those two adages have got them through a slow-burn, 14-year ascent that has lead to the release of their fourth album, Fuck Art.
At times, though, it seemed that their dreams were destined not to come true. Bentham formed the band with drummer Kyle Fisher in 2006 (current bassist Ross Miller joined in 2017) in their home town of Dundas on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario. Initially there was very little appetite on the local scene for the Nil’s brand of “howlingly loud”, sparky power-pop and punk-indebted rock’n’roll. For years the band were ignored by the press, while their peers leapfrogged over them in every sense. “Everyone else was touring internationally and had management, a label, booking agen ts,” says Bentham, who is effervescent in conversation and possesses a dry, self-deprecating wit. “We had nothing. We were just basically bouncing around southern Ontario like a bunch of numpties.”