In Nomine

This page is dedicated to the Memory of Andres Gonzalez. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 29, on June 10, 2008 (goes for you my friend).

In Nomine (1989-2001)
(As recalled by Leonardo Pérez)
The eighties
At middle eighties, Rubén Pérez and Leonardo Pérez (they aren't brothers, by the way) had their first contact with symphonic rock, and lived the last moments of an almost unknown genre in Spain. They could only find a few new groups in the usual commercial ways in their country. Moreover, the inexistence of contacts and their almost absolute ignorance about magazines and espezialised cathalogs made the panorama very maddening. Due to all that, the material that these two rare exemplarities of human nature dealed with was mostly Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, A.P. Project, E, L & P, Marillion, Camel... and a few more.

Anyway, they managed to (step by step) extend their loving genre among their friends, and the friends of their friends, so that, slowly, and surely, the town in which they lived (Priegue, Nigrán, Pontevedra) became an authentical prog redoubt.

So, in a logical way, when three buddies of such a strange town thought about joining together to make a Rock band, this had to unquestionably be a prog one...
In the begining...
The first idea came out from Leonardo's brain in (aproximately) 1990. Formerly, in 1988, Leonardo (Nardo) had tried a failured project of a proto-band, along with his friend Rubén (something called 'Salmacis'), in which the latter played drums and Nardo beated up a second-hand KORG POLY-800.
The experiment failed, but was very good for Nardo as his first contact with a real drumkit, and he begun to learn how to play it (until that moment, he would use to play his hand-made sticks in a sofa, along with his favourite drummers). At the same time, another guy (called Esteban Fragas) created a musical project with their friends, called 'Transformers' and, simultaneously, two other friends, Segundo Gonzalez y Andrés Carrera (the latter being cousin and neighbour of Nardo) rehearsed and play, dressed up with comic clothes (doing Play-back, mainly) in a local Tuna (a kind of a student music group).
Life is life
Life is life, really: Nardo had sold his second drumkit (a bit disillusioned by 'Salmacis', with which they didn't rehearsed any complete song) thinking in purchasing a keyboard, given that he hadn't time for playing his sister's grand piano, and meanwhile, just to entertain himself, he studied engineering. At that moment, he hated Universit ..ignoring that this circumpstance would produce the creation of IN NOMINE.
In fact, Segundo González decided to go to University to study engineering, as well as Nardo, and he asked him for help. Certainly, during the last month of classes (september 1990), they talked more than they studied, and they talked (apart from women concerning) about music, mainly (and they listened to it, too). By the time, Andrés Carrera, cousin and neighbour of Nardo, and close friend of Segundo, used to spend the day playing a little CASIO keyboard.
Nardo had in mind the idea of buying a third drumkit, only thinking about learning a little more, but when he knew that Segundo's sister was plannig to give her brother an electric guitar as a present for christmas, he thought seriously about making a rock band, with rehearsals and all that stuff. Anybody knows how he managed to convince his cousin Andrés to buy a more serious keyboard (KORG 707), and to convince Segundo's parents to let the band use their garage for rehearsals. Nardo bought a third second-hand drumkit, which was carried to the garage in the old Renault of Rubén Pérez, who was a friend and assistant of the group from the first moment (he used to do ANYTHING in the group, except playing), and so, the band was born. It's all right, there wasn't a bassist, but there were bass octaves in the keyboard!!
After a few rehearsals, music starts to sound... and it sounds right. What music? The first version is "Abacab", followed by a "Sky" song (briefly rehearsed), and the challenge: Marillion's "Assasin", with Nardo singing. That was a time for laughing and excitement... it sounded good! But they needed two more things: a bassist and a name for the group.
And then there were four
Same day, a guy called Estebán went to Andrés' home (Nardo was there) and, after talking with him for a while, he took Andrés' spanish guitar and begun to play "The Ancient" with much naturalness, a fact that impressed Nardo, who begun to sing along. Inmediately after, it came "Mood for a Day" and the offering to join the newborn band as a bassist. Of course! Getting hold of a bass guitar won't be difficult...
With four musicians the thing comes better and more fluid. After "Assassin" they try The Police, Camel, Pink Floyd... (easy things, in a word), and even a song in their own (something disgraceful called 'Away but...'). Don't be hurry. Be happy..
One of that days in which we talk more than we play, some names for the band begin to appear here and there... Andrés says "No Name" Then we wrongly translate it to Latin: "In Nomine". We all enjoy it, so...
We continue doing more and more versions, and the days contemplate constant arguments between Segundo and Esteban (Tebi, or even Tiberio) about playing guitar instead of bass guitar... We begin to dream, and to think about recruiting a singer. Rubén is always with us... He brings us microphone-like devices, he arranges damaged amplifiers, suggests possible versions... and he cheers our efforts... and he gets very amused (as Nardo and Tebi) when a few months later Andrés and Segundo decide to leave the band to intend to join a professional orchestra (nice name: 'Redbeard and his girls'. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE), with the objective of earning money with music.
After that, Nardo gets rid of his drumkit, thinking about going on trip to Sevilla with his girlfriend Marga. IN NOMINE dissolves, but before that, Nardo and Tebi sign an eternal engagement (Spring 1992).
TVE, Channel 2, and beggining again
Nardo spends all his money in the journey to Sevilla, and now he devotes himself to his girlfriend and his university career. Tebi continues learning spanish guitar and Rubén has just started to work (so he buys more and more prog-rock records). After a short time, Segundo y Andrés become fed up with doing play-back with the orchestra and they both leave it.
But the great surprise is still to come. A few days after returnig from Sevilla, a spanish TV channel (TVE/2) calls Nardo to participate in a quiz, in which he manages to earn more than two million pesetas, so that he can make his dream come true: composing and recording his own music. He sets up a little studio in his girlfriend's house (thanks to wonderful father-in-law Miguel), with a (first-hand!!) TAMA drumkit, an amplifier, and a synth workstation (KORG 01-W/FD). After a couple of moths composing and arranging his new material, and improving his drumkit playing, ..Nardo decides to re-establish In Nomine, after a reunion with all its members, in which he puts his studio and his new instruments at the band's diposal, with only one firm condition: no more arguments between Segundo and Tebi about playing guitar or bass.
From that day on, In Nomine begins to walk, with regular rehearsals, and lots of work. The new sequencer allows Nardo to compose 'Father David', a song that contends with some fragments of 'The Dagger' (composed by Tebi and Segundo) and 'The Northern Gate', parallelly developed by Tebi, for the honour of being the first complete song of In Nomine.
The first songs can be described as light prog pieces, with certain symphonic treatment of structures, and the use of keyboard backgrounds. The influences of Extreme and Mike Oldfield are present in Segundo's playing, and Tebi begins to develop his own style. The song titles depend on the day, and the first steps tend essentially to instrumental music. At the first time, they look for a singer, but after some failed attempts, Nardo and Tebi decide to carry that cross together.
IN NOMINE, Live!
A date, at last: August, 28th 1993. First live concert, and just at home, in their town, Priegue. The previous months witness arguments of an unknown magnitude until that moment, with people even menacing the others with splitting...
But then the day came... Floyd's 'In the flesh' opens. 'Run like hell' closes. In that gig they played songs that can only be found today in demo-tapes ('The Dagger', 'Father David', etc.). And others (even untitled) that were never recorded (like 'Armónicos' or 'Por momentos'). The versions give us an idea about the technical level of the band at that time. With the running of time, the band looks backwards to that gig with tender acquiescence, due to the amount of mistakes and incorrections made, but at that right moment, they touched heaven. At the end of the gig, the band cohesion is absolute, and the energies are on top.
During that year they don't play any other gig, but with 1994 ..it comes the best phase for In Nomine. They compose longer and more complicated songs, and they add more difficult versions to the set-list. At that time, the only official recordind of In Nomine (now kept under lock and key) is just that first concert in Priegue, so they decide to record a demo-tape. Thanks to a common friend, they contact with an ex - musician called Carlos Eguía, who owns a little home studio. In a couple of weeks they finish NICODEMUS PATRI, that includes their first songs: 'Northern Gate', 'Father David', 'Snowly' and 'The Dagger', with sequenced percussion. With this demo, Nardo make another dream reality: he designs a cover!! (in that cover you can see a Monk, Nicodemus, for which creation Nardo took Segundo's father as his model...).
NICODEMUS PATRI constitutes the first approach of In Nomine to the rest of the world. They sell a few copies, and the remainder is sent to specialized magazines (like Lunar Suite, Margen Magazine, Wonderous Stories, etc.), in which the first (and very kind) reviews are published, injecting even more illusion in the band. During that year they only make five public appearances (Some guys even pay them for that!!). In one of them (august 19th) they come into contact with Rafa Dorado and Rogelio Pereira, from Margen Magazine. These two rare men open the eyes of In Nomine members about the reality of prog-rock in the world (and also about the place that IN can occupy in it). Through Rafa's vision they find out which is the particular style that they make (something called neo-prog), and also, they get to know about the hundreds of other bands that try to make something similar, moving in the sub-world of the non-commercial music. This new vision would change the perspective of the whole band, from then on.
During the year of 1995, work turns frantic, and the gigs accumulate, following one another. The creation of new songs turns slow, due to the increasing complexity and length of them, and the new way of working is concreted in their second demo, which parts from a live concert (Bayona) and some home recordings made at Segundo's garage. This second tape (called 'Ten to Nine') is dedicated to Rubén Pérez, whose involvement in the group is absolute at that moment.
At early 1996, with the coming reviews in sight, people at In Nomine begin to think that they're not so bad, and the idea of recording the first CD begin to grow up. From that moment on, they stop sharing the gigs' profit, and the activity within the band turns even more frantic (so as the number of live gigs).
August, 20th 1996: the last concert of In Nomine until now. People take a couple of moths' rest (all of them excepting Nardo, who marries with the major fan of the group, Marga, ten days later), thinking about their first CD recording, that would begin four months later.
The Odissey (An elephant's pregnancy)
Everything's right, and we've got the money. The tracks to record will be 'Beetles of Concrete', 'No Deal', 'Spiritless Fellow', 'Panem & Circenses', 'Snowly' and 'Le Cadavre Exquis'. In Nomine people commit a tremendous error when they choose the studio, and begin recording in january 7th 1997, at ten o'clock in the morning...
...And so, the torture begins. It was such a negative experience that history of In Nomine totally changed from then on. The thing went from bad to worse from the beginning: Andrés Carrera had announced his split (due to musical differences, officially) before he went into recording, though he promised to stay in the band until the recordings and mixings had finished. The intention of all was to record all instruments and vocals in one moth, but only THE TUNNING OF THE DRUMKIT took more than a week. Once that complicated process is over, Nardo begins his recording, which finishes fifty days later. We don't need to say that the sound engineer (?) took it "easy". Inmediately after Nardo, Segundo and Tebi went on to record bass guitar, which was the second of a large list of problems: engineer seems not to be convinced with the sound... they try three different bass guitars (they also used a few different guitars, and not exactly for aesthetic reasons). Afther that, the keyboards (he repeats the same mistake that he made with drums: he record them totally flat, with the intention of giving them all effects on mixing. Simply horrible), and later on, Tebi's personal oddisey: electric and spanish guitars (one of the tracks didn't even sound in the final mixing, for having right and left channels been recorded 180º phased out!!). At that time, this rare kind of an engineer asked for more money, a fact that caused a little (or maybe not so little) financial crisis that the group still has to withstand nowadays. Unfortunately, the band decided to carry on with him.
Summer: The recordings continue. Now vocals and effects, with the special collaboration of our dear friend Jesús Filardi (Galadriel). Mixing begins in september, starting with 'Le Cadavre Exquis'. The mixing of this track seems to be horrid but, due to the pressure and the anxiety that floats all around, they decide to send it to Musea, with which, thanks mainly to the influence of Filardi, they had contacted time ago. That mixing (of course...) got lost and it didn't arrive to Musea. After thinking about it for a while, and anticipating a new financial crisis, they decided to escape to a second studio for the final mixing (spring 1998).
..When they arrived to Elite Studios they really took conscience of the magnitude of the disaster (tracks disappeared, drums terribly bad recorded, problems with guitars, and more, and more...). Far from disappointing, they urge their new engineer to do his work as good as possible. And that's all...
Near to the end of the summer, Andrés has splitted, and Nardo offers Tebi's brother Julio (who had formed in a symphonic band called ITH, which got dissolved after the tragic death of keyboardist and composer Alberto) to join the band as a bassist. Julio had closely lived all the process of recording and mixing of 'Mutatis', and had made himself familiar with IN music. He accepted inmediately and, from then on, they tried a Bass-Drumkit-Guitar-MIDIGuitar structure, due to the interest of Segundo in this kind of a Guitar-Keyboard.
With the end of the summer comes the end of the CD, still untitled. Tebi suggests 'Odissey' or 'An elephant's pregnancy', for obvious reasons. But the odissey hasn't finished yet...
'The Wall' and the next split
Only thinking in recovering some money, and also to ease Julio,s fitting-in, Rubén and Nardo decided to propose the band to play the whole Pink Floyd's 'The Wall', for various reasons: it was very easy to play for the new formation, they could anticipate a good acceptance from the audience and, besides, the twentieth aniversary of such a legendary record was near.
They all decided to get involved in the project and, only for that ocasion, Andrés Carrera rejoin the band. The rehearsals begin inmediately so that, at the start of the next year, 1999, the super-version is almost ready, sound effects included. Concerning to 'Mutatis', they contact Musea to talk about a real contract, although all that refers to graphic design is still undone, so they begin to look for a designer.
After a couple of months, Nardo decides to do the design himself, for which he counts with the unexpected and incredible talent as a photograph of an old friend of them:
Anxo Rial
, comentator and DJ of Radio Popular de Vigo (a local Radio station), who had interviewed them in some ocasions.
Meanwhile, summer comes close, and they begin to contact clubs and pubs to play 'The Wall', but the owners seem not to be interested, and the only that do, don't pay much money. Finally, the band democratically decided to forget playing 'The Wall', fact that caused that Segundo, who, on top of all the said, hadn't time for rehearsal (for being simultaneously studying engineering, working on a factory, and rehearsing), decided to leave the band.
The situation of the group is now almost untenable, and they move their asses and all equipment to Bayona, more exactly to the garage of Nardo's wonderful father-in-law Miguel, and then begin to desperately look for a keyboard player.
At the same time, Nardo works unceasingly on the graphic design for 'Mutatis Mutandis'.
The sun shines: Andrés González and 'Mutatis Mutandis'
Year 2000 approaches, with cover and booklet almost finished. After trying a couple of keyboardists, the miracle comes, and the sun shines for In Nomine: Andrés González, from Bayona (500 meters from rehearsing room!), 20 years old. He joins the band and he instantly connects with the others. A little time after, they sign a contract with Musea, at last. In which refers to their CD, they only have to wait. The band is another thing.
Year 2000 brings the band complete renovation. The line-up changes forces them to start from scratch, composing and developing totally new material (the last composition was done in 1996), ..and they notice very soon that music have also changed, with more complexity and density. The fact of having recruited an authentical bass player (with his own vision about composition) and a keyboardist that developes his unique style and great technique day by day, as he integrates in the band, insuflates fresh air into IN. Nardo decides not to sing again, concentrating in drum playing, and Tebi unfolds his guitar-playing potential. At the first time, they tried a few singers, but they didn't seem to fit in. At the day of today, Nardo is seriously (though reluctantly) thinking about putting the microphone on his head again.
In November of year 2000, two months to reach the FOURTH YEAR from the entry in the recording studios, the band have, at last, 'Mutatis Mutandis' for sale. That fact constitutes a real injection of energy for the band. It's the end of an era. The end of the cross. Critics are unanimously favourable (some of them really kind), and they begin to think about recording a second CD, and return to stages, after five years from the last gig. When? We don't know. Everything will come. That' sure.