Best known as one of the guitarists in Alice Cooper’s band, Nita Strauss will release her second solo album, The Call Of The Void, on July 7 via Sumerian Records. “It was a long process, definitely a labor of love. I’m so happy to finally have it out to the world,” proclaims Nita.
In addition to rocking stages around the globe with Alice Cooper since 2014, Nita Strauss has played with all-female Iron Maiden tribute band The Iron Maidens, and Demi Lovato. Furthermore, Nita is the first ever female signature artist with Ibanez guitars, and she’s performed at numerous home games for football teams The LA KISS and Los Angeles Rams, as well as at WWE pay-per-view events.
While The Call Of The Void is comprised of 14 brand new, jaw-dropping tracks, it also pays homage to Nita’s past. Specifically with the instrumental song “Consume The Fire”, as that was the name of one of her previous bands. “Yes! Actually, some of the riffs from that song were written when I was in that band, and it was a song that band never used. So, that was where some of the song came from and the title,” says Nita. Although it hasn’t been updated since 2014, the Facebook page for Consume The Fire is still online, along with a few videos on YouTube. “Everybody in the band got pulled in different directions; there was never a full-length effort or a tour. But there was an EP that we put out for free download. So, maybe it’ll turn into more people hearing those songs. I hope so, cause they are cool songs.”
There’s eight guest vocalists on The Call Of The Void – four are male, and four are female. Gender equality was intentional, according to Nita. “It was important, yeah. I definitely wanted to make sure there was a lot of different representation on the record – male vocalists and female vocalists. Different generations, different styles of music, so we could cover as much ground as possible.” The songs on The Call Of The Void are undeniably cohesive, despite featuring widely varied singers. “Thank you. That was really something that we worked hard for – between the instrumental tracks and vocal tracks, that nothing sounded out of place on the record, which was a tall order because there are so many different styles. There are ballads, there are very heavy and fast songs. There’s screaming, there’s clean singing. It was definitely a concerted effort to make sure that everything made sense together.”
“The Golden Trail” featuring Anders Friden, sounds like it could be an In Flames song, yet it’s a Nita Strauss song. For the songs with guest vocalists, was the music written before or after you knew who would be singing it? “Actually, that was the only vocal song that was originally written as an instrumental,” reveals Nita. “In Flames is one of my biggest influences! My first favorite band ever! So, while we were listening back to it, Josh (Villalta – Nita’s drummer and boyfriend) actually had the idea, ‘It sounds so much like In Flames. Why don’t we contact Anders and see if he would be willing to do a feature on the song?’ When we got his vocal track back, I listened to it with tears in my eyes, cause it just embodies my little In Flames fan’s heart. It makes my little heart so happy to hear this very classic In Flames sound on one of my songs.”
So, the other songs with singers weren’t necessarily tailored for the guest vocalist? “It depends on the song really. There were some that were very specifically written for that artist – the Alice Cooper song, ‘Winner Takes All’, was one of them, obviously. Who else could sing that but Alice? Then some of the other ones were more like, we want a powerhouse female vocalist. That can be Dorothy, that can be Lzzy Hale, that can be Lilith Czar. So, we wound up with all three of these incredible women singing. And ‘The Wolf You Feed’ is a very unique song that only a handful of vocalists can pull off. So, Alissa (White-Gluz from Arch Enemy) was a great choice for that one! It was really a bit of a mix of the two.”
It only makes sense to have Nita’s boss, Alice Cooper, who’s become more like family, on this album. It would have been weird if he wasn’t. “It would have been a little weird, yeah. It was a really cool experience in the last two years. I’ve spent almost a decade playing with Alice’s band, and the last couple of years, not only was he on my new record, but I’m also on his new record (Road, due on August 25). We had this brand new studio experience with each other, after working together for so long.”
When it came to the lyrics for the songs with vocals on The Call Of The Void, were the guest singers given carte blanche? “Again, it kind of depended on the situation. A lot of the time, the majority of the lyrics were written before the guest vocalist was finalized. Even in those situations, we did say, ‘Here’s the idea, take it and make it your own.’ For example, with Alissa, we had the structure of the song written, but we had her write the verses, just to put her stamp on it. Other people, like Anders and David Draiman (from Disturbed) was another one that just completely took the blank slate of the song and wrote their vocal, wrote the melody, everything from start to finish.” When you say some of these lyrics were pre-written, were they written by you? “Myself, and different writing partners. I did some co-writes with Tommy Henriksen, who, of course, is my stage-left partner in crime in the Alice Cooper band. I wrote some songs with Johnny Andrews, who’s written with Halestorm, Motionless In White, and Three Days Grace. It was a team effort.”
Nita’s solo tour in support of The Call Of The Void began on June 13 in Nashville, TN and wraps up July 14 in New Orleans, LA. Obviously, it’s impossible to bring eight guest vocalists on the road to do one song each. So, Nita hired Kasey Karlsen from the band Deadlands to sing these songs live on stage. “She is such a talent,” declares Nita. “Pretty new on the scene. She’s made a pretty big name for herself on social media, but pretty new as far as the live touring scene goes. We’re very, very excited to have her out with us. I found her on social media. I was putting the word out there that I was looking for somebody that could cover a massive range of different styles – somebody that can scream, somebody that can sing; somebody that can sing a male vocal and a female vocal; and perform while you’re doing all of it. That’s when I was told about Kasey. I went on Tik Tok and watched some of her videos. I was totally blown away! She truly is a chameleon; she’s a transformer machine of metal vocalists. She can really do it all. So, we reached out, literally just sent her a DM on Instagram and said how much I liked her stuff, and asked if she would be interested in auditioning for this. We didn’t even hardly consider anybody else; she seemed like a great fit right off the bat.”
There’s a beautiful instrumental song on The Call Of The Void titled “Kintsugi”, which is a Japanese word that translates to “Golden Joinery”. Kintsugi is defined as the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. But it’s also a philosophy that treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. “I can’t recall how I first came across that concept,” admits Nita. “But it’s something that’s been turning over in my mind for a long time, multiple years. I’ve been thinking about writing something about the concept – when things are broken, often times they’re discarded. And actually, if you take the thing that has been broken and put it back together, it’s stronger and more valuable because of it. And more beautiful because of it. So, we really leaned into that concept – the note choices that I made, and the tone choices that I made in the recording were sort of very simple. Just trying to tell the story, rather than be flashy with it. Just try to really evoke that concept as much as we could through instrumental music, and not having the actual words to tell that story.”
Speaking previously about The Call Of Void, Nita stated, “Making this album helped me learn and grow so much as a musician and songwriter.” Now, she elaborates further upon that comment. “Well, when I made my first record, Controlled Chaos (released in 2018), it really was controlled chaos; and not very well controlled I might add. It was sort of like me having a temper tantrum in the studio, saying, ‘I don’t want anyone to tell me how to make music. This is my thing and only my thing; and that’s what it’s going to be. This time around, I was really – once I got that out of my system – able to relax the reins a little bit, not completely, and take different input on song structure. Crafting songs a little bit more carefully, instead of just pouring out whatever emotion came to me, into my Pro Tools session, and letting that be the song. Just really approach it from a more mature, well thought out standpoint.”
