Let’s talk about NUFO

90s Skatepunk always will be the golden era! Today we have the honor to talk a little bit with an epic skatepunk bad from Graz, Austria NUFO.

In all those years NUFO shared the stage with bands like No Fun At All, Adhesive, Venerea, WASEI, Straightline, The Exploited, SNFU, The Siknotes, Red Lights Flash, Lineout, 69enfermos, Terrorgruppe and many more. 

Greetings from Costa Rica to Austria. We are honored to have you on Punk Rock Mag today. We have had the pleasure of listening to your last two albums, which we have thoroughly enjoyed. Today, we are presenting your latest release, “Stick Together,” and we hope it gets a lot of attention on this side of the planet.

INTERVIEW

1. Can you tell us a bit about the origin and history of the band Nufo? How was it formed and when did you start playing together?

The initial spark to get this long story rolling was in the early 1990s when Stefan Hausegger and Alex Pfleger were classmates in high school in Graz, Austria. It was about 1992/93 they got infected with punk rock music by their schoolmate and local skate legend Markus Nagler. Bands like Bad Religion, Pennywise, No Use For A Name, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys and NOFX became the favorite bands on our mixed tapes these days.
At the beginning of 1995 together with Alex’s younger brother Matthias, our buddy Hannes Gross and Thomas Veselka the band Nuclear Fallout was founded. The first gig was a band contest at the Orpheum concert house in Graz on April, 17th 1995. Besides cover songs (Sanity, Along the Way and Bro Hymn) we played our first own song “Up to me”. After many gigs at parties, in youth centers and at band contests in the first two years, Daniel Jobstraibitzer dropped in as new drummer in 1997. In these days we became more and more familiar with Scandinavian punk bands like No Fun At All, Adhesive, Passage 4, Stoned, Randy or Millencollin. All those bands strongly influenced Nuclear Fallout as a band, and their songs become part of our path from childhood to young adults. Between 1997 and 2001 NUFO – that was already the mostly used name for Nuclear Fallout – played about 80 shows, we recorded our first EP “Constellation“ with 6 songs, and played some legendary shows at the club “Explosiv“ with our friends Red Lights Flash, Straight Burbon, Antimaniax and many more bands of the pulsing punk scene in Graz.
In 2001 the band split up and most of us focused on different music genres in mainly short-term projects.
Only the band RhythMen, a trance project from Alex, still rocks the dancing stages since 2003.
Due to our deep friendship we certainly never lost contact in these years and in 2009 we decided to reunite and follow our passion for punk rock as NUFO. So, a new NUFO era with Stefan, Alex, Matthias, Hannes and the new drummer Martin Obmann began.
In 2013 Georg Pfleger, youngest brother of Alex and Matthias, replaced Martin on the drums. From these days on a very creative period started that led to the release of the first LP “Virtual Paradise“ in 2016 which contains songs from the early days as well as new stuff. This was the start of an exciting journey which is still in progress. Also in 2016 we supported No Fun At All at a gig we organized in our hometown. Unfortunately, Hannes left the band in 2017. Bene and Sassi played bass as substitutes for the next 2 years. In summer 2018 we managed to support our idols Adhesive from Sweden for 3 shows on their one-year-reunion tour. That was the time when we get in close contact with Dalin from 69enfermos. Thanks to Dalin, in December 2018 we were touring Brazil for almost 2 weeks with gigs in Rio de Janeiro, Pelotas, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Critiuma and finally in Sao Paolo. This tour has been the greatest adventure we had experienced so far as a band. We were overwhelmed by the support and all
those nice people. Finally, we get a lot of new friends all over the country, and we can say that we can count on a loyal fanbase in Brazil since this tour. Since then, the number of shows and activities as a band increased step by step. Especially 2019 was a very creative year, when Matthias and Georg wrote most of the songs of the new LP “Fight your Thoughts“. The album has been released in March 2020.

Unfortunately, this was the time when the covid pandemic hit our country hard. Restrictions and lock-downs made it impossible to do an appropriate release show. So, this show never happened.

Back to 2019, we realized that we must make a decision about the bass, so we decided that Alex plays bass by himself. This made the band life and decisions easier (only 4 people with different schedules) and opens the opportunity to split up the main vocals between Stefan, Matthias and Alex. After Georg left the band in 2020, Gerwin Berger followed him on the drums and completed the current cast.

Hence, the current album “stick together” is the first NUFO album as a party of four with no distinct main vocalist.

2. Skate punk is known for its energy and rebellious attitude. How would you describe the spirit and philosophy of the band in relation to this music genre?

From the musical point of view, we are highly influenced by typical skate punk bands, and we still try to express the typical energy of skate punk in our own style. Furthermore, we had personal connections to the skate and snowboard scene in Austria.
The idea of being different to the mainstream concerning music, clothes, hair color and attitude was part of our evolution as a band as well as our personal development. Besides the instrumental aspect we also went our own way in the philosophical interpretation of skate punk. In the first era we deliberately had almost no lyrics with political content because we didn’t see NUFO as a political band in the narrow sense. We wanted to have fun on stage and catch the audience with our energy and music. Sure there were also serious topics in our songs but always with a wink or in a subtle way.
With increasing age, the optical expression slightly changed. However, the spirit and attitude of skate punk is part of our life and our personalities and will ever be. Also, our lyrics developed to a broad spectrum of topics like social injustice, environmental protection, recent and future crisis, personal aspects of living in the 21th century but also friendship, brotherhood and social interaction still inspires us to new songs.

3. Let’s talk about your latest album or musical project. What can you tell us about it? What is the central message or concept you wanted to convey?

Our newest album “stick together” is characterized by several premieres. It is the first album with Gerwin Berger on the drums. It is also the first album with no specified lead vocalist. Alex, Matthias and Stefan are continuously switching between lead and background vocals which gives us even more opportunities in the songwriting and expression of the songs. This is the first NUFO album on vinyl. By the way, also the older two albums are now available on vinyl.
The songwriting as well as the production has been done under difficult conditions due to the pandemic.
Besides the individual message of each song, the main statement of the album is “stick together! Whatever may come to your way – together you gonna make it!”.

4. What are your favorite songs to perform live, and why? Is there a song that always generates a great reaction from the audience?

There would be 4 different answers to the first question. Every band member has its favorite songs to perform live. Nevertheless, it is always hard for all of us if we must remove songs from our setlist depending on our stage time because we love to play all our songs.
True, there are some songs that we can hardly delete from our setlist. We perform some songs since the first era of the band and of course these songs are well known and always generate a special reaction.
It’s pure pleasure if you see the audience going nuts and singing the song alongside with us when we perform “Alright”, “I regret” or “Don’t forget”.
From the new album especially “Madmen” worked from the first time on. The chorus seems to be a catchy one.

5. Besides music, are there any visual or artistic elements that are important to the band, such as album cover designs, concert art, etc.?

At gigs we don’t give much attention on our outfits or art elements. We keep it clear and simple on stage. The music, it’s energy and having a good time together (band and audience) stays in focus.
Concerning the artwork of our albums, things are different. We tried to express the album titles in the cover design. For example, the album cover design of our recent album shows a table soccer with different colored players. We wanted to express that doing things together is no question of color, race or social background and that you just have to “stick together” to accomplish everything.
We are very proud that we had the pleasure to work with such talented artist like Andreas Maier (grafic designer from Austria – “Virtual Paradise”), Michael Birnstingl (famous contemporary artist from Austria – “Fight your thoughts”) and Roberto Rabadan (artist and grafic designer from Mexico City – “stick together”). It’s even more exciting now to see our cover designs on vinyl!

6. Finally, what are Nufo’s future plans? Do you have any exciting projects or tours in mind that you would like to share with your fans?

This summer we will release the next single from the new album with an amazing music video.
This autumn we are touring Europe in September with gigs in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
After our great tour in Brazil in 2018 we plan to do another oversees tour in 2024 with no specific country or region. Furthermore, we are still working on new songs and additional shows. So stay tuned at www.nufopunk.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube!

STICK TOGETHER

The new NUFO album is packed with 9 songs where speed is imminent from the very first second, with some tempo changes and choruses that bring back memories of Bad Religion’s early albums. It is loaded with excellent guitar riffs and well-defined bass lines. One can sense the essence of the Austrian scene, much like bands such as “A Guy Named Lou” and “Missstand.” Truly, this new material serves as a continuation of their album “Fight Your Thoughts.”

*Go grab a copy of this album and merch on their bandcamp profile.

NUFO members

Alex (Bass, Vocals)
Matthias (Guitar, Vocals)
Stefan (Guitar, Vocals)
Gerwin (Drums)

NUFO contact

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