NARCOTIC WASTELAND

The Don’t Meth With Texas Tour
June 22 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
June 23 – Houston, TX – The Concert Pub
June 24 – Fort Worth, TX – Rail Club DFW
June 25 – Corpus Christi, TX – Boozerz Rock Club
Sex, Lies & DNA Tour
Special guests – Gorgatron and Tegmentum ** – only selected dates
July 27 – Las Vegas, NV – Dive Bar **
July 28 – Long Beach, CA – Supply & Demand **
July 29 – Eureka, CA – The Siren’s Song Tavern **
July 30 – San Francisco, CA – DNA Lounge **
July 31 – Portland, OR – Twilight
Aug 1 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon
Aug 4 – Columbia Falls, MT – The Silver Bullet Bar
Aug 5 – Drumheller, AB – Loud As Hell Fest
Aug 7 – Regina, SK – Cloud 9
Aug 9 – Winnipeg, MB – Bulldog Event Center
Aug 10 – Thunder Bay, ON – Black Pirates Pub
Aug 11 – Sioux Falls, SD – Bigs Bar
Aug 12 – Menomonie, WI – Zymurgy Brewing
Aug 13 – Fort Wayne, IN – Piere’s
Aug 17 – Montreal, QC – Piranha Bar
Aug 18 – Toronto, ON – The Rockpile
Aug 19 – Ottawa, ON – Brass Monkey
Aug 20 – Bowling Green, OH – Howard’s Club H NW Only

Recording Band Line Up:
Dallas Toler Wade – guitar, vocals
Ed Rhone – lead guitar
Chris Corcione – bass
Erik Schultek – drums
Live Band Line Up:
Dallas Toler Wade – guitar, vocals
Chris Corcione – bass
Joe Howard – drums
Brett Lee – lead guitar

discography:
2014 Self-titled LP
2017 Delirium Tremens
2022 Morality and the Wasp (single)

song was written by Dallas Toler-Wade
Produced by Dallas Toler-Wade and Erik Schultek
Mixed by Erik Schultek and Dallas Toler-Wade
Mastered by Erik Schultek, Level 3 Studios

Metal Injection (2017):
“Narcotic Wasteland, the now-full-time project of ex-Nile guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade, is just stupid heavy. Toler-Wade and company dropped a self-titled debut album in 2014, and now they’re back with a face-melting new song called ‘Faces Of Meth’. It’s literally face melting in that it’s about fucking your face up with methamphetamines, and metaphorically face-melting in that Narcotic Wasteland knows nothing other than playing fast, loud, and undeniably brutal music.”
(Delirium Tremens) – Bravewords (2017):
“chock full of intensity, technicality, and speed”
Metal Wani (2017):
“It is not easy to thrust the listener consistently into an aural landscape orchestrated by the band and make them stay put for the entire length of the album. Narcotic Wasteland does it brilliantly as they take you through the nightmarish journey of ‘Delirium Tremens’.”
Dead Rhetoric (2017):
“More often than not, death metal bands have a tendency to stick to the familiar topics. Death, gore, killing – that sort of thing. There’s always exceptions, or bands that have a different take on the subject, but as they say, dark music demands dark themes. Narcotic Wasteland does, for one of its lyical slants, face a slightly different (yet still suiting) take – that of addiction. Plenty of grim to still go around with such a concept, and Narcotic Wasteland hits just as hard sonically as any other death metal act to come through the pipeline. Founded by Dallas Toler-Wade (he now formerly of Nile), Narcotic Wasteland released their first, self-titled album, back in 2014. Those yearning for something relentless surely found it with said release, and the band is now on the verge of releasing their second album, ‘Delirium Tremens’. A focused, tight-knit, and balls-to-the-wall effort that death metal fans should find some visceral comfort in.”

Narcotic Wasteland will be hitting the road this June for their ‘Don’t Meth With Texas Tour’, which will see the death thrashers performing four show dates starting on June 22nd in Denton and rolling through Houston, Fort Worth, and wrapping up on June 25th in Corpus Christi, TX.
Following the Texas tour, the band will be beginning their West Coast leg of summer shows with Gorgatron and Tegmentum performing on select dates of the Sex, Lies & DNA tour.
Narcotic Wasteland will then push north to Canada for a performance at Loud As Hell Fest in Drumheller, AB with Jungle Rot, Incite, Necronomicon, The Convalescence, and more.
They will then continue headlining the Sex, Lies & DNA tour across the Canadian lands and American Midwest for the month of August and end the summer trek in Bowling Green, OH on August 20th.
2023 is going to be an exciting year for Narcotic Wasteland, not only is the band hitting the road they are will also in the works of releasing their third yet-to-be-titled album via Mega Force Records.
So far they have unleashed three singles ‘Morality and the Wasp’, ‘The Best Times Have Passed’ and ‘Victims of the Algorithm’ to give fans a taste of their forthcoming mosh pit of terror.
For their third full-length, the band worked once again with engineer and producer Erik Schultek who produced the band’s self-titled debut album.
The band’s 2023 album will be the follow-up to their sophomore full-length 2017’s ‘Delirium Tremens’.
Fourteen years into his two-decade tenure with acclaimed Greenville, South Carolina technical death metal band Nile, guitarist and vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade was itching to explore new musical and lyrical frontiers.
So he hooked up with some old buddies from his hometown Fayetteville, North Carolina and started writing old-school death metal inspired by some of their favorite bands, including Gorguts, Immolation, Incantation and Suffocation.
“There was something really powerful about those bands, especially Gorguts,”
Toler-Wade says.
“They had these twin guitar compositions that felt different than the kind of death metal other bands were doing. So, Narcotic Wasteland is partially my way of rediscovering what I first loved about death metal.”
Narcotic Wasteland self-released their self-titled debut in 2014.
Then in October 2016, Toler-Wade left Nile and Narcotic Wasteland became his main priority.
“It was just time for me to do something different,”
he says.
After talking to several companies, Narcotic Wasteland signed with Megaforce, which historically has launched the careers of Metallica, Anthrax, Testament, Overkill and others.
Narcotic Wasteland’s second album, ‘Delirium Tremens’ is a dramatic musical evolution from the band’s first release.
Not only is the production better, the chemistry between Rhone and Toler-Wade is impeccable, each feeling out and feeding off of the other’s playing.
And bassist Chris Dupre and drummer Phil Cancilla form a whirlwind rhythm section that’s tighter than a locked door.
Coupled with trenchant grooves and impacting vocals, ‘Delirium Tremens’ is more than an homage to the band’s favorite musicians, it’s a new style wrought from some of the best pages of the past.
“Maybe knowing that this was going to be my main band made me think about it a little more carefully about the songs,”
Toler-Wade says.
“I had a bit more direction and the stuff I was writing seemed more focused. The first record established a sound and this one definitely took it to the next level.”
On ‘Delirium Tremens’, Narcotic Wasteland exit the starting gate with guns blazing on ‘Introspective Nightmares’, a brutal feast of angular riffs, enticing licks, blast beats and scathing vocals.
‘Life Revolted’ is slower, but impacts just as hard, juxtaposing staccato riffs and melodic guitar lines with double-bass drumming.
Then there’s ‘Self Immolation’, one of two atmospheric instrumentals on the album;
it consists of haunting organ, synth, piano and strings and would perfectly compliment the next ‘Evil Dead’ sequel.
Bassist LutaChrist Dupre wrote ‘Husk’, a death metal stormer that features acrobatic guitar lines and contrasts infectious chugging riffs with amphetamine-fueled blast beats;
Dupre also collaborated with Toler-Wade on the lyrics to ‘Pharma Culture’.
Narcotic Wasteland named their new album after the title track, which is about delirium tremens, the medical term for symptoms an alcoholic suffers after about three days without a drink. These include uncontrollable shaking, shivering, sweating, heart palpitations, confusion and hallucinations.
“All these things are going through your brain and there are voices in your head,”
says Toler-Wade, who admits having had problems with alcohol in the past.
“It feels like you’re going crazy. It can happen with opioids, too, but most of the time it’s from severe alcoholism.”
Over the years, many of Toler-Wade’s friends and family have fallen into the abyss of addiction.
And some never returned.
It’s a tragic byproduct of growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a military town where male residents have a PTSD rate as high as 75% and there are the most reported incidents of shaken baby syndrome in the country.
Lots of Fayetteville’s disenchanted population chooses to escape misery through street drugs, prescription medication and alcohol.
Instead of remaining silent about the scourge that has surrounded him, Toler-Wade addresses it throughout ‘Delirium Tremens’.
“You waste your life trying to forget reality with booze, pills and cocaine/ I will not remain silent while you piss your life away,”
he screams in the meaty, riff-saturated ‘Bleed and Swell’.
And in the torrential, hyper-speed guitar-fest ‘Faces of Meth’, he growls about amphetamines
“slowly killing you while robbing your youth and beauty”
and laments those who
“never had a chance at a normal life”
and are
“raised from generations of total ignorance”.
“I’m addressing all the bad stuff that goes on with addiction and making statements about what I see,”
he says.
“There have been a couple of people that have said we’re an anti-party band, but that’s not true at all. I don’t give a shit what people do with themselves. And, you know, if they can handle it, that’s fine. I’m really just interested in talking about addiction and some of the toxic human behavior that comes along with it.”
Unlike Nile, which wrote album after album about Egyptian history, theology and the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Narcotic Wasteland isn’t purely a concept band.
The unrelenting, blast-beat powered and rhythmically eclectic ‘We Agnostics’ questions the existence of a higher power, the triumphant ‘Return to the Underground’ is a statement of dedication to the pure strength of metal and ‘In Memoriam’ is an acoustic instrumental that serves as a touching dedication to anyone who has passed away.
“I couldn’t write every song about the same thing,”
Toler-Wade says.
“But I didn’t want to have a bunch of vague stories and songs that don’t mean anything as a whole, even if they might sound good together. I prefer to be very straightforward and blunt, almost in a punk rock fashion. And I’ve had people actually message me saying, ‘Man, this song you wrote really hits home with me. I’ve had similar issues myself or with a friend of mine.’ Having someone connect with what we’re doing like that is a really powerful thing.”
The most political song on ‘Delirium Tremens’ is the closing cut ‘Pharma Culture’ a slower thrash/death metal number that blends lethal chugs with sharp, melodic guitar lines and addresses how the medical industry is more intent on producing pills to ease symptoms than it is in curing diseases.
“It’s talking about how we’re being enslaved because there’s such a high addiction rate,”
he says.
“Everyone’s hooked on their pharmaceutical drugs, and it would cut into their money if there weren’t so many people that were dependent on their product.”
Toler-Wade wrote four songs for ‘Delirium Tremens’ before he left Nile, then, with new motivation and more time to work, he powered through the rest of the tracks in early 2017, finishing all 12 songs by March.
Joining him in the writing process was lead guitarist Edwin Rhone, who engaged in a friendly competition with Toler-Wade to see who could come up with the coolest parts.
Then the two had a blast creating the best songs out of what they had.
The main reason for the strong chemistry between Toler-Wade and Rhone is they’ve known each other since 1991.
“I was playing in another band at the time called Dukallian and some of my friends were like, ‘You gotta check this guy out,’”
TolerWade says.
“He was one of a group of guitarists I knew of. So we started jamming and trading licks. We became good friends and then our bands started playing shows together. When my band fizzled, I joined him in Teratosis. We did a couple of demos, but couldn’t really get anything going. I realized it was going to be really hard to have a career in North Carolina, so I moved to Greenville, South Carolina to join Nile. But at the end of the day, the chemistry I have with Ed is really special. It’s not something you can just have with any musician. We really connect on the same level.”
In 2011, Rhone introduced Toler-Wade to bassist Chris ‘LutaChrist’ Dupre, who played on the band’s 2014 self-titled debut.
The only lineup shift to take place between the two Narcotic Wasteland’s albums is drummer Erik Schultek, who quit in 2014 to focus on a studio career.
The split with Schultek was amicable and the drum stool didn’t stay vacant for long.
A Facebook friend of his, Phil Cancilla, earned an audition after Toler-Wade, a gaming junky, saw a clip of him frantically playing along to the music in the final stage of the video game Contra.
Toler-Wade could immediately tell their personalities were compatible and Cancilla’s speed, skill and style fit perfectly with Narcotic Wasteland’s passion and energy.
“He just nailed it, man,”
Toler-Wade says.
“He played his heart out and really got the vibe of what we were doing right away.”
Narcotic Wasteland self-produced and mixed ‘Delirium Tremens’ at Vegas View Recording and at Dallas’ home studio.
Grammy award winning producer Neil Kernon mixed the album at Auslander and Alan Douches mastered at West Side Music.
With two albums of material to draw from, Narcotic Wasteland are looking forward to playing shows again in 2022 and beyond.
“We’ll play anywhere,”
he says.
“We don’t mind doing shows at small bars. We just want to get as many shows as we can and to take this around the world if we can. I’m just excited to get out there and see what happens.”
Narcotic Wasteland’s is currently in the studio working on their third album with its release date to be determined.