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.”

As a completely instrumental album, Controlled Chaos did very well at Billboard: #1 Top New Artist, #3 Independent Label, #4 Top Hard Music, #8 Top Rock. It also charted on iTunes at #7 Rock. With the addition of vocalists, The Call Of The Void will certainly appeal to a wider audience, and is poised to achieve even greater success. “I think it definitely will, and we’ve already shown that from the success of the singles. The first single was ‘Dead Inside’ with David Draiman. It went to #1 at Active Rock Radio. The last female artist to do that was Alanis Morissette. We are already breaking boundaries that haven’t been passed in 30 years. I hope that once people hear the rest of these incredible features, it will make a great impact.”

Just as Controlled Chaos does not have a title track, the same holds true for The Call Of The Void. “Actually, for a long time, one of the translations I read from Kintsugi was The Art Of Precious Scars. I liked that so much that, for a long time, that was going to be the title. Then ‘Kintsugi’ would have sort of been the title track in that way. But we wound up going with The Call Of The Void, not having an actual title track, which, I really don’t know why, to be honest with you. I guess there just wasn’t a song in there that spoke to me for it.”

All the songs speak incredibly well, and The Call Of The Void is a long album, clocking in at just under 57 minutes, yet it’s an incredible listen from start to finish. Was that length intentional? Or was it just a case of, we have 14 songs, and this is the running time? “Well, when I made Controlled Chaos, I thought that I had written so much music. I was stunned by how much music I had come up with. Then we looked at the final tracklisting, and I think it’s like 35 minutes long. It’s so short! To the point where I think it was even in my record deal at the time – you are supposed to deliver a minimum of 40 minutes of music. We had to go back to them and say, ‘The album is 36 minutes.’ Then I got booked to go on my first solo tour, and I didn’t have enough material to do a set. We had to add in Alice Cooper songs and Iron Maiden songs to fill up the time to be able to do a headline set. So, we definitely did intentionally make sure we had a better amount of music to go into it this time. And I think also, it helps having the songs a little more carefully crafted, with more of a structure to it, than the original album.” That being said, Nita is “really proud” of Controlled Chaos. “I’m proud of how it came out. If I could do everything I did all over again, I wouldn’t change a single thing. I learned so much from the making of Controlled Chaos.”

While looking at the artwork for The Call Of The Void, don’t feel bad if you can’t identify the city streets, neon lights, and tall buildings. “The album cover is actually a digital piece of art. It does look like a real city down there, but it is a fictional city and fictional feet.” Was that done due to a fear of heights? Did you not want to dangle your legs over the edge of a skyscraper? “No, not particularly. I don’t think I would have minded. It was more just logistical; I’ve been on the road the whole time since finishing recording the album. I don’t think that I would have had time to find a skyscraper to go sit on. There’s a quote that I love about the concept of The Call Of The Void. One of the researchers that was looking into it said, ‘An urge to jump affirms the urge to live.’ I love that because we’ve all had that little voice in the back of your head – it’s not a suicidal ideation. But what if I did this? What if I stepped off? What if I jumped right now? Every time you don’t give into that temptation, every time you don’t step over, every time you step back from the ledge, you’re self-consciously taking control of your life. I want to continue. I want to succeed and push on. It seemed like the perfect concept to illustrate what it felt like making this record.”

There’s one guest artist on The Call Of The Void who does not sing – guitarist Marty Friedman, formerly of Megadeth, who plays on the song “Surfacing”. In closing, Nita explains why that’s labelled as a bonus track. “Really because it was written at the very end of the process of the record. We weren’t sure if it was going to make it in time for the pressing of the vinyl, because everything gets done so far in advance. But even if it ended up being a digital release, we still wanted to include it with the rest of the songs.” If Nita ever got the chance to duel on stage with Marty… “It would be the highlight of my life to perform on stage with Marty! That would be such an honor. My tour schedule is insane, and I know his is too. Any time that we would be able to make that happen, I would be super, super honored – and terrified. Honored and terrified.”

(Top photo by Ana Massard)