Reservoir of Pain: Novembers Doom

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FOR THE PAST 18 years, Paul Kuhr has sung and growled dark, emotional lyrics for the gothic death-metal band Novembers Doom. But Kuhr's pain isn't just mental; he suffers from a debilitating physical disorder.

"Eight years ago I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, which is a degenerative spine disease," Kuhr said by phone from his Chicago-area home, his voice thick with a Midwestern accent. "Basically, the spine is breaking down and collapsing on the nerves in the spinal chord, so it causes tremendous amounts of pain daily. I've been on painkillers and Vicodin for six years now, and it's very trying every single day. There was a point in my life, at the lowest point, when I really felt like I couldn't live the rest of my life like this … I didn't want to live in pain for the rest of my life."

Kuhr's condition is so chronic, the 35-year-old said, "You'll see when I perform a lot, any break I get when I'm not singing, I turn around and walk back by the drum set and I lean over to try and regain strength in my spine. My headbanging days are long over; I can't do that anymore. I have pain in my neck all the way down to my tailbone. I have hair down past my ass, so people are like, 'Bang you head!' And I'm like, 'It's not going to happen.' I'm not as animated as I used to be, but I do what I can."

And despite the pain management program he's on, Kuhr said everyday his agony just "gets worse. But if you deal with something every single day, your body adjusts and you kind of get used to it. It's something I deal with every day, but I think my tolerance for pain has definitely grown, because I had no choice."

That's partly because nothing can reverse Kuhr's condition, and partly because he and his wife had a daughter between the Novembers Doom albums "To Welcome the Fade" (2002) and "The Pale Haunt Departure" (2005).

This little girl gave the burly metalhead the motivation to keep going.

"There's no doubt about it: She saved my life," Kuhr said. "Bringing my daughter into this world gave me the strength and gave me something to fight for. I've got something I need to stay around for — she definitely did that for me."

Kuhr's lyrics reference his back pain directly on "Within My Flesh" from "To Welcome the Fade." And he sings about his daughter on "Through a Child's Eyes" from "The Pale Haunt Departure" and on "Autumn Reflection" and "Twilight Innocence" from Novembers Doom's new CD, "The Novella Reservoir" (The End Records).

"The Novella Reservoir isn't a concept album, but it's themed," Kuhr said. "Every song goes back to water. Water is used in many different ways on the album: for change, through baptism, spiritual, physical; it can be torture. Mainly, it's used to symbolize a rebirth.

"Musically, as we started writing this album, there was a change in the music," he continued. "We got more aggressive. We focused more on speed and simplified things — not in the way we write, but more in song structure, to really drive a point home. We really focused on our earliest influences: early '90s Chicago death metal. We wanted to make it really heavy and aggressive, and in doing that it started making this change."

The group still features plenty of its signature melancholic melodic moments, but "The Novella Reservoir" skews to the harder side of Novembers Doom's sound.

"It was more of a rebirth for us," Kuhr said of the CD, which is Novembers Doom's strongest yet. "We were starting to evolve more from our earlier albums. Not only that inspired the water concept, but also things in my personal life: more acceptance, more things going on with me that I wanted to touch on. It was a time, for me, of growth and change."

Kuhr's earnest, unguarded words are somewhat unusual in the metal scene. In fact, they're more along the lines of what you might hear in an emo band.

"I try to get really personal with my lyrics; I try not to tell fictional stories about anything," said Kuhr, a self-admitted and unabashed Coldplay fan. "I definitely put my heart on my sleeve and open myself up to a lot of criticism, especially being in a metal band. A lot of metalheads — the true Cannibal Corpse death-metal guys — are like, 'What is this? This is not metal.' I'm sorry, but we're not out to be that sort of metal band, I guess. We just set out to do what makes us happy. It's a personal therapy for me."

» Jaxx, 6355 Rolling Rd., West Springfield; with Saturnus, Daylight Dies, Thurisaz, Decimated and The Groaning, Wed., 6:30 p.m., $18; 703-569-5940.

Photo courtesy The End Records