By Mike McGuirk

IF THERE IS one thing Nate Denver's Neck makes clear, it's that there is no one to turn to for help but yourself. Trust no one but yourself and find your own strength. No one is going to save us. No one is going to provide us shelter from the pure evil that rules this world. It's a sad truth that pervades every facet of our lives. These are important and infinitely beneficial messages from a prophet who speaks a language few of us really can understand.

Nate Denver's Neck's first show was last year at Mission Creek Cafe, on Valencia Street. After setting up his guitar and minidisc recorder, which acts as a drum machine and sampler, Denver disappeared into the back room. When he finally came out, he strode into the bright lights of the coffee shop wearing a black, floor-length hooded robe, with a skull mask over his face. A cardboard scythe was affixed to his guitar neck. He plugged in and played an instrumental metal jam, firing staccato guitar lines into the crowd, rotating his body and nodding his grinning, leering skull face as he did it. The drum machine was too loud, the guitar was barely audible, all the lights were on. Folk metal? The whole scene was just weird. Before starting the next song, Denver pulled off the mask. Underneath was the black horror of an executioner's hood with slits for eyeholes. He sang a song about how God told him to die so he told God to go die Himself, in a high-pitched, childlike voice. For the next number he pulled off the hood to reveal his face, slathered in corpse paint, black rings around his eyes and mouth. He sang about small animals being chased by a mean bear or something. Then he covered a Deicide tune.

For the record, I think the word creative has lost its meaning through over- and misuse, but with Denver nothing else fits. He writes simple, direct songs that incorporate imagery from comic books, half-remembered childhood nightmares, a mishmash of the world's religions, and most important, heavy metal. The heaviest of metal, in fact. Denver alternately squeaks and growls lyrics about demons fighting the angelic hordes, stuffed animals seeking revenge on neglectful children, and straight-up inner-strength triumph over personal adversity. Like any great songwriter, Denver, who also sings and plays bass for Total Shutdown, uses his art to work out personal demons.

I was lucky enough to go to Denver's secret hideout recently, where he showed me his gold-plated rocket car and invisible jet. During the tour of his underground mansion, our conversation turned to those aforementioned songwriting tendencies.

Denver offered, "Well, they're all stories. I have always loved stories in general, and songs like 'Rocky Raccoon,' by the Beatles, and 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,' by Gordon Lightfoot, and also Winnie the Pooh and stuff like that.

"So whenever I write, I can never sing about something abstract, I can only sing ... like you know how with a lot of rock songs you have to decode them? I haven't figured that out yet, how to make it so you don't have to pay attention. I make it so you have to pay attention and listen to the whole story. I really like stories. And I'm really interested in torture and stuff like that. So somehow that always ends up being part of them."

Torture? Is Denver some kind of sick bastard or something? I wondered if he was he one of those kids who tortured animals all of the time.

"No, not at all," he said. "I had a friend who was a kid like that, and it really bummed me out. Animal suffering is a bummer. I mean, all suffering is a bummer. I like the kind of benign, safe idea of suffering and pain. I think it's fascinating; I mean, like, reading about it in the past is exciting and fascinating, but if you read about it in the paper, it's just horrifying and makes your stomach turn. And if you see it on the sidewalk, or if you know someone that's suffering, it's awful. But I think somehow it's kind of cleansing and therapeutic, for me at least, thinking about the worst possible thing that I can imagine and saying, 'Oh, it's not that bad.' And you suffer bad stuff, and then it's not that bad."

Is there an element of dealing with every person's – and especially his own – fear of death in his music?

"Oh, for sure. I used to think about that all the time when I was a kid, thinking I was going to die all the time," Denver said. "I'd be scared that everyone I liked would die. I still have that but not as bad as I used to. But when I write songs, it makes me feel a little bit better."

He's right, you know. We're all going to die. And no one is coming to save us.