'I am The Nephilim!' McCoy declares

Carl McCoy has left Fields Of the Nephilim after declaring that he can no longer work with the rest of the band or their management.

The others - guitarist Peter Yates, bassist Tony Pettit and brothers Paul and Nod Wright (guitar and drums) - will carry on with a new name and a new vocalist. McCoy, who intends to continue under the Nephilim banner, is now working on new material with various collaborators.

McCoy officially quit three months ago but had been privately unhappy since the 'Psychonaut' era more than two years ago. He told the Maker this week: "The split-up was inevitable, and I can't pretend it's been amicable. It hasn't. I just decided I couldn't work with these people or the management.

"We'd done the complete cycle in what we were representing, and musically I felt it was time to change. The only way to progress, to try to develop, is to kill what was before, sacrifice it. Annihilate it, break it down. I'm now in the process of burning the fields so as to develop what I set out to do in the first place."

While declining to name the collaborators in his next project, Carl insisted that he would not be giving up the Nephilim name.

He said: "As far as I'm concerned, I am The Nephilim and all it stands for, and I feel I should use it, even though the others don't approve.

"There are a couple of people I've been working with on and off and it looks like the foundation, the nucleus, of a future band. At the moment, I'm writing another album. It's going very well. I feel a lot happier nowadays. The future's looking bright. It's exciting."

Asked if Neph fans would be likely to approve of the new material, he said: "I would think so, I can only draw my inspiration from the same sources I've always drawn upon. I'm still developing what I set out to, and I will develop it further, in the live department especially, doing something really radical. This is where my frustration started setting in over the last year or two with the band."

McCoy, who is keeping his new material under wraps until next spring at least, has appealed to fans not to write to the fan club until further notice; "When we've been able to reorganise and restructure it to run efficiently."

The rest of the Nephs have recruited vocalist Andy Delaney to complete the line-up of their new band, which is, as yet, unnamed. Delaney has worked with local bands in the Nephs' hometown of Stevenage.

Peter Yates told the Maker: "Carl rang us up and said he had no choice but to leave the band. It wasn't that he suddenly turned round and made the decision. There were things happening, a bit of an uneasy atmosphere, while we were recording 'Elizium'.

"We were expecting it. It reached the point where someone was going to say it, either us or him. There was never any thought that any of the rest of us would go off and work with anyone else, because we've always worked as a unit.

"We've been doing demos for about two or three months, and written about half an album. It's brilliant. It's not a radical departure as far as the music's concerned. It's got all the power, the big sound, that we had before, and there's still a dark side, a moodiness, but I think now Carl's left, he's taken most of the Gothic element with him.

"The subject matter he used to write about we were all interested in to a certain extent, but not as much as Carl was. We're feeling really positive about what we're doing now, really high. It's good."

There will be no new releases from the new band until next year.