San Diego underground grunge rock musician and one-man band, Michael J. Dole, who released his blistering Nirvana-influenced debut album, Crass, under the moniker of Empire of Gold, a couple of weeks ago, premieres the gritty, super charged, “Intoxicated,” via EoG’s splashy, surreal and artsy new music video.
The song is a balls-to-the-wall nod to Dole’s favorite band, Nirvana, spliced together with a fast-moving, colorful and interesting collage of mostly public domain images and videos.
The musical journey for Dole began in Chicago at the age of 14 when he received a guitar for Christmas. In time, Dole found himself leaning towards 90’s alternative rock and metal.
“My interest in music when I was a kid was all the metal music coming out in the late 90’s,” Dole says. “The ones I took a keen interest to was Slipknot, Mudvayne, Coal Chamber, Korn, and so on.”
But there was a catch. He also loved Green Day, and credits the band with encouraging him to explore other genres. After graduating from high school in 2005, Dole decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue film, attending the respected The Art Institute.
However, the cross-continent move to the Pacific Coast left a big gap in his life. He was homesick for his native Chicago and feel into a depression. And like many artists, a fall into darkness can be the very fuel to inspire them to crawl out by channelling the sadness, fear and isolation into poignant and meaningful art. Which is exactly what Dole did.
It would still be years later – in fact, nearly a decade after graduating high school – in 2013 when Dole finally decided to take the demos he’d worked on for years and start recording them. He released his first EP, Raw, last summer.
Oddly, Dole had never listened to Nirvana’s ground-breaking album, Nevermind – one of the biggest selling albums of all time – until two decades following its official release in 1993. That changed everything for Dole, and he kicked off Empire of Gold.
“That album changed my whole style, transforming me from an acoustic singer/songwriter to a ‘grunge head.’ It was like an epiphany. I realized my purpose.”