Based in the Commercial City of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and surrounded by a music scene that is dominated completely by the mainstream musical hype, Nervecell independently worked their way up the ladder to do the needful and are now considered as metal veterans in the Dubai metal scene and one of the most potential metal outfits in the area to date, delivering a powerful mixture of death metal & hardcore with a thrashy edge.

The band emerged early in the year 2000 consisting of founder members Barney Ribeiro (guitars), Hatem (drums) and Brogan Costa (vocals). As one of the first hardcore bands in the city, Nervecell made their debut performance at the Battle of the Bands 2001 in the city’s capital Abu Dhabi, with the addition of Mazen (guitar) and Carol (bass). Together with their intense performance and stage presence the band won themselves ‘Best Performance’ award and Barney picked up the ‘Best Guitarist’ award. What was meant to be their first live gig was also a huge wake up call to all depicting that they were here to stay.

However it was in 2002 when Brogan and Carol departed Nervecell to study abroad and Mazen left the band to pursue other projects. Recent vocalist/bassist Rajeh AKA James joined Nervecell in late 2002 after the departure of vocalist Brogan & bassist Carol. James decided to handle both duties and take them to a whole new extreme level. Nervecell also welcomed Rami in 2003 as a full-time lead guitarist. Rami was an old time friend of both James and Barney before joining Nervecell. The band carried on with this line up and were working on new material before they went on to perform. It was not too long again when they had to start a new search for a drummer as Hatem had to leave the country for personal reasons. This led to Nervecell’s greatest problem and left them with no choice but to leave the kit for session drummers as Mark Deeb (ex – Threshold of Pain) and now currently with Alan Madhavan current drummer of Nephelium.


In the summer of 2004 the band hit the studio to record their debut EP ‘Human Chaos’, following the success of the first demo. This much anticipated CD included 5 songs with re-recorded versions of the first demo and 3 other tracks that are considered as Nervecell’s old school classics! The release grabbed a lot of attention from both the underground scene and the media in Dubai locally and the masses from around the globe. Being aired on local station Radio One’s weekly metal show Heavy Metal Thunder and various international radio stations as UK’S Total Rock and Germany’s The Metal Observer Radio, ranking their Top 20. ‘Human Chaos’ also received many positive reviews from many webzines & magazines in Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Morocco, USA, Czech Republic and Britain’s metal bible Metal Hammer. At that point in time Nervecell’s name reached the other side of the globe where they signed a distribution deal for ‘Human Chaos’ with Mexican label Atolinga Records.