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Just over one week ago, my best friend, Nathaniel Ferris Moore, passed away unexpectedly. We had been friends for over 30 years, meeting for the first time in driver’s ed class when we were both 15. My first interaction with him was to put on an effected southern drawl and call him a dumbass because he paid another student a quarter or two for a couple of Starburst. I couldn’t believe he would spend so much on such a small amount of lousy candy. He must have thought I was funny, because rather than take offense, we started hanging out at school, then after school. Over the years, we lived together, traveled together, moved apart, and moved back together. We had so many good times together, so many occasions when we made each other laugh until we cried. Other times, we just cried (okay, usually me). And like all adult friends, we had periods when we didn’t see each other as much as we would like. Even when we didn’t see each other for months, we were always in touch. We always had something to talk about. That something was music.
One of Nate’s family’s asks of me is to help identify a favorite song for his memorial page, an impossible task if there ever was one. How can you find a single song to encapsulate a life, especially a life powered by a ravenous love of music, an almost omnivorous consumption of songs? There will never be just one song that can sum up his being, or our friendship.
Nate and I, as well as our other high school friends, grew up in the grunge era. The soundtrack of those years was Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, The Crow soundtrack. Nine Inch Nails, The Offspring, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins – hey, it’s not our fault we grew up in the best-ever era for music. Of course, it wasn’t just our little crew listening to these band – everyone was. But, for our group, along came White Zombie. Nate discovered them first and loaned me his copy of Astro Creep 2000. Truly one of the transformative albums of my lifetime, White Zombie was my gateway to what would become my primary genre: heavy metal.
Nate and I, as well as our other high school friends, grew up in the grunge era. The soundtrack of those years was Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, The Crow soundtrack. Nine Inch Nails, The Offspring, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins – hey, it’s not our fault we grew up in the best-ever era for music. Of course, it wasn’t just our little crew listening to these band – everyone was. But, for our group, along came White Zombie. Nate discovered them first and loaned me his copy of Astro Creep 2000. Truly one of the transformative albums of my lifetime, White Zombie was my gateway to what would become my primary genre: heavy metal.
Nate, my brother James, and I at Psycho Las Vegas, 2021
Soon, I was listening to Black Sabbath, Rollins Band, Tool, and a countless flood of heavy bands. Nate was as well, and before too long we were going to our first metal shows together, the first of which the White Zombie/Pantera co-headlining tour at Target Center. Deftones and Eyehategod opened. Then there was OzzFest at the Metrodome, KMFDM at First Avenue, Primus, Gwar, Tool, The Misfits, and so forth. I went with him to see his favorite band, Megadeth, at the dreadful Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul. Dozens of concerts together followed over the following years and decades. We saw shows together in venues of all sizes and across the country. Maybe it’s fitting that the last thing we ever did together was see a show.
It was February 20, 2026, at my favorite venue, the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. We were there for Author & Punisher, the second time we’d seen the heavy industrial artist/musician together. It was the loudest show I’ve seen in years. I could feel it in my bones. I thought that would be the thing I carried with me about that show. Now, it has a deeper, sadder significance.
Like we did at all shows, we caught up between sets. Nate was good. He had settled into a good groove with his girlfriend Erica. Since they weren’t married, it wasn’t exactly right to call him a stepfather to Erica’s kids, but that’s what he was. It made me happy to see what a solid father figure he’d become to those kids. It fit him so naturally, like a needle dropping into a record groove.
When we would get together in quieter settings, we would catch up on matters of life. Work. Families. The state of the world. And music, always music. Over 30-plus years, we must have spent literal days talking about music. I worked in record stores in high school and college, and I learned so much about different bands from the people I worked with. At first, I’d bring recent discoveries to our conversations at school. Later, I’d bring home CDs to our shared apartment. Later still, when we’d grown older and settled into our adult lives, we’d meet up at breweries or around a campfire, and we’d share our latest musical discoveries.
It was February 20, 2026, at my favorite venue, the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. We were there for Author & Punisher, the second time we’d seen the heavy industrial artist/musician together. It was the loudest show I’ve seen in years. I could feel it in my bones. I thought that would be the thing I carried with me about that show. Now, it has a deeper, sadder significance.
Like we did at all shows, we caught up between sets. Nate was good. He had settled into a good groove with his girlfriend Erica. Since they weren’t married, it wasn’t exactly right to call him a stepfather to Erica’s kids, but that’s what he was. It made me happy to see what a solid father figure he’d become to those kids. It fit him so naturally, like a needle dropping into a record groove.
When we would get together in quieter settings, we would catch up on matters of life. Work. Families. The state of the world. And music, always music. Over 30-plus years, we must have spent literal days talking about music. I worked in record stores in high school and college, and I learned so much about different bands from the people I worked with. At first, I’d bring recent discoveries to our conversations at school. Later, I’d bring home CDs to our shared apartment. Later still, when we’d grown older and settled into our adult lives, we’d meet up at breweries or around a campfire, and we’d share our latest musical discoveries.
The Metal Dudes with Amy Tung Barrysmith of Year of the Cobra
In the last few years, I set up a text chain with all my friends who were as fanatical as heavy music. Nate was, of course, a founding member of that text chain. Before long, everyone on the chain was meeting up at shows together. Hardly a day would go by without a recommendation from someone on an album that we should all check out. We all learned each other’s tastes and preferences. That led to labels like “Jeremy Shit” or “Nate Shit.”
“Nate Shit” was always more expansive than my pretty narrowly defined lane. He was open to hip hop bands like Public Enemy back in our high school days. It would take me at least a decade to come around to anything that didn’t have guitars. He was always more accepting of different genres than me, more willing to explore outside the confines of our chosen primary genre. He never lost that. In his last few years, his girlfriend Erica brought him to all kinds of shows I never would have imagined he’d go to, like Sleep Token, Lizzo, and Laufey. He approached all with a kind of openness that I have never mastered. While at the Sleep Token show, he reported back to the rest of the Metal Dudes about the experience like a wry anthropologist. His notes from the show were always funny and incisive, but never dismissive.
That’s who he was. Hilariously clever in the driest way possible, never one to punch down, never one to be cruel. The only person I’d ever heard him mock with any regularity was me. And that was okay. We both gave each other crap, like brothers. Biology aside, that’s what we were. That’s what we are.
“Nate Shit” was always more expansive than my pretty narrowly defined lane. He was open to hip hop bands like Public Enemy back in our high school days. It would take me at least a decade to come around to anything that didn’t have guitars. He was always more accepting of different genres than me, more willing to explore outside the confines of our chosen primary genre. He never lost that. In his last few years, his girlfriend Erica brought him to all kinds of shows I never would have imagined he’d go to, like Sleep Token, Lizzo, and Laufey. He approached all with a kind of openness that I have never mastered. While at the Sleep Token show, he reported back to the rest of the Metal Dudes about the experience like a wry anthropologist. His notes from the show were always funny and incisive, but never dismissive.
That’s who he was. Hilariously clever in the driest way possible, never one to punch down, never one to be cruel. The only person I’d ever heard him mock with any regularity was me. And that was okay. We both gave each other crap, like brothers. Biology aside, that’s what we were. That’s what we are.
Sewing patches on our battle jackets
Nate was far more interested in thrash metal than I ever was and loved heavy industrial bands like Black Magnet and 16 Volt. He had a strange soft spot for metal performed in other languages besides English. He liked folk-infused metal bands like Panopticon and Blackbraid. He loved modern-day thrash throwbacks like Spirit Adrift. He loved sludge, doom, and post-metal – one of my friends who would most humor my constant promotion of my particular post-metal fascination.
I have no idea how many times Nate and I saw Mastodon together.
Nate sat with me to keep me company when I had the artwork from Neurosis’ Times of Grace tattooed on my arm.
Nate was the person who drove me to my hernia repair surgery when no one else was available.
Nate was the person I cried to when I experienced my first real heartbreak.
Nate not only tolerated it when I brought home the cardboard display from the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack, he welcomed it.
Nate and I were there at the disastrous High On Fire show when Matt Pike got so drunk that they had to end the set early.
When I wanted to go see the obscure Brazilian noise rock band Deafkids at the Fraternal Order of Eagles club, of course Nate said yes.
Nate was with me and maybe 50 other people were there for Gogol Bordello’s riotous first show in Minneapolis in the tiny 7th St. Entry.
Nate was the best man in my wedding. I was the best man in his.
When he moved to Alaska, we kept up by playing games together on Xbox Live, despite the time difference.
When he moved back, we had more meals together at the Town Hall Tap in south Minneapolis than I could ever recall.
When he and his wife amicably divorced, I was the one he called to talk about it.
When he started dating again, his stories about rejoining the dating pool had me in stitches.
He was the first friend I saw again after emerging from the haze of having a newborn baby.
I needed to let him know when my dog recently passed away, a dog that he too had known for almost 15 years. That happened just two weeks before Nate’s passing.
I have no idea how many times Nate and I saw Mastodon together.
Nate sat with me to keep me company when I had the artwork from Neurosis’ Times of Grace tattooed on my arm.
Nate was the person who drove me to my hernia repair surgery when no one else was available.
Nate was the person I cried to when I experienced my first real heartbreak.
Nate not only tolerated it when I brought home the cardboard display from the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack, he welcomed it.
Nate and I were there at the disastrous High On Fire show when Matt Pike got so drunk that they had to end the set early.
When I wanted to go see the obscure Brazilian noise rock band Deafkids at the Fraternal Order of Eagles club, of course Nate said yes.
Nate was with me and maybe 50 other people were there for Gogol Bordello’s riotous first show in Minneapolis in the tiny 7th St. Entry.
Nate was the best man in my wedding. I was the best man in his.
When he moved to Alaska, we kept up by playing games together on Xbox Live, despite the time difference.
When he moved back, we had more meals together at the Town Hall Tap in south Minneapolis than I could ever recall.
When he and his wife amicably divorced, I was the one he called to talk about it.
When he started dating again, his stories about rejoining the dating pool had me in stitches.
He was the first friend I saw again after emerging from the haze of having a newborn baby.
I needed to let him know when my dog recently passed away, a dog that he too had known for almost 15 years. That happened just two weeks before Nate’s passing.
I’m not sure why it worked out this way, but in 2025, I was listening to a lot of music explicitly about grief. Mares of Thrace’s The Loss was in almost constant rotation for me last year, and I kept coming back to the Chat Pile/Hayden Pedigo song “A Tear for Lucas” over and over again. I thought that it was perhaps the chaotic state of the world that made this music connect with me so much. Now, when my grief is so strong, I cannot bring myself to listen to it.
Over the days I’ve spent writing this, I’ve concluded that I’ll never be able to find a single song to encapsulate my dear friend. And while I know that Nate would think it’s absolutely hilarious if I subjected his assembled mourners to say, an Agriculture track, I’ve settled on a song that I think speaks to Nate’s essence: a quiet, thoughtful, caring man who loved nature and the outdoors. And, the fact that most people will listen to it not realizing that it’s from a black metal band will amuse him, wherever he is.
Nathaniel Ferris Moore, February 3, 1978 – April 8, 2026
Goodbye, my brother. I love you.
Over the days I’ve spent writing this, I’ve concluded that I’ll never be able to find a single song to encapsulate my dear friend. And while I know that Nate would think it’s absolutely hilarious if I subjected his assembled mourners to say, an Agriculture track, I’ve settled on a song that I think speaks to Nate’s essence: a quiet, thoughtful, caring man who loved nature and the outdoors. And, the fact that most people will listen to it not realizing that it’s from a black metal band will amuse him, wherever he is.
Nathaniel Ferris Moore, February 3, 1978 – April 8, 2026
Goodbye, my brother. I love you.
7 Comments
Such a lovely tribute to Nate. We are all missing him so. Thinking of you Jeremy. ❤️
Jeremy, thank you for taking the time to bring us into the world you and Nate reveled in together. It means a lot that you were such an important part of his life and took the time to write such a beautiful tribute! Big Hugs of support!
Jeremy, you have brought to the surface interactions and life events that Mary Pat and I knew little about. Thank you for this gift. The tears can now come.
Thank you for the great memories of Nate. He will truly be missed in this world!
What a wonderful heartfelt tribute. Although I didn’t know Nate well, your descriptions resonate and bring back my memories of him from high school days. Condolences and hugs to you, your family, and all whom Nate touched.
This is such a beautiful tribute. Your words are so special and full of love. I felt the depth of the history and friendship you and Nate shared, and I know he would love the way you honored your bond and all those years of music, memories, and brotherhood.
Thank you for opening a window to your countless memories with Nate. Music was a constant connector for you both. It will, undoubtedly, continue to keep you connected. Keep open to the ways, through music, he will let you know that he with you.