Nick Barker, the extreme metal drummer known for his work with CRADLE OF FILTH, DIMMU BORGIR, BRUJERIA and LOCK UP, has revealed he recently battled a life-threatening condition called calciphylaxis, three years after first disclosing he was dealing with kidney failure.
Speaking with Paul McNamee on The False Face podcast, Barker described the condition in graphic terms. "It's got a 50/50 chance of survival rate. That's how serious it is," he said. He explained the condition developed after he was prescribed the blood thinner warfarin, which caused calcification in the blood vessels of his calves. "It made... these big bruised lesions. It looks like a shark has just come and taken chunks out of my calf muscles," Barker said, adding that what began as a small, pea-sized blood blister escalated rapidly. His wife's grandmother, he said, described the wounds as looking "like raw meat."
Barker said the pain was severe enough that doctors put him on morphine, methadone and nabilone, a THC derivative, though none fully relieved it. "It felt like my legs were in a fire constantly," he said. Once doctors identified warfarin as the cause, they stopped the medication and began dialysis five times a week to flush it from his system, a process complicated when his wounds became infected and he came close to developing sepsis.
Barker said his wife broke down in tears upon hearing doctors confirm he was healing, telling him she had feared she would lose him given the condition's roughly 50% mortality rate. He described his outlook now as improving "day by day," framing the ordeal, which he said occurred as recently as last month, as a serious health scare he is still recovering from.
Barker's decades-long drumming career has placed him behind the kit for some of extreme metal's most prominent acts, and his openness about both the kidney failure diagnosed three years ago and this more recent, more acute crisis offers a rare, unfiltered look at the physical toll that can accompany a long touring and recording career in the genre.