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Primordial - Generation Armageddon - Backstage 10.05.2003
Interview with A.A. Nemtheanga
At first let me thank you for the time you took for the interview so close to your gig here in Munich. I really would like to start the whole interview with some more or less personal questions especially about your home country Ireland!
AA.: Alright! Whatever!
As far as I know you are from the area around Dublin. Where are you exactly from?
A.A.:
I am from the North County Dublin. Dublin is split into two sides by the main river through it, the Liffey. So the north side of Dublin is where I am from. That's where all of us are from. Except now we have a new guitar player. He is from Cork. It's a county in the south. The rest of us is all from North County Dublin.
When I stayed the first time in Ireland there were two places around Dublin I enjoyed very much: The first one was the Wicklow Mountains, the great loneliness that I could find there. I really met no one for several hours. The second one was when I was walking around the Cliffs on the half isle Howth right before Dublin because you really could feel the weather, the storm I had at that time and there was nearly nobody because of the weather. Are there any special places like this you would prefer?
A.A.:
I mean there are lot's of nice places to go in Ireland! You know Ireland is full of places like that. I mean I am from the city, I live in the city and there is not much to do like this. I live and work there and only a couple of us managed to live in the outskirts of the city. Our bass player used to live out in the middle of nowhere. Now he had to move back into the city. But yeah, there are so many places like that in Ireland that it would be really hard to say just one. You travel for an hour or let's say half an hour beside the city and you find some. I know what you are talking about!
So you are coming from a country that with a very old and of course very interesting history. Are you interested in it very much; let's say especially the Neolithic times like Newgrange or more the medieval times?
A.A.:
I wouldn't say that I am more or less interested in any particular time. All of Ireland's history would interest me. It wouldn't be a case of finding one more interesting than the other. I mean even history from this century is interesting to me as well. But yeah, things like Newgrange and that kind is really fascinating how they are build and all that stuff! And the mythology in the folklore of course is having always a romantic association. It's just interesting as well! You are right it is a very old and very interesting country full of strange and actually wonderful facts, you know!
There are lots of legends and myth all around in Ireland. I think you can really feel it at some places. What do you think of them, are you interested in them - especially the myths all around and if so do you have a short one which impressed you very much?
A.A.:
I mean it's the same thing of course to be interested in all of our mythology, culture and folklore. We are another kind of band that instead of retails uses mythological tales. I am the opinion some of them I can use as bare bones and put things on them like we did at the song "The Children Of The Harvest" from Spirit The Earth Aflame. This is based on the children of Leah. It is a story about basically three children being turned into swans and being banished over a hundreds of years to different lakes and then the ocean and they returned to their native land and found it completely changed and desperate. So this is the bare bones instead of the allegorical tale feeling like an alien in your own country. But Primordial has never told things in a simplistic way, everything is done in a - to be honest - very complex way.
What do you think of the whole commercialising of all the Irish legends, myths and Celtic art?
A.A.:
Well, I mean Irish mythology and culture has been for many years one of the only ways the country could make money through tourism. And it's true the commercialisation of our culture is double sided. In one way it does get people interested in the folklore and culture. But on the other hand it's kind of sad to see that it's a sort of Hollywood selling. The Irish can't start approaching their own culture for only commercial gain you know! It's hard to say. People come to Ireland they like it and they want to bring things like that back home. And who is to say for what it is good having folklore so prominent in society even that I would say it is not the right reason. You can have a knock on effect on people to get interest in it but it's really hard to say, you know! It's a very complicated subject.
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When I arrived by plane the first time in Ireland I was very impressed by the very special colour of green you are having there. I never again saw that again somewhere else. Do you have a special connection to a special goddess for that or are there any other reasons?
A.A.:
To be honest really, something like that it is, yeah! I mean nowhere I've been I saw this green. Maybe, I have heard in New Zealand it is like that or even in middle England it is nearly like in Ireland. But it's not the same as in Europe. The thing has to be honest a very simple reason. The difference between our seasons is not that profound as in other parts of Europe.
Four seasons on a Monday?
A.A.:
Yeah, exactly it's a very wet, moist country. There's a lot of rain. So that just helps. That's the reason why and because the land has been farmed for so many thousands of years.
Let's go over to the band's name Primordial. I think the meaning in other words is something like "originally" or "at the beginning". Did you choose it because of your interest of the ancient times?
A.A.:
Well when we started we had a couple of different names that we didn't like. And we were in need to find something original. No one had that name at that time which was very important. To find a name for the band that no one had. To be something special. The time before time seemed to have some sort of mystical association. Trying to do it, you know you imagine the lyrics and that kind of things.
So there are several folk music elements in your music. Do you like folk music, especially Irish folk music or do you only use the certain elements in your music.
A.A.:
Of all the people in the band I am probably the person who is at least into Irish traditional music. But I like it, especially the heavy, very melancholic kind of stuff. But you know, we don't try and just take influence from the Irish traditional music and translate it into metal. What we do is that we are creating scales and chords on our own. Basically we like the dark underlying of all that traditional influence. Not like may be Cruachan would use it. They use it in a much more straight forward, simplistic kind of way which is their own thing. We are very much led by all that what is being dark. It's probably the most important thing in the music.
I think something very special about your music is your guitar sound. What's the secret behind it and how would you describe it?
A.A.:
The secret behind Primordial's guitar sound without sounding arrogant is that no one in the entire metal scene plays the guitar the way we do. And no one probably has done it to be honest. We play nearly all the time completely full chords. A lot of it has arrived from Irish traditional music, from Irish traditional acoustic guitar playing which is really kind of fast and often very complicated. Not like a Spanish guitar which is based on the rhythms, you know. The only bands I can think of who might do something adequate like we do, play in a way like we do may be Borknagar or Opeth sometimes. But this full chords sweeping thing is just hard to record. You need to get very experienced with the instruments that you have. We just try to make things organic. I think this absolutely recognisable style is based on our guitar player Ciáran.
So my opinion of your last album "Storm before Calm" is that it is much harder and faster than the one before. Did you want to achieve this or is it just a sort of natural progression in your eyes?
A.A.:
We wanted to have a better drum sound and make things a little bit more heavy. Also the songs are written over a shorter space of time. And I think they ended up containing a lot more of the natural aggression from where the songs are inspired. We have kind of messed them a little bit. And also the better the production gets the harder it sounds usually. But we don't really analyse it. We just went ahead and write them. We decided that we wanted to start the album really fast and strong. No big intro like 3 to 4 minutes as everyone expects. Sometimes it's just good to confound people's expectations. But we don't really analyse things too much.
Everytime I listen to your music there is some sort of pagan feeling coming up, especially while reading the lyrics to the music. So would you actually call yourself pagans?
A.A.:
The concept of pagan metal really is some sort of banner which people use to fly above certain bands in the scene. I wouldn't look up on myself necessarily as practising paganism. I see myself as a person with more than this. You can't describe what exactly paganism is in the 21 century. It's quite a complicated thing, you know there's no romantic today. Quite for me, the way I look up on it is that the band has cultural roots. We are cultural inspired, we have linked of course mythology and heritage. Folklore bloodlines and history are absolute important to us and that's where the band's roots are in. It includes a pagan part. But I wouldn't call us essentially pagans. May be near on what it depends. With the concept of realising the old gods or what ever we should call them we just mean the natural relation to the elements. The natural things are for us very important to realise and of course it's a harsh opposite to the world that we live in today. So we are not romantics, we are not looking to go back to another year, we are not the opinion that it would be better if there would be the morals and ethics that had been. We just take a little bit of everything. As a late teenager I was really into Satanism and stuff like that. It's not that I have left it totally behind. I just evolved with it and took it with me. I am interested in all countries mythology. It's kind of difficult to say because pagan metal is such an enormous big thing. For me it's just music with other elements. And if it helps to raise people's awareness towards bringing themselves back to something more natural which is surrounding them and finding out more about the culture, the heritage, the folklore, the local area and all that things. That's all positive. And also it's making a stand against the three minutes fast food culture that we live in, it's about making a stand against absolute consumerism, you know. Because Primordial is still angry, there is a lot of energy and not negative energy. We are taking positive energy, and that's important we keep that in the band. We don't mellow out, we don't fade into some sort of seventies hippie excursus. We are not interested in that, we are not romantics.
Are you then able to speak the Gaelic language?
A.A.:
We did it in school, all of us. You don't really use it so you do forget it very fast. But our drummer has just passed an exam so that he is able to teach Irish language. He is a good person to talk about it. If he sat here we could have a conversation. It would come slowly but surely if we all give our best for some weeks it would all come back to us. It's like the same that I learned German in school. When I come back to Germany I start to come around a bit and I begin to remember things. But it has been around ten or eleven years since I left the school where I learned it, you know what I mean?
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In that way could you imagine doing a whole album in that language?
A.A.:
I don't know if we should just prove a point like hey we're gonna write all in Irish so that you don't understand it. I think the massage that we have is too universal for just only writing in Irish. The first song on the first album is in Irish and there will be some on the new album. But it's gonna be like a few lines and some interesting harmonies and that. But I wouldn't do a whole thing in Irish.
Many bands started in their career using electronical and modern elements in their music. Could you ever imagine to do this in your music? By the way I won't hope it!
A.A.:
Oh no, never. We're not interested in samples and electronic. Our lyrics and stuff are not based in the past they are very current and there are a lot of things in them that reflect the way we live today but I am not interested in samples and electronic and things like that. If you are worried that anyone of us would say hey I want to do something like that then he just does that beside but not in the band. I think probably the next album will have more traditional elements on it, more acoustics, more traditional Irish instruments.
Do you have a time in mind when the next album will come out?
A.A.:
We don't know. We just started writing songs now. It will take quite a long time. May be we can record it by the end of the year, who knows. For one thing we are sure we rushed a little bit by the album before. You know I still like it and I think it's a strong album but we decided his time not to rush anything.
What about the Irish metal scene? Small island with a big scene? Or all the way round?
A.A.:
Small island with a small scene. To be honest I think the active underground is only a couple of hundred people. You know there is thousands of metal fans as well who come and see Metallica or Ozzy and something like that. There is a mainstream of metal fans but they never get to hear and have any exposure to Irish metal. So Primordial would be the biggest Irish metal band but we only sell 200 or 250 copies in Ireland. Which at least to me after 12 years and four albums is pretty pathetic. If we headline a show in Dublin a hundred, a hundred and fifty people are coming to the shows. That's why nearly all the best Primordial shows have been in Europe. We can't deny that. Society in Ireland is at the moment very much based on trance music and sticking to something and having loyalty with it is not very cool at the moment in Ireland. So you see people pass through the scene all the time.
Coming and going.
A.A.:
Yaeh, all the time
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