Interview with A. Nemtheanga (vocals) from Primordial conducted May 2005.
Written by Alina Michelle.

PHOTOMISTRESS: In one word, describe each band member, including yourself.

ALAN: All right, Ill start with our drummer, his name is Simon.  He's, in ways, a typical Irishman.  He's the one in the band who speaks fluent Irish and knows hundreds of traditional songs and different instruments.  He lives on another planet really, he avoids anything modern as much as he can.  He's a very odd man.  Ciáran is the guitar player...

He's the person who comes up with 60% of the music and that kind of thing.  Another sort of alienated disaffected pagan, so he tries to stay away from the modern world as much as possible.  He doesn't say much but when he does say something you listen to what he says ... and he has way too much hair.  Michael is the other guitar player... He's a very quiet, introverted, sullen individual.  He comes from Cork, which is about three or so hours away from Dublin, so he's kind of like a real country boy.  He's a quiet but cool guy and musically he's a very gifted musician.  Pól is the bass player and he's another relatively quiet sort of guy.  He's older than the rest of us by a year or two or three or something.  He has a bit of a reputation as being a hard man, I guess.  They're all cool guys, they're very different.  Collectively, we are five very different people.  The days of us fighting and arguing they really don't exist anymore as much as they used to before when we were younger.  We all get along now.  And then me... I'm kind of like the mouthpiece of the band, in your face, eccentric sort of ... ah, I don't really know what to say ... maybe a social mercenary, you know?  Trying to stay out of the 9 to 5 world and the usual thing as much as possible.  We're all typical Irishmen ... play hard, party hard.  Put us all together and it's just going to be drinking and singing and fuck you and fighting and whatever.  But we all do have a goal in the end.

PM: I know it was pretty difficult to record The Gathering Wilderness, so I wanted to know what you were most proud of achieving on the album.

AN: That we actually did it.  I don't enjoy recording and I'm not going to pretend that I do.  You know, sitting and staring at the same people for 24 days in a row.  You have small spurts of creativity mixed in with long stretches of boredom, arguing, things breaking ... it's just not for me.  But we always have stress, we always have pressure.  I think it's what sometimes gives the music a little bit of an edge.  If it was all sweetness and light, we'd just be a power metal band I guess.  So I'd say in the end, that we were just able to make a strong album that has continued the Primordial path and doesn't retread the old ground, that's the best thing about it.

PM: The Coffin Ships is my FAVOURITE song of the new record and the lyrics are pretty deep.  I wanted to know if your country still remembers the tragedy publicly or if they just choose to leave it buried in the past.

AN: There is no particular public commemoration of the famine but it is obviously remembered by everyone as that part of Irish history is very important and taught to the kids in school.  When it happened between 1845 and 1849, it set a massive trend which didn't stop and still goes on today.  But especially in the 1970s and 1980s when Ireland was very poor, almost a second world country.  The only way out was for people to emigrate so it set the tone for 140 years.  If you were going to try and achieve a better life for yourself you had to leave Ireland.  This song is something we've been trying to write for years without the lyrics being like a history lesson.  So finally it all came together and in a way it's like our own commemoration to all those who died back then. Three and a half million is quite a lot in four years.  It's almost like the emotional high point of the album.  A lot of people like that song.

PM:  When you write such complex songs, do you write the lyrics first or part of the music or do you just get together and start jamming?

AN: We do the same thing we always did.  I write words.  I don't think about them or think that they'll be in a Primordial song, but I have books filled with a lot of things that no one's ever seen and that have never been any of the songs.  We don't rehearse very often like [most bands do] 3-4 times a week, that would just kill it.  But when we do, someone might come over with an idea, then we might put it together and I just try and piece together what fits the atmosphere of the music that's been created.  There's no magic formula to us, we don't really analyze what we do very much, we just try to make things and not second guess yourself.

PM: I have to ask about The Dark Song, even though it's not on the new CD because that is my overall favourite song.  Near the end of the song you sing the lyric "AiliIath Nerenn."  What does it mean?

AN: Well Nerenn means Ireland ... it's hard to translate it.  Spirit of the voice of the disembodied spirit or something like that.  The original lyrics were written in old Gaelic, but this is what we translated it into.  It was written by a man called Amairgen, who was the first Druid in Ireland.  He went from Siluria to Ireland and brought the Druid tradition to Ireland with poems that he wrote about Ireland.  We always used to want to put it to music because I figured we couldn't write it any better than that.

PM: Can you actually speak Gaelic, just a few words or anything?

AN: We learned it in school for years and if we were pushed we could all have a conversation with each other and talk to each other; it would just take a while for it to come back to us.  Our drummer is pretty fluent in it, it's not a bother to him.  But to the rest of us it would take a while.  We don't use it in every day life.  But if we are on tour and we want to talk about somebody and we don't want them to know, we talk like that.

PM: In a hundred years when you're dead, would you rather be hatefully remembered or totally forgotten?

AN: Hatefully remembered.  I suppose it's better to live in infamy than not to have lived at all.  As Oscar Wilde said, there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's NOT being talked about.  Of course it depends what I did probably.  Well, I would have to do something while I was alive to make sure I would be hatefully remembered really, wouldn't I?

PM: I've had a lot of my friends ask me what genre of metal your band is.  I say it's hard to describe, do you have a way to describe your music yourself?

AN: No not really, I leave that to the journalists.  It's metal of course.  We have our own trademark and style and we just don't really analyze it too much.  We just try to make things as pure, honest and true as possible.  A true transfer of energy and emotion and atmosphere.  It's like I've been telling people since I've been doing interviews...  We don't play music just for the sake of playing music, we play music because it's in our culture and our blood and that kind of thing.  And it's not bullshit about unicorns and zombies or guitars and drinking beer.  In a three minute fast food culture this music actually stands for something.  So all the genres in the world don't really matter to me.  We make the music, put the package together, everything compliments each other and once it's out there it's up to the record labels, journalists and magazines to call it whatever they want to call it.  You can pick a name for it.

PM:  Does the turmoil in Ireland affect the metal scene there and the ability to play live shows in Ireland?

AN:  No.  You have to understand that I live in the South which is a republic, so the images you've seen over how many years are of northern Ireland.  Belfast is only about an hour and a half up the road from here, two hours at the most.  But most of the trouble is within the north of Ireland, the South is relatively okay.  Of course the history in all of Ireland goes back hundreds of years.  You couldn't be from here and not be affected by it in some way.  But maybe up until five years ago or so there was very little contact between the bands from the north of Ireland and the ones from the South.  We would've never played in Belfast.  But things are different now and now there is more cooperation.  For sure it was hard for people up there too.  I mean you couldn't see a blasphemous, anti-Christian black metal band or something like that in Belfast, it just wouldn't work, it's as simple as that.  Generally when you see something that's portrayed by the media on the TV and you're actually from the place where it is, it is never as bad as it's made out to be.  You have more of a chance at being shot in say, L.A., than in Belfast.

PM: I know you do artwork for backdrops and I really like them.  I wanted to know how did you get hooked up doing the one for Death Angel?  They are good friends of mine so I was curious.

AN: Their management knew I did this and just asked me.  They needed it in four days and to ship it to London so I just did it.  It was pretty cool... I mean I was a fan of the Ultra-Violence back in the day, so it was pretty cool to do the Death Angel logo.  I do lots of bands logos.

PM: How long did it take you to do the one for your own band since it's a lot more detailed?

AN: I don't really know as I did it so many years ago, maybe five or six years ago.  I was asked, where did I get that and I told them I made it.  Slowly and surely I realized that hey, maybe there's something in the market here.  To get a proper printed one it will cost you a lot of money.  For underground bands I do them for maybe 250 Euros.  It works out.  I don't know how long it took me to do ours, it must be about 10 hours or maybe 8 hours.  All the artwork on all the albums is more or less under my direction.

PM: Since I know you toured with Thyrfing, I want to know what your favourite memory from that tour is?

AN: We got along very well with those guys.  We were both releasing albums and Hammerheart was on it's way out.  We hit it off famously from the word go.  It would be cool to do a proper big, long tour with them.  For some reason though the drummer always seems to get sick when we tour with them, so I don't know what the story is with that.  I have lots of stupid memories with them, too many to pick just one.  Any band we can get along with or have some sort of common ground with, we're going to have a good time.  Standing on the stage is completely different from everything else that leads up to and after it.  That is something else that is a little bit more important and more ritualistic than the rest of the day.  But you need decent people around you because it does separate the men from the boys.  People who are immature or have too many problems to share out in the open are not going to be cool.

PM: Would you ever consider touring the States if it were a smaller tour and you had to tour in a van here?

AN: Yah, of course.  We tried to get to America quite a few times but it's always been people who want exclusive shows or people who are not willing to take a risk on something a little bit different.  Now I know the sales for Spirit the Earth Aflame were okay, but virtually nothing was filmed for it because the label kind of disappeared.  I know that the big popularity there at the moment is metalcore and death metal is still popular, but Opeth can still sell a lot of records in America.  I think there are people out there who could be interested in the band but it's just a case that the distances in America are so great so we're really gonna have to rough it.  I have heard an awful lot of horror stories.  But you know we're not winchy Norwegians (laughing), we're Irishmen, we're a little bit of rough and tumble and make lots of noise. (laughs again)

PM: My last question is, how long have you been a Manowar fan because that is my favourite band!

AN:  (laughs)  Since about 1986 or 87 I guess. 

PM: As long as me almost!  Wait a minute, how old are you?

AN: I am 30 this year.  Pól is 33.  We are all between 28 and 33.  I think I was 12 and I saw the video of Blow Your Speakers and I thought that was pretty cool so I went out and bought the 7" and then Fighting the World and I went backwards.  I mean okay yah, they are a bit of an (indecipherable word) now and it's easy to see the ridiculous in them but I still like the fact that they are characters and they do stand for something.  It's easy to stand for something when you're earning a quarter of a million Euros for a festival appearance.

PM: Have you seen them live?

AN: Yes, three or four times now.  They actually played in Ireland in 87 but I couldn't go to that because I was young.  But I did see Metallica the following year in 1988.  It was like it is in Poland or eastern Europe.  I could just stand at the front and when the crowds opened the door we'd push our way in.   No security.  Ireland didn't get to really prosper economically until 1992 or 1994, so anything before that it was cool, but it was pretty grim and metal.  But yah, I've been a Manowar fan for a long time.  I have 25 or 30 Manowar 12" records or so.

PM: Do you have the picture LPs?

AN: Yah, I have like everything.  I have six different versions of Sign of the Hammer and all that stuff.  I have Manowar albums from 1982 and the likes. 

PM: Never in my life did I think the singer of Primordial would like Manowar, this is too cool!

AN: Well, it's not really that much of a stretch when you think about it...  Manowar and Primordial.  We've messed around in rehearsal.  The others aren't really Manowar fans and we joke and play a little bit.  Maybe they're old, old fans from Into Glory Ride and stuff like that, but after that it's different.  It's old, epic music and if you think about it, Bathory, Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods are very influenced by Manowar from Into Glory Ride and Hail To England.  And we were quite influenced by Bathory, so you know what comes around goes around.

Official Website:  www.primordialweb.com