PRIMAL FEAR Bassist: 'We Have A Lot Of Really Loyal Supporters Out There'

Sweden's Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with PRIMAL FEAR bassist Mat Sinner. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metalshrine: You played the ProgPower USA festival. What was that like?

Sinner: Fantastic!

Metalshrine: Was that the first time for you?

Sinner: Yeah! Not for the first time in the U.S., but invited to the festival for the first time. We had a lot of problems at the immigration. They are a little bit crazy at the moment. The guys they are searching for, they didn't catch them, so they bring in the Germans for a two-hour interview. (laughs) But in the end we made it and the festival was fantastic. 2000 people. Crazy! And we had about 500 people waiting for us at the signing session. They were really crazy PRIMAL FEAR fans.

Metalshrine: What can immigration possibly want with you guys?

Sinner: I heard that you need a working visa, but it's insane to go through it all to get a working visa. It costs a lot of money. For one show, a working visa would kill the budget. The problem was that if an American buys the ticket, you need a working visa as a band or an artist. But the cost of a working visa makes it impossible to play there. It's a crazy circle. PRIMAL FEAR toured the U.S. before, with working visas, and they could see in our passports that we'd been there before.

Metalshrine: What's the response been so far, to your latest album "New Religion"?

Sinner: It's been really great! For us it was a very interesting and exciting moment, because after a long, long cooperation with Nuclear Blast, we changed labels to Frontiers Records and it was interesting to see if they could keep the pace with a label like Nuclear Blast, which has a better standing in the metal world. But anyway, we charted higher in a lot of countries than with the last album "Seven Seals" and that's a very good sign. People love the band and love the album, so we have a lot of really loyal supporters out there.

Metalshrine: Frontiers are mainly releasing AOR stuff and more melodic stuff, but I guess they're bringing in heavier bands now.

Sinner: Yeah, they signed Rob Halford and stuff like that and there will be some new bands coming up. In my view, first of all as a international working record company, you can't survive with only one style of music. You need to be open-minded and look to the left and to the right. On the other side, a record company has to sell records, so even if you're signed to a major label and they have traditional country music or whatever, they can sell albums. In my opinion it was the most important thing, could they sell albums? They proved it with TOTO, for example, that they can sell a lot of albums. If there is a market out there for a band, they can sell records. If there's no market for a band, they can't do miracles.

Metalshrine: What would you say is PRIMAL FEAR's strongest market? Is it Germany?

Sinner: Let me say, it's the U.S., Germany and Japan. In these three countries we are really selling well, but of course there are a lot of European countries in which we are selling ok. Also Canada, Korea, South America and Australia. Today, it's really important that all of these numbers are coming together and that it adds up to a good number.

Metalshrine: As far as I know, you've produced all of the PRIMAL FEAR albums yourself. Would you ever consider bringing in an outside producer?

Sinner: It depends. I've had some serious trouble with some of these guys in my career before PRIMAL FEAR and that's why I was learning the job, because the record company paid these guys a good amount of money and in the end I wasn't really satisfied with the albums. They go on to the next job and they also have good times and bad times and they can't always do a fantastic job. I had some bitter experience regarding this and now I do it by myself and if the album is shit, you can kick my ass. (laughs) Sorry for being so direct, but it's the truth. Kick my ass and say "Man, you're a fucking loser!" and if another guy is highly paid and is a fucking loser, he goes on to the next project and I'm left with my album. So that's why I'm doing it and as long as the album is a world wide success, I'll go on with it. But we have always other good people involved, like Charlie Bauerfiend. A very experienced guy. He's produced HAMMERFALL, BLIND GUARDIAN, HELLOWEEN and so on. He's the engineer and co-producer, so my job is not that difficult.

Read the entire interview at Metalshrine.