PRIMAL FEAR Frontman Discusses Solo Debut In New Audio Interview

March 27, 2011

On February 18, Metal-Rules.com conducted an interview with PRIMAL FEAR vocalist Ralf Scheepers. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below.

Scheepers' solo debut album, entitled "Scheepers", was released on February 15 via Frontiers Records.

Scheepers has built himself quite a reputation for being one of the finest German heavy metal singers. With a career spanning three decades (he debuted with TYRAN PACE's "Eye to Eye" album in 1983),Scheepers sung on true power metal manifesto releases such as GAMMA RAY's first three albums before starting PRIMAL FEAR in 1997 with Mat Sinner. His voice is high-pitched and tenor-esque and his abilities were often compared to some of the finest hard rock and heavy metal singers ever (from Rob Halford to Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan). In addition, oth HELLOWEEN and JUDAS PRIEST considered him for the singer position in their respective bands.

Over the years Ralf wrote and collected a few tracks that did not fit exactly in the PRIMAL FEAR concept. As often happens, he was just waiting for the right chance to present itself and that happened when he, his buddy Mat Sinner and Frontiers Records president Serafino Perugino sat together and discussed plans for the future in… 2007! Over three years later and the results are finally here and in Scheepers' words "I'm really proud of the result!"

Scheepers' artistic intention was to please the existing PRIMAL FEAR fan base, but he also wanted to add some surprises and include as much variation as he could in the recording. So he went ahead and covered one of his own favorite — albeit atypical — JUDAS PRIEST songs, "Before the Dawn", and for the first time, Ralf played all instruments on a track, except the fantastic guitar solos added by Victor Smolski (RAGE). "Compassion" is another special track with a very positive vibe, recorded only with acoustic instruments. Two of the songs were composed with former PRIMAL FEAR guitarist Stefan Leibing, while GAMMA RAY's Kai Hansen added guitar on "The Pain Of The Accused". HALFORD's "Metal" Mike Chlasciak played lead guitar on the album opener "Locked In The Dungeon". One more highlight is the vocal duet with Tim "Ripper" Owens (YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, JUDAS PRIEST, ICED EARTH) on "Remission Of Sin". Additional guest appearances include Sander Gommans (AFTER FOREVER),Snowy Shaw (KING DIAMOND, THERION, DREAM EVIL) and Scheepers' PRIMAL FEAR bandmates Magnus Karlsson, Alex Beyrodt and Mat Sinner. The album was mixed and mastered by Achim Köhler and produced by Mat Sinner.

"Scheepers" track listing:

01. Locked In The Dungeon
02. Remission Of Sin
03. Cyberfreak
04. The Fall
05. Doomsday
06. Saints Of The Rock
07. Before The Dawn
08. Back On The Track
09. Dynasty
10. The Pain Of The Accused
11. Play With The Fire
12. Compassion

"Locked In The Dungeon" audio sample:

"Remission Of Sin" audio sample:

"The Fall" audio sample:

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