PRIMORDIAL Frontman On Longevity, Musical Progression And Illegal Music Downloading

MTUK metal 'zine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Alan "Nemtheanga" Averill and guitarist Ciáran MacUiliam of the Irish dark metal masters PRIMORDIAL. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

MTUK: One thing that really makes PRIMORDIAL somewhat unique is the fact that you have been playing for such a long time, with (correct me if I'm wrong) no line-up changes. Very few bands can claim such a feat. How do things stay so harmonious within PRIMORDIAL's ranks, I am sure many would like to know the secret of your longevity?

Alan: Well, there have been a few, but not many. I think, well, we have been in this band for 17 years and didn't start it as friends, we became acquaintances, haha. No, we became friends over the years and we didn't approach things as a lot of bands do, like agreeing to rehearse Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and we must book band meetings and you must wear this, blah blah. No rules and no regulations and because we didn't make any money from it — we do a bit now, every now and again, but it's never a big deal or anything like that. We never set out or sat down and asked what are we going to do to sell the most amount of records or anything like that. What happens just happens; we don't have a grand plan. Well, he might (pointing at guitarist Ciáran MacUiliam and laughing). I try and impress this on people but they don't believe me that we don't sit down and go here's the album, here's the plan for it. We are free from a lot of the pressures that other bands face, I can see that some have to tour and have to play festivals and record new albums but we never have had to do all that. It's just kind of Irish, a bare-knuckle kind of attitude. If there is a problem, we can always work it out, there's no primadonnas, you don't take it personally, there's no fragile egos and rock stars in this band.

MTUK: Onto the new album and the obvious question, how would you say the band have evolved between the recording of it and previous album "The Gathering Wilderness"?

Alan: You learn a bit more every time you record, and I think this time we had a more definite idea of what we wanted to do as regards to the gear, the studio that we picked. It helped that Chris and Dave who owned the studio we were recording in were the same age as us.

Ciáran: With this album, we had a week off during the recording so we could listen back to what we had played. We could perhaps think that's gone on a little bit too long we could do something with it. In the past, it has been, "We have two weeks, let's go and record it all the way through." This time we had a little more space.

Alan: It helped not being in Dublin we recorded this in North Wales. You got up in the morning and recorded from noon till 2AM every day. You had your breaks but it was just us free of interruption so we could just focus on what we were doing. It made a huge difference. And as he said, the time between the recording and the editing, overdubs and the mixing was a huge help. We did everything in 13 days, recording, mixing all of it. Well, if BLACK SABBATH can do it in three days, we can at least do it in four times that. I mean, what's the point? There's no point in fucking around. The overall feeling is more important than is that bass drum like this blah, blah, blah? Well, OK, we worked a bit harder with this, this time round but the point being you are not striving for perfection; flaws give character.

MTUK: One thing I would guess that does concern is piracy. What are your opinions on downloading and how would you imagine it affects you? I would have thought most PRIMORDIAL fans would accept nothing less than the finished product and preferably buy the vinyl too.

Alan: There is that perception about me, as Blabbermouth took this quote from me out of context. I was talking about the pros and cons, but they printed just what I said about the cons, so I get all this, if it wasn't for downloading I would never have heard of your band. In the modern age, with MySpace and all that getting your songs out there and downloading is important. I think the concept that if you own a shop and I go in there and take something and don't pay for it and walk out, you are going to go, "You better pay for that." The fact is the record label gives us money, which is like a loan that we have to repay in sales and if everyone just gets it for free, it just doesn't work like that. The thing is I also understand that people who otherwise wouldn't be able to hear the band download it and then go and buy the album. That is what didn't get put across on Blabbermouth.

Read the entire interview at www.metalteamuk.net.