PRIMORDIAL Frontman Talks Global Recession

Vocalist Alan "Nemtheanga" Averill of the of the Irish dark metal masters PRIMORDIAL has issued the following update:

"[The] 'Imrama' [reissue] is out early next week finally and looks great, Paul from UNHINGED/SCALD has done the job once again and now we are working on 'Journey's End', 'Spirit' and 'Storm'. It feels good to be listening again to these old albums and have them finally under one flag, no longer at the mercy of inscrutable labels and middle men. 'Imrama' has a bonus DVD of a show from February 1994. Very rough, raw and old school. It would have been easier to tag on a new show filmed for nothing at a festival, but for 'Imrama' we felt we should include something from that time. If you have the originals, of course, we do not ask you buy them again. However, even a purist must admit it is important to have these albums out there and available once again. They are not only important chapters in our career but important milestones in the history of '90s metal.

"The American tour looms closer. We are looking forward to some new experiences, meeting old friends and making new ones. Not to mention sharing a bus with the MOONSORROW miscreants once again.

"We have confirmed a few festivals, most notably Bang Your Head!!! in Germany. It may seem a strange marriage but hopefully we can turn the heads of a few headbangers. There are plenty of offers on the table but much of the internal organization (if I can call it that) of the band has been complicated lately. Some announcements will be made soon on a couple of booking issues.

"The first edits of the DVD shoot from Dublin in January are starting to come back and it looks excellent. There are plans to make a documentary about the band. A release date for the whole project hasn't been set but we will spend some of the summer working it.

"So can I mention the 'R' word? Recession. It's biting Ireland hard. In little over a year we seem to be back in 1987. Closed shopfronts, business shutdown, massive dole queues and a huge economic shortfall in the budget. We were all teenagers in the 80s so this is nothing new to us but the difference is the Irish have nowhere to emigrate and people have racked up massive personal debts over the last 10 years. We foolishly modelled our economy on both the U.S. and U.K. Our government sold the countries future to property developers, bankers and unionized lobby groups. The last 30 years of political cronyism and devil may care 'jobs for the boys' attitude has finally come home to roost. We made no provisions for this rainy day, offering 100% mortgages, bankers treating institutions like casinos and relying so heavily on foreign investment to the detriment of our own infrastructure. No we are left with no skilled labour within the country and the multinationals flooding to Eastern Europe and Asia. We currently sit at 10.4% unemployment of the workforce and I can see it rising to 15% by the end of summer and possibly hitting near 20% in one year. Our governments foolish move of offering re-financing of the banking sector before the U.K. and rest of Europe had settled on a common strategy will now be our undoing as we haemorrhage money. No one has any faith in our banking sector. The government seems to have no plan whatsoever.

"This may indeed be the end of Ireland as an entire generation have known it. I know, I study with them and 70,000 students will graduate in May to nothing.

"There are, of course, other elements at play. The fact that we are in a worldwide recession beggars the question: how could a tiny island like Ireland survive anyway? Surely, we haven't had a choice. Possibly, but the fact is this country is rotten, a politically corrupt banana republic in all but name and and while we had the price of a pint, an overpriced SUV, inflated suburban dream or gram of coke in our pocket we didn't seem to give a fuck. We are about to get a massive dose of humility.

"While the Spanish parliament was having an emergency sitting to deal with the economic crises in January, what were ours doing? Going on their usual five-week break from office... Crisis? What crisis? Our Taoiseach (PM) is the highest paid in Europe, we have the most amount of ministers riding the pig's back, the highest paid consultants. Recession? 'Ah, sure, it'll be alright I'm going on holiday.' In that month, 37,000 people signed on the welfare. This is the equivalent of 1,115,000 people signing on in America in one month. Apparently the Spanish economy is showing signs of recovery...or at least should in 2010. Go figure...

"I can hear Merkel and Sarkozy wagging a finger and telling us, 'We told you so...' Economists all over Europe must be amused. Pride comes before a fall. This may sound like doom mongering but what do you expect. I play in PRIMORDIAL after all....o). You want cheer and escapism, then find a power metal MySpace page...

"How will this affect the band? As always, we will work around things. Do what we can when we feel we want to. It does however make all of our financial situations and futures very difficult to predict. Considering the pressurized nature of the modern metal scene where people require legal commitments 6 months to a year or more in advance, this places PRIMORDIAL in an even more difficult position. This is an excuse for nothing; we will do as we always did and cope with what is thrown at us, but we are all looking over our shoulders. These are uncertain times, my friends.

"Other than that, you might have noticed I have a regular column in Zero Tolerance magazine and will be contributing more in the future. Thanks for your comments, both positive and negative, so far. I contributed a spoken-word piece and some vocals to the new ELUVEITIE acoustic album which I was happy to do. Chrigel and the boys (and girls) know I might have felt a little more awkward about a metal album, as you could say our tastes differ, but they are an honest bunch and that, my friends, is to be supported.

"Vocals for both the VOID OF SILENCE and BLOOD REVOLT albums/demo are in the production stages right now. Yes, there are some basic ideas down, lyrics written, but it has take a tortuously long time to work this out. Time, my friends, is the enemy! Gratitude goes out to the people I'm working with for their patience."

Watch footage of PRIMORDIAL performing in Dublin, Ireland - January 2008: