PRIMORDIAL – interview with singer Alan Nemtheanga

Irish PRIMORDIAL released their 10^th album “How It Ends” last year and as usual they topped themselves with this one. Raw sound, heavy atmosphere and tons of emotions in both sound and singing. As for the latter, it is not a novelty as Alan is well known for his emotional approach to art in general. We met after their show on Brutal Assault in Czech Republic. Unfortunately, the reality of festivals is cruel and you usually do not have enough time to discuss everything you planned. This conversation could have lasted twice longer, but still it proves how seriously he treats this band and its role.

Hello Alan, nice to meet you. How was your show? Was everything alright? Are you happy about the sound on stage, etc.?

Hi! Yes I think so. I don’t have any big complaints. Sound was good and the rest was fine too.

I have a question about the line-up change. Your second guitar player Micheál O’Floinn left PRIMORDIAL last year after over 20 years. Can you explain what happened? Secondly, are you going to continue as a stable four piece band and have second guitar player only for concerts?

We will remain as four members, the same like we were over 20 years ago. When we were going to make a new album, Micheál said that he had nothing else to contribute to the band. You know, over time, you sometimes begin to get tired of travelling and all that stuff. You reach the level when you decide that you need a break. There is no hard feelings. He just came to that point where he had enough of flights at 3 AM and no sleep. When you get tired of being in the band, it becomes a bit of a drag. Gerry, who plays instead of him, has already been helping us for 25 years and we know him for 35 years. He played with us every time anybody couldn’t play. He is not in the band as a permanent member, but he has been helping us. We also have a different bass player today, because Pól has just injured his shoulder very badly. So it is a little bit different looking PRIMORDIAL.

I asked that also because you, Ciáran and Pól are in this band from the very beginning. Your drummer Simon joined you a few years later in 1997 and with some short breaks in between, he has played in PRIMORDIAL since then. How do you do that?

Yeah, it is unusual. Me, Ciaran and Pól are together since 1991, but Ciaran and Pól had played together since 1987 as kids. I think the way we do it is that everyone has their own life. When we do not have anything to do as a band, we do not see each other and it can be months. When we get together we have a purpose – to write songs and be creative. We are still friends, so there is no weird stuff in the band. Irish people usually do not hold grudge against each other. It is like “You are allowed to f..k up. You are allowed to have a difficult time”. For example, everybody can have a tragedy in your family or whatever else may happen. This is part of being in the band, so when somebody wants to have some time off, it is fine. We are not a professional band, so you do not have to do anything, but you can. We have a very unusual relationship and we enjoy being together and hanging out. We are honest at what we do. If Micheál says one day – “Hey, I want to play again.” We might say “Yeah, why not.”

I see. In this case, as you know each other so well – how does your creative process look like? You know everybody’s strong and weak sides as composers, so do you do it old school in the rehearsal room or separately?

We only do it the old school way, so we meet in the room with amps there and make noise. The only difference is the way we record it, because we do not do it on tape recorder any longer. We do not trade files, or do anything online. We do not do anything digitally. We record albums on analog equipment and live together in the room. There is no click track, no samples, no cut & paste. PRIMORDIAL is about us playing live in the room. I do my singing part in a couple of hours and sometimes I do a song in one take. We just do not f..k around. We do drums in one day. We can do a whole album in six-seven days, of course if everything is ready. Obviously, when we go into the room we change things, there is democracy in the band. It happens that anybody can suggest to change some beats or from C sharp to C flat. It’s exactly how it was thirty years ago and we will never change it. If someone sent me the file to listen to it, I would delete it. That is our style and it has to be old-fashioned and have to be human.

So it means it does not have to be perfect, right?

No, not at all. In fact, imperfection gives the music it’s character. I am not interested in singing perfectly in tune or in time. No one is interested in playing in tune perfectly. BLACK SABBATH or other great 70’s bands were not interested to do it either. Character was more important. You should be able to make an album in two, three days. I have another band DREAD SOVEREIGN and we have made our albums in more or less two days. It was live recording all the way and we also mixed while recording. We just do it, in one take. You should be able to do that. There is no reason to f..k around.

I was actually going to ask you about your other bands. You mentioned DREAD SOVEREIGN and you have another one called VERMINOUS SERPENT. You sign and play bass in both of them. Can you say anything about this one too to ones who do not know it?

I love the record we made with this band during the lockdown, unfortunately most people do not know it. It sounds like first demos of SARCOFAGO, MASTER’S HAMMER, BEHERIT or SAMAEL. It’s like an album from 1988-1990. It’s super brutal. Of course it has some complicated riffs, but it was recorded all the way through in one take. We made two runs like this and kept the first one on the album. It took us one hour to record the album. Another two-three hours to setup everything earlier and then another two-three hours to mix, so in total it was maybe eight hours. It is all I wanted to achieve with that album. For some reason, black metal people did not get it, but it does not matter.

What is the status of TWILIGHT OF THE GODS? Are you still active or plan anything new?

No, we made a record “Fire On The Mountain” in 2013 and it was a good album. At that time, it did not seem that people were that interested in this Manowar-y/Black Sabbath eighties kind of style. We always talk about making a new album. Maybe someday…

Everybody is too busy?

Yeah, me and Rune are busy. Still someone has to give a shit about the band. You can make a record and people can come like “Really? Another one?”

I saw the video for orchestral version of “As Rome Burns”. It consists of outstanding views of some raw Irish landscapes shot from the drone. The song itself together with those images also summarises your other videos which focus more on building the atmosphere rather than some shocking scenes. You are also very consistent about it. Aren’t you tempted to do a video in kind of more modern style – with faster tempo and many images per second?

If you look at “Where Greater Man Have Fallen”, it is a faster one. It is built upon the Chicago world’s fair in 1893. It is a different looking video. I actually do not like making them and find them tiresome. Five-ten years ago you had to make videos, it was part of the thing. Now it is changing a bit because of technology. We also made “Victory Has 100 Fathers, Defeat Is An Orphan” and used some authentic outfits. Our friend, Dave Swift, who also made “Exile Among The Ruins” with us, he runs a re-enactment group called “Claiomh” in Ireland. They also teach kids about our history. So all the uniforms there are authentic and some are even original. I do not know what works when it comes to videos nowadays.

For sure, there are too many of them now, which makes it difficult to stand out.

PRIMORDIAL is not going to be more popular than we are. We are who we are and we are fine with it.

When I saw you on the stage today, I really liked the eye contact that you were making with everybody in the audience and all the emotions that you put into your singing. You are like an actor on the stage when you perform with PRIMORDIAL. Did you ever think about acting somewhere someday?

It is like Jekyll and Hyde – it is still me, I am not acting. When you are a singer in the band you have to be partly a hooligan and a poet. A lot of black metal artists behave like they are against the crowd and it does not have sense when you are all in it together in the same room. We in PRIMORDIAL want the people to feel that we are their band. When I make the eye contact with everybody, it is on purpose. I always do it. I want to look at everybody’s eyes and ask them “You see? You get it?”. Some songs have deep seated meaning about martyrdom, loss, sadness or tragedy. Let’s say someone is from a small town and they know from its history that there was a well into which they threw 40 bodies in 1860. I want them to connect that with PRIMORDIAL, in the positive sense and purpose. Wherever you are from, there is some history behind it. It is not entertainment, it is art. I want the people to get the message – “Come with me and listen to what I am saying. Think about where you are in this world, how you relate to your family and kids. Think about your area, your nation and your city. Think about some great tragedies that could have happened there. Maybe you walk by a statue everyday on your way to work, so take a moment to think about what it is.” PRIMORDIAL should be a gateway to this understanding of who we are. Maybe our aspirations are too big. Anyway, I am no different than anybody in the crowd so I look into somebody’s eyes and I go “Alright?” and they go “I am ok” and I go “Are you sure?” and they go “It’s fine”. They know what I am talking about, so we have a dialogue in the middle of the song. Then I go to another one and go “You, ok?” and they go “Yeah”. It is not “F..k you”, because that’s fake. It’s is about – “I see you, so if you are in what we are doing, come with me and you are in”. I’ve been trying to do that for last 30  years. For me it’s not about alienation, even if we sing about being an alien or martyr. It’s about inclusion of the crowd with our message. Somebody may say “Hey, this song meant this to me”. “Yeah, you are probably right”, however it may not be what I wrote it for, but if that’s what it means to you, it’s great.

That is the beauty of great poems.

Yeah. I want PRIMORDIAL to be the band that the people will go “Hey man, you got to see them! They are the real thing. When they play ‘Coffin Ships’, just watch. Here is the band that puts it all out” – you know what I mean. Sadness, sorrow or tragedy are the essence of our history. As you are from Poland, so it’s seen there everywhere. Tragic circumstance of nationhood is what we should not be afraid of. “Coffin Ships” is not really only about the famine, it’s about all our human tragedies. It’s a real thing, so when we play it and I hear that somebody lost his mind over that song, it’s great. It proves that he or she is human. The song is for the great understanding of sorrow or sadness and also might. That is better than singing about zombies, satan or fast cars.

Or beautiful girls on the beach, right? Every band or style has their own conventions…

Whatever, that is not who we are. I do not want to waste my life singing about nonsense. I am 50 now, so when I am 65 and my kids would ask me “really, you sang about such things?” – I’d be ashamed. There is great Irish artistic tradition and I feel the inheritance of that and its weight – cultural and historical weight. It means, don’t lie, don’t pretend, just put your greatest out for the people to see. If someone thinks PRIMORDIAL is boring that is fine, I don’t care – we will never be the biggest band ever. It’s not for everybody.

As a result, you are the spark of hope and good example for younger bands because of your genuine approach to composing and performing.

PRIMORDIAL is not about hope. My view on the world is very dark, but on the other hand I want to show that we should simply be a better humans, be a better to your families, etc. We should understand the history, the folklore, the mythology and the language. Try not to be brushed aside by globalist monoculture. That is what PRIMORDIAL is about, we chose a different path, which is to sing about such things. We don’t make the living out of it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just beautiful and I enjoy it. If there is someone in the crown that goes “What the f..k is going on?” and later he does some thinking about his family name, where he comes from etc. Then it means that my work is done. I do not know how often it happens, but someone has to make such stand.

Yeah, sure. To sum up our interview. “How It Ends”, your 10^th album, is only one year old, so I guess it is still too early to talk about the new one, or am I wrong?

I don’t know. People loved our last album, but it doesn’t have any hits on it.

By hits you mean “Empire Falls” or tracks like that?

Yeah, or “To Hell Or The Hangman” or “Gallow’s Hymn”, but it is ok. It is what it is, it is a strong, dark and angry record. It is full of defiance, because I feel that heavy metal needs some defiance now. I have a feeling that our scene became a little cowardly in post lockdown era. So, we decided to make a rebellious album and here it is. We can be gone in  five years, who knows…

Don’t say that.

I do not mind, I don’t want to go out and not be a parody of myself. I don’t want the people to say” “F..k, I should have seen them twenty years ago when they were fit and healthy. Look at them now…”. I do not want to be like that.

I am sure it will not happen. Unfortunately, we have limited time and have to stop at this point.

Thank you for the interview.

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