Primordial (band)

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Primordial
Primordial logo.svg

Primordial on July 8th, 2016 at the Rockharz Open Air
Primordial on July 8th, 2016 at the Rockharz Open Air
General information
origin Skerries near Dublin , Ireland
Genre (s) Black Metal (formerly), Pagan Metal , Folk Metal
founding 1987
Website www.primordialofficial.com
Current occupation
Alan "Naihmass Nemtheanga" Averill
Ciáran MacUiliam
guitar
Michael O'Floinn
Pól MacAmlaigh
Simon O'Laoghaire
former members
Drums
Derek MacAmlaigh
guitar
Feargal Flannery
Bassist Pól MacAmlaigh at Rockharz 2016
Ciáran MacUiliam on May 26th 2007 at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in the Kohlrabi circus .
Singer "Naihmass Nemtheanga" at Rockharz 2016
Guitarist Ciáran MacUiliam at the Rockharz 2016
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Redemption at the Puritan's Hand
  DE 31 05/06/2011 (2 weeks)
  CH 90 05/08/2011 (1 week)
Where Greater Men Have Fallen
  DE 34 05/12/2014 (1 week)
  CH 97 11/30/2014 (1 week)
Exile Amongst the Ruins
  DE 9 04/06/2018 (2 weeks)
  AT 26th 04/13/2018 (1 week)
  CH 27 04/08/2018 (1 week)

Primordial ( engl ., Urzeitlich ') is an Irish Pagan-Metal - tape from Skerries in Dublin . Alongside Waylander and Cruachan , she is considered the founder of Celtic Metal .

history

The group was founded in 1987 by bassist Pól MacAmlaigh and his brother D. Ciaran joined them in late 1987. In 1988 the band changed vocalists frequently and recorded a demo during the year with the death cover Born Dead , Sepultura's Screams Behind the Shadows and one or two of their own tracks. Also in 1989 the line-up changed except for the MacAmlaigh and Ciaran brothers. According to Alan "AA Nemtheanga" Averill, the band's name at the time is not clearly passed down, allegedly it was called Sticky Clits. Averill got on as a singer in 1991 following an advertisement from the band in Dublin's main metal shop, to which no one but him had replied. According to his own statements, he was "terrible" at the first rehearsal, but brought in some knowledge of the underground scene. In September or October, the band called Forsaken at the time appeared with him for the first time in the parish hall of Skerries, where they played covers of Sodom , Sepultura, Death and Massacre , among others . In addition, the band began to write their own songs. The following year the band gave a few concerts in Dublin. In the summer of 1992 a sampler cassette with a rehearsal room version of The Darkest Flame was released , which, according to Averill, is probably the greatest rarity for potential Primordial completeists. This compilation was the first of its kind in Ireland and, according to Averill, one of the major turning points. Due to satanic and occult references in the band's first own songs, the band and the rest of the Irish scene fell out. The band also wrote the song To Enter Pagan , which still belongs to their live repertoire, and renamed themselves Primordial in December.

In 1993 the band wrote songs, but did not consider recording a demo possible because of the school, the necessary money, travel expenses and equipment. In June, however, the band was able to record their first and only eight-track demo Dark Romanticism for around 50 pounds in their hometown of Skerries. Given the equipment, the time required and their own experience, the band was surprised by the quality of the recording. By Dark Romanticism copies were sold over 1,100. The band, which found the Death Metal of the time to be boring and felt more like Black Metal, appeared for the first time with Corpsepaint in August . The band now saw the recording of an album as possible. Peaceville Records was not interested in 1994, but Jonny from Deaf Records was. Primordial was counted among the first bands in the Deaf program, but nothing was released there. According to Averill, the band has been contacted by more and more underground record labels such as Candlelight Records , Necromantic Gallery Productions, Unisound Records and Hellspawn Records . The band helped organize performances for then-candlelight bands such as Decomposed and Korpse in the hopes that Candlelight Records would join Primordial, but it never came to that and no contract. Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth pressed Cacophonous Records loud Averill to take Primordial under contract, but the record company wanted to hear more songs. In response, the band sent a live tape recording of their performance with Decomposed, Korpse and The Fifth Dominion (now Arcane Sun), which contained five new tracks and won the band the contract with Cacophonous Records. In November, the band recorded a “sub-standard album” or demo within twelve days of rented equipment where they had recorded their demo, which was “not terrible, but not suitable for release”. The band had to wait until May 1995 to remix the album. According to Averill, the fact that Imrama was even audible was due to Mags from the academy, who became a friend of the band. Imrama was remixed in three days and finally released in September, almost a year after it was recorded. In 1995 the band also played outside Ireland for the first time together with Occult , Gomorrah and Bal-Sagoth in London. The album sold relatively well without the band's interviews. Tours with bands such as Gehenna , Bal-Sagoth, Samael and Cradle of Filth were considered, but they did not materialize. At the end of 1995 Primordial played with Cradle of Filth and Gorgoroth on Metal-Hammer- Nacht at the Astoria in London.

1996 was the worst year for the band, according to Averill, in which nothing noteworthy happened except an appearance in Athy in a Gaelic Athletic Association hall with The Fifth Dominion and Thy Sinister Bloom, who was in the middle of the Primordial appearance by the police canceled. There was also a re-recording of To Enter Pagan from the 1993 demo on a split - 10 ” with Katatonia . The band states this in their discography as a release from 1996, in their biography the contract with Misanthropy Records , the new recording of To Enter Pagan within six hours and the release are related as events from 1997. After the recordings, the band separated from their drummer, whom Averill describes in his biography as " cancer within the band" and whose exit is "long overdue". Simon O'Laoghaire joined the band as the new drummer. Arcane Sun's Fergal played bass in performances with Mayhem in the winter. The year ended with the announcement that the band would record their second album at Academy Studios in Yorkshire in February of the following year, which they were not prepared for. Regarding the album A Journey's End, Averill regrets changing the cover because Misanthropy Records' Tiziana Stupia hated it and wanted it to be changed. During the year it became clear to the band that they should find a new record company. In 1998 the band first appeared on the European mainland at the Wacken Open Air . A planned tour with Menhir and Thyrfing, however, did not take place. Guido from Hammerheart Records and the band Bifrost were the first to offer the band a contract. Averill booked a studio for March 1999 to record a new mini CD. In May the band played with Hades Almighty and Mayhem on the Annihilation-of-the-Lowlands mini-tour in Belgium and the Netherlands. The mini-CD was released with the title The Burning Season around September 1999. A performance by Primordial at the No Mercy Festival in December was discussed, but probably rejected because the band only had one MCD to offer for promotion. Instead, with the help of a Portuguese friend, the band was able to give seven gigs in Portugal and Spain along with Sacred Sin and Masque of Innocence. Since Primordial wrote new songs again at the end of the year, a studio was booked for February of the following year. In 2000, in addition to the album Spirit the Earth Aflame, an eight-day tour with Thyrfing and Shadowbreed followed as well as appearances at several festivals, including With Full Force , Windorock and the Wave-Gotik-Treffen . The band signed a contract with Edition Wolffackel / Warner and Sure Shot Worx, and Lucifergal (Fergal from Arcane Sun) joined Primordial as the second guitarist.

In 2001 the band gave only a few concerts and Fergal did not stay with Primordial for long. He was replaced by M. O Floinn. The band started composing for their fourth album. The relationship with Hammerheart Records began to deteriorate. The first two albums Imrama and A Journey's End were re-released there. In 2002 Primordial and Mags took part in Yorkshire to record their album Storm Before Calm , which was accompanied by a lot of stress, financial and legal problems. The band gave a few concerts in Ireland and played at a few festivals and a mini-tour with Mercenary and Callenish Circle . Hammerheart Records had financial difficulties and, according to Averill, failed the album, the press was excellent but the promotion and design inadequate.

In 2003 the band went on a European tour with Rotting Christ and Enthroned . The promotion was “poor to nonexistent” according to Averill, but Primordial played well. The band realized they had to try to find a new record company. She toured with, among others, Ancient Rites , Thyrfing and Septic Flesh , played with Negură Bunget in Romania and Bulgaria and for the first time in Greece. In the biography, Averill describes winter time as "hibernation" for the band, who spent most of the time with legal issues.

In 2004 Primordial gave a few concerts and signed with Metal Blade Records . Hammerheart Records more or less broke up, with Dark Romanticism re-released as a parting gift. The band recorded their sixth album The Gathering Wilderness in Dublin with Billy Anderson. The press again received the album positively and the band's sales soared.

In 2005 the band mainly spent mini-tours and festivals. She played for the first time in Finland, among others. However, the band were still denied major tours, including the Xmass Festival and a festival tour with Morbid Angel . In 2006 the band made their first appearance in the United States at The Heathen Crusade Festival. She took on the idea for a small tour together with Moonsorrow and Mourning Beloveth . Primordial also played at several festivals in Europe and made her biggest appearance in Ireland in the opening act for Opeth . In addition, the band began again to write songs. During the writing process, the band gave a few concerts mostly in Germany in 2007 before hitting Foel Studios in North Wales in the summer. The recordings lasted more than two weeks. To the Nameless Dead was released in Europe on November 16 and in America on November 27. The album was voted "Album of the Month" by Rock Hard and Metal Hammer .

Also on Metal Blade Records, the band released their first DVD All Empires Fall on March 15, 2010 , which contains live recordings and documentaries from their career.

In 2011 the album Redemption at the Puritan's Hand followed . The album Where Greater Men Have Fallen was released on November 21, 2014 and the album Exile Amonst the Ruins was released on April 18, 2018 .

style

music

When the band was formed, they were influenced by Slayer , Metallica and Megadeth . As the musicians got better technically, they increasingly orientated themselves towards extreme Thrash Metal and early Death Metal by bands like Sepultura and Death . Around 1989/1990 bands like Morbid Angel , Obituary , Autopsy and Pestilence influenced her. While she found her own style and was inspired by bands like Bathory , Celtic Frost , Sabbat and Candlemass , she increasingly approached Black Metal and moved away from Death Metal. To Enter Pagan from Demo Dark Romanticism helped define Pagan Metal .

Primordial's debut album Imrama , which was released in 1995, was still based on melodic black metal . The follow-up A Journey's End is, according to Averill, "a very dark album, obscure and dull in many ways" and marked by the frustration of the two previous years. Kai Wendel from Rock Hard sometimes reminds the arrangements and structures a bit of Bathory's times on her albums Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods , in contrast to Bathory, Primordial does not only indulge in calm musical realms, but also bring "heavy Black Metal- Attacks a bit of variety into the game ”. Averill has a charismatic voice and can "sing very variable and soulful, but also scream properly". Starting with this album, Primordial turned to a sound influenced by Irish folk . The band used traditional Irish instruments such as mandolins , flutes and the bodhrán . Overall, the style became much more epic, and in addition to screeching vocals - as is common in Black Metal - from then on she also used clearer male vocals. Therefore, as well as through the sweeping pieces, she also moved musically in the direction of Doom Metal . This approach was partly discarded on the following albums, but the folk elements were further refined. The music is thus a mixture of Black Metal, Celtic / Folk Metal and Pagan Metal. According to a review of Spirit the Earth Aflame , Primordial “has never really wanted to be classified in the usual categories: neither Black nor Pagan nor anything else like Metal, but simply PRIMORDIAL. Moving hymns, which mostly move in the mid-tempo range and live from their expressive melodies, are the outstanding features of PRIMORDIAL. " Storm Before Calm described Volkmar Weber as" Heavy Metal with a first-class Irish seal of approval. Mournful, melancholy, but stubborn and combative. The guitars in particular sound incredibly transparent, dynamic and very authentic - or in other words: better than ever before. "

At The Gathering Wilderness , Primordial tried to achieve a more raw, live-oriented sound. This also includes MO Floinn's first creative contributions to the band, which broke with their tradition. Marc Halupczok from Metal Hammer described the album as a “milestone”, which allowed the band to take several career steps at once with the “pagan metal boom that started at the same time”. His colleague Robert Müller described it as a "frighteningly dark" work.

Katrin Kropf from RockZOOM.de writes about To the Nameless Dead : "It sounds as if Messrs MacUilliam and O'Floinn sucked these tones straight from the Irish soil, a pre-Christian relic." ( Katrin Kropf for RockZOOM.de ) On this album The Götz Kühnemund from Rock Hard, reminiscent of Weakling , “inhuman screams, enthroned over furious, eerily beautiful melodies (a trademark that PRIMORDIAL distinguished on various earlier albums), […] are hardly to be found, although at the same time increasingly blastbeat parts flow into the heavy, driving mid-tempo reels. Alan's vocals are much stronger and more variable than on any other PRIMORDIAL album: more melodic, stronger, more sovereign - but at the same time also harder, more plaintive and blacker. Only the uncontrollably angry Weakling list has faded into the background. ”The band had moved more towards heavy metal , but had“ not given up the BLACK metal part ”. Compared to its predecessor The Gathering Wilderness, the sound was, according to Gunnar Sauermann from Metal Hammer , "much more powerful and clear" even before the final mix. The band retained all their typical trademarks, which, according to Sauermann, are "the subtle Irish rhythm as well as the unobtrusive integration of traditional melodies, the crackling guitar use and Alan's dramatic singing style". According to Sauermann, melancholy and anger are "finely balanced" on the album.

Texts

The band's first two original songs, Nefarious Affliction and Prince of the Sky , contained many, according to Averill, naive, satanic and occult references, which led to discord between the band and the rest of the Irish scene. Those saw themselves closer to bands like Rotting Christ or Varathron than many of the "eco-friendly hardcore ' death' metallers in the Irish scene". She saw herself increasingly close to Black Metal and Death Metal as "mostly settled and boring". Apart from this early phase, the band does not deal with Satanism and therefore cannot be assigned to Black Metal in that sense. Nemtheanga herself emphasizes that this was "always based on a spiritual or idealistic point of view"; “The texts and the general aesthetics had to be satanic, esoteric , occult or even religious in order to pass as ' orthodox '. Plain and simple: no deviations, no compromises. I saw it that way in 1992, and I still see it that way today. ”However, he said that he saw himself more as a political and less as a spiritual person and indifference as a modern evil.

In particular, the (mostly English) lyrics of the band expressed an intensive preoccupation with Irish tradition and history ; In contrast to the band Void of Silence, in which Averill is also active, the lyrics in Primordial are less about him than about more general topics. He looks at all pages and abstains from all comments on current politics, the band is not his personal mouthpiece. According to Averill, Primordial is “about history and culture” and the attitude is very serious. According to Rock Hard, he writes song lyrics similar to those of Martin Walkyier of Sabbat , which "could be described as 'dark battle poetry' in the broader sense." Averill is inspired, among other things, by statues in old European churches and the brutality they represent. Primordially, he understands art and not entertainment. In interviews and song texts, he often emphasizes values ​​such as strength, honor and fighting spirit. The piece The Coffin Ships from the album The Gathering Wilderness deals with the victims of the famine in Ireland in the 1840s . The album To the Nameless Dead is about the Irish and British dead of the Irish struggle for freedom. One connection between most of the lyrics on the album is nation. Averill said he was wondering "what drives people to believe that they can claim a piece of land". He took "the side of the small nations against the tyranny of the great empires", the song No Nation on This Earth is dedicated to them. The spirit of rebellion runs through the entire album.

Kühnemund described the album Redemption at the Puritan's Hand as "a challenging examination of death in terms of content".

The title song of the album Where Greater Men Have Fallen "is about the promises and unprecedented horrors of the 20th century, the result of the mills of progress".

Discography

Alan "Naihmass Nemtheanga" Averill performing at Party.San .

Albums

Others

  • 1993: Dark Romanticism ( Demo )
  • 1996: Scarlet Heavens / To Enter Pagan MCMXCVI ( split EP with Katatonia ) (Misanthropy Records)
  • 1999: The Burning Season ( EP ) (Hammerheart Records)
  • 2005: Soul Must Sleep / Cluain Tarbh (split EP with Mael Mórdha ) (Sentinel Records)
  • 2010: All Empires Fall ( DVD ) (Metal Blade Records)

Web links

Commons : Primordial  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Chart sources: Germany - Switzerland
  2. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p A.AN : Biography. (No longer available online.) Primordial, archived from the original on October 25, 2014 ; accessed on October 25, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.primordialweb.com
  3. a b c Conny Schiffbauer: Chatterbox . Alan Averill. In: Rock Hard . No. 328 , September 2014, p. 14 .
  4. Discography. Primordial, accessed October 28, 2014 .
  5. Split 10 "EP with Katatonia. Primordial, accessed on October 28, 2014 (English).
  6. Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann: Primordial . To The Nameless Dead. In: Rock Hard . No. 247 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  7. a b Primordial . To The Nameless Dead. In: Metal Hammer . Axel Springer Mediahouse München GmbH, December 2007, ISSN  1614-2292 , p. 90 .
  8. ^ Andreas Schiffmann: Primordial . Satan's mills grind slowly. In: Rock Hard . No. 330 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  9. ^ A b Marc Halupczok : Waldschrate & mead drinkers . In: Metal Hammer . Axel Springer Mediahouse Berlin GmbH, March 2010, ISSN  1614-2292 , p. 31 .
  10. Kai Wendel: Primordial . A journey's end. In: Rock Hard . No. 135 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  11. Primordial . Spirit The Earth Aflame. In: Rock Hard . No. 157 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  12. Volkmar Weber: Primordial . Storm Before Calm. In: Rock Hard . No. 182 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  13. a b Katrin Kropf: Thoughts on PRIMORDIAL's “To the Nameless Dead” on RockZOOM.de, November 26, 2007 (German, accessed December 19, 2007)
  14. a b Götz Kühnemund : Primordial . Free spirits! LOUD ATTACK. In: Rock Hard . No. 246 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  15. ^ Gunnar Sauermann: Primordial . Greetings from the Stone Age. In: Metal Hammer . Axel Springer Mediahouse München GmbH, November 2007, ISSN  1614-2292 , p. 25 .
  16. Alan Nemtheanga : No deviations, no compromises . In: Rock Hard . No. 269 , October 2009, p. 69 .
  17. ^ A b c Marcel Tilger: Alan Nemtheanga . Struck by forgotten Grace . In: Mørkeskye , No. 12 / Sounds Under the Surface , No. 5, pp. 303-311.
  18. ^ A b Gunnar Sauermann: Primordial . Irish rebels. In: Metal Hammer . Axel Springer Mediahouse München GmbH, December 2007, ISSN  1614-2292 , p. 86 .
  19. Conny Shipbuilder: chat box . Alan Averill. In: Rock Hard . No. 328 , September 2014, p. 16 .
  20. Primordial . Ireland's spearhead. In: Rock Hard . No. 184 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).
  21. Götz Kühnemund: Primordial . The death of the working class. In: Rock Hard . No. 288 ( online [accessed October 31, 2014]).