PRIMORDIAL Frontman Alan Nemtheanga - "I Don’t Think We Ever Lost The Spirit Of The Reason Why We Started The Band"
December 26, 2007, 16 years ago
BW&BK; spoke to PRIMORDIAL frontman Alan Nemtheanga recently about a number of topics including their latest album, To The Nameless Dead, out now via Metal Blade Records. An excerpt from the chat found in issue #108 follows:
“Somebody told me the other day that one of the reasons why Primordial remains so pure is because essentially we come together to make music when we feel we want to,” says Nemtheanga. “We don’t compromise in any way because we don’t make a living from this. We’re not on the cycle of touring, festival, touring, album, touring, blah, blah, blah. We don’t rehearse that often, we have other things that go on in our lives, but we have to make music.”“The Gathering Wilderness was sort of the beginning of the final phase of the band - without sounding too cryptic of course, because I cannot see us making ten albums,” says Nemtheanga cautiously. “It’s a really rough album, and this new album is more confident, the songs are more direct, they have a certain rebellious energy to them, whereas The Gathering Wilderness was a bit bleak and desperate. The Gathering Wilderness is depressive and claustrophobic sounding whereas this one has a bit more metal in it. Metal Blade were actually surprised because they thought we were gonna go even more grim and raw, and even darker! And then when they heard the first song they were like, ‘Fuck, people can headbang to this in the beer tent!’ We don’t really analyze or second-guess ourselves; we just go with what we think is Primordial. But I mean, six albums in, I think you can trace the lineage from our demo to this album. You can hear it’s the same band, and I don’t think we ever lost the spirit of the reason why we started the band.”
BW&BK; Magazine #108 is in stores now or available online here.
