1. First off, would you please introduce yourself briefly?

A. A Nemtheanga…singer for about half of my life with Irish band Primordial.

2. What makes heavy metal good?

- What a question…I've had people not into metal ask me this and I've thought long and hard and the easiest way I can explain it is…the transferral of energy. You know when Metal is good when it give you that high, that adrenalin rush or peaks your emotions.

3. Can you talk metal with strangers?

- Sure…I'm a good arguer and quite the persuader. Disarmingly honest and a great liar. Its funny in Ireland people though friendly are quite cliquey and something like being into Metal is really not accepted as something you should be doing past 18, but I guess we wouldn’t have it any other way…

4. Is there a particular twist that characterizes your metal mania? What’s your obsession within an obsession?

- I guess like many people I seem to be obsessed with dates and time and how long ago this was and that was, I can remember almost where I got every single thing in my collection and from who and nearly when. You know…bought In the Sign of Evil for one pound from Ken in first year late September 1988 etc…..

5. How does your metal mania differ from your other addictions, hobbies and other assorted habits? Do you consume it in the same way?

- Well I play sort and paint and write and am obsessed with history and travelling but my metal obsession is honed to the point of parody sometimes, knowing times of songs from demos from 1987 you haven’t heard in 17 years. I think being male you do as much as possible to avoid the real world or what's perceived as growing up and we have this habit of being obsessed with
trivia, collecting useless information and simply collecting things. Metal is an ideal playground in this respect. It keeps us young…

6. Confession time! What’s the worst gap in your metal education or in your collection?

- you know I am pretty well rounded. I can go from Rush to Blasphemy to Holy Terror to Misfits to La Guns to Varathron in one afternoon. I suppose there's some holes in my 70s rock collection…I'm missing some good stuff by deep purple, whitesnake, uriah heep, mountain, zeppelin and things like that. Although I have some not all…but I pretty much like what I consider to be
the cream of all the crops from nwobhm to funeral doom and all things in between

7. Are there other activities you particularly like doing while indulging your metal mania? Does metal make them better, or vice-versa? If so, how?

- you mean do I like playing dungeons and dragons or something ?...I don't know man really, I find life gets more and more complicated as time goes by and finding time to fit the metal in harder and harder. when you were a kid you could stare at the back of the ride the lightning sleeve and james hetfields dirty sock or at that weird black guy somewhere in the crowd on the last in line or something for fuckin hours but finding the time to be such a metal nerd is hard these days but I persevere. I am kind of seasonal...summer is lots of rocking and winter lots of dooming.


8. What has heavy metal taught you?
- hmmm interesting, i think even though it sounds like a cliche it taught me to go against the grain and not be afraid of what others think in my more formative years, yeah i know it sounds like a bad manowar lyric but its kind of true. that feeling of being on the outside of society is something i think most metal fans who grew up in the 80s or early 90s feel. i think things are different now as kids grow up a lot faster and a lot of the charm and mystery is gone from everything but back in the day it did feel genuinely rebellious and i think it set me on a different path to most people who were never part of anything that could be seen to represent a counter culture movement. It got me interested in the occult and arcane side of life and from that eventually sprung my interest in my own culture and heritage and history so you could say it was one of the most important things in moulding me during my early years. I think above all it taught me to be myself...and to spend all my money on re-issues and remasters...

9. Who’s your metal mentor?
- i guess i could say my uncle was to blame, when i was about 9 he gave me some tapes and 7"s of ac/dc, deep purple, sabbath, dio, maiden, wishbone ash, argent, van halen, ufo and that kind of thing...my earliest love and still my favourite band is ac/dc so i guess i wanted to be bon scott when i was a kid. then came the likes of quorthon and the like...

10. When have you felt betrayed by a favourite band?

- sure, i think we all do. when you are a kid you think u own bands. i think thats part of being a fanatical metal fan and something that seperates us from casual music fans. however over the years and from being a musician for a long time you can understand where bands were coming from. i remember thinking south of heaven was too slow, and coma of souls too polished (still think that !), or that kind of thing. ive been very conscious of not falling into the trap of not caring about anything new or never seeking any new bands. i know too many people whose record collection finished at abotu 1994...ive kept a lot of my enthusiasm im glad to say over the years.

11. Are there any albums that you keep around just for the sleeve,
acknowledging that the music is crap?

- haha, yeah i have a few sabbat albums from japan that i really actually think are crap but the lyrics and covers are so fuckin hilarious, baby disco is fuck is simply genius. trying to think, i have a Y N T album called out for the count or something which has an andriod about to be bitten by vampire which is funny as fuck. a friend of mine comes over on a saturday and we drink and we have a catalogue of stupid songs we always play...tuatha de danann and mago de oz and other horrible stuff which drives everyone else mad, dont know what thats got to dow ith the question mind you


12. What, to you, is the difference between discovering a great old album
that you haven’t previously, and a great new album made this year?

- to be honest not much other then realising with the older album the time it came out in and being able to place it in the timeline as opposed to other things that happened that year and the trends of that year. for example i was never into WASP until about 10 years ago a good friend taped me the first two albums and i wondered where the band had been all my life and now they are one of my fave bands...but i could place it back in 85 with other things that came out. with a new album you are starting with a clean slate.


13. “The magic disappears when the masses get hold of it” – true or false?

- i suppose we all like that elitist..."im the only one into this" kind of vibe, especially when you are a kid. i remember tape trading for mayhem, samael and rotting christ, masters hammer and all that early black metal and i had this kind of if you cant find your own way there you dont deserve it attitude and then the local shop started getting in beherit, blasphemy and then of course after kerrang mayhem and burzum and i remember thinking people didnt deserve to get it so easily, so i guess its a mixture of being young and impressionable and also that great feeling of knowing something no one else knows...so half true i guess.

14. What’s your favourite logo?

- oufff so many cool ones, celtic frost stands out, venom, possessed, all the old bands had a much simpler and easier aesthetic that really stuck in your head. look at morbid tales its simple but stays with you forever. too many bands and labels go photoshop mad these days. more modern logos i think unleasheds logo is killer off the top of my head.


15. Do you think Tom G. Warrior-Fischer should shut up?
- totally...that guy man, he made all his music worth listening to between 1983 and 1987 thats 4 fuckin years...so for 18 years he's done pretty much fuck all. ?...i hope the new album is good but i really doubt it can be. i mean peter tatgren production ?....cmon. i trust martin ain more then him so we'll see. i think live it'll be a fuckin car crash though....

16. Do you think heavy metal still has some place to go in the 2000s? Can
new music only remind us of past glories – at best?

- yeah i think it does and whether we like it or not the new metal is neurosis, cult of luna, converge, isis, today is the day, that kind of thing, which doesnt bother me i love isis for example but theres always bands who can bring something new to the fold...look at a band like axis of advance, on paper nothing new but they have this almost militant feel which id never quite heard before. hell look at primordial, dont want to be arrogant or whiny but we dont sound like anyone...it is possible to twist and turn you know into something new.

17. Is heavy metal sexy?

- hmmm, well its definitely sexier then it was in the 80's...once men started growing out their fringes and stop wearing spandex. fuck man i dont know i guess im the wrong sex to ask but i could as a 21st century man see how dimmu borgir might be more attractive to a woman then say saxon or sacred reich (ugly dudes !...)...


18. What’s your favourite metal year, and why?

- i think 1988 actually, it was the year i started slipping really below the surface and you had 2 of my absolute fave albums that year...holy terror mind wars and bathory blood fire...and of course south of heaven, pestilence malleus under rated, kings of metal...important for a 13 year old although even then i thought the warriors prayer was naff !!!, so far so good, punishment for decadence, leprosy, and also i think i was in my first band, kranium slaughter or something like that...fast times !.

19. Do you listen to genre metal?

- i dont really know what that means but if you mean do i listen to one particular thing then no i listen to everything...

20. What is the best act of all time with only one album to its name?

- ouffff.....the unreleased trespass album is pretty damn good, I can think of tons of bands with two...and tons of bands with only one good album but...evil "evil" is pretty damn good although only an ep, I'm trying to think of some early death metal classic like funebre, god macabre or demilich or something but I don't know if id call them the best of all time...something new like funeral mist only have one album and i view that as pretty damn good so perhaps that ?...


21. What’s the most different formats or pressings you own of one single
release? Why?

- if i knew why then ?....i guess blood fire death on lp, pic disc, tape and 2 cds..the old one and the new one. then again actually sign of the hammer on tape, cd, european press, korean, czech and chilean or something pressing...oh and a signed one as well for good measure. i have passage to arcturo about 3 times, although i am really getting sick of having to buy the new remastered cds after buying the original cd after the vinyl...kreator being a good example. refer to q 8

22. Do you ever get the feeling that metal is about one-upmanship?
- sometimes i guess it can be especially in the underground and especially since ebay rules the roost. i have the moonblood blah de blah press of 113 copies blah blah whatever. sometimes i do feel like that when i pull on a really old shirt and you know people are going...fuck a fuckin at war shirt where the fuck...and i cant help but have a chuckle. i think because it is so male in many ways it couldnt not have an element of that within it


23. What’s the ideal form for a HM band? Trio/quartet/quintet? Why?
well hey...iron maiden quintet...black sabbath quartet....venom trio...i dont know...you choose

24. Has there ever been a particular moment when you’ve felt like you’d done
justice to metal?
- justice ?...i guess after playing a really killer show and you come off bounding with energy and adrenalin and you know deep down that THAT fix only comes from Metal....or going to a killer show and having your faith renewed !...happened to me at a great Skyforger show here in dublin, here was a band not doing it for money or nuclear blast or conforming to the whatever trends of bullshit is going on at the moment, singing about something that means something to them...not fuckin zombies or beer and the crowd went off...the atmosphere was electric...it can still be like that.

25. Did you ever have to suffer because of your allegiance to metal? How?
- i guess the same old story, sounds like a manowar lyric but most recently with a woman who couldnt get to grips with any of it...the tattoos, the gigs, the noise, the behaviour, the band, touring, travelling...because sometimes you forget because you are used to people being the way they are in the metal scene or being relatively "extreme" or out there compared to your average group of people and well it didnt work out at all. id thought that perhaps naively our differences would be something positive but in the end not...but hey its not fuckin oprah here. but thats an example...or the usual when you are somewhere with a bunch of people who start slagging the music off but arent passionate about anything and dont know anything about it...or worse when you find out...i used to be into that when i was 13...well hey so was i !!!...and the wow...such and such a band are still going...no man they quit when you stopped liking them...etc.


26. Do you wear the heavy metal uniform?
- guess i do although the days of trenchcoats, leather trousers and armbands are kind numbered i still pull on the black and strut my stuff...


27. What type of humour do you accept in relation to your metal?

- when i was younger very little...depends i dont mind black humour in metal but i always hated joke bands or thrash bands with joke songs...lawnmower deth or acid reign or that kind of crap. but i must admit i like my metal kinda serious...

28. Is there a particular track that, to you, is like a declaration of faith
in metal?

- highway to hell would be pretty damn good i reckon. however if someone where to ask me what is metal i reckon id play them painkiller by priest...it ahs everything in its 6 and a half minutes that is quintessentially Metal !!!.

29. What’s your wild card that you put on when, for some reason or the
other, you can’t find anything suitable to listen to?

- ac/dc always....at the moment its the woven hand but thats a story for another day.

30. Personally, are you album-oriented or song-oriented?

- album really...of course i have fave songs and this and that but when im on my own i play full albums, sure if its party time or people are around you end up playing this and that. but i never understood people who just listen to the one track off an album all the time...

31. Best gig you've ever been to? Is metal best experienced live?

- metal live is where its in its element, thats the real power of metal so to speak...fuck i sound like joey demaio !...best gig...wow...ok metallica 88, slayer 88..also cos i was 13 so..., sabbat in 89, deicide 90 when they more or less meant it and didnt hate each other completely yet, morbid angel 91, neurosis 99...so extreme...incredible, venom wacken 2001, however overall ac/dc on the razors edge tour....

32. What would you steal from Lemmy if you could?
- fuck...either his memories or a damn good pair of cowboy boots...

33. What would you rank amongst heavy metal’s seven wonders alongside e.g.
the bass solo in Sodom’s “Equinox”?
- haha...fuck that is some solo alright...theres so many ways i could answer this....
how about off the top of my head
steve dawson of saxons moustache circa 1979
mantas' motorbike on the back of black metal...how fuckin big is that motorbike ?....
eric adams furry boots on the back of into glory ride...which are coming into fashion right now here !!!
dave murrays grin
dave chandlers st vitus hair...especially in the background on the live album...holy fuck
rob halford circa 1978 stepping straight out of the gay s and m scene and giving metal its image right there and then !!!
and lastly simply....dio !!!


Many thanks!

no problem
nemtheanga