Defenders Of The Faith, le forum Metal

Twilight Of The Gods, the extreme metal supergroup featuring Primordial’s Alan Nemtheanga, Mayhem’s Blasphemer, ex-Cradle/Dimmu drummer Nick Barker and members of Thyrfing and Einherjer, are putting the final touches to their debut album, Fire On The Mountain, which is due to be released in February or March next year via Season Of Mist. Subterranea got an early listen, and in the first of a two-part interview we chat with Alan about going back to the past, siege mentalities and the joys of being obvious.

This new album is going back to the old school, but it doesn’t sound kitsch. Some bands can sound too knowing and Fire On The Mountain finds a good balance between knowing your marker points and being progressive at the same time.

“Yeah. I guess the thing is that we’re a bit older. We grew up with and through most of our reference points. This is just what just came out when we play, we didn’t need to go, ‘We need to write songs that sound like Manowar’, but we all love Manowar. There’s a fine line to walk between pastiche, parody and putting of the old gonzoid heavy metal charm into it, but not being too self-knowing in that sense.”

Was it weird to switch over to singing classic metal lyrics, and finding out how you relate to those lyrics?

“Definitely, the thing is that it’s full of the gonzoid heavy metal idioms – the swords and the steel and the blood and the fire. It was a difficult balance to find, to strike between being full of a certain glory and beauty and charm of old heavy metal, without it being too wink-wink, nod-nod, self-parody, but really genuinely meaning it because that’s what we all love, and treating it with the sort of kid gloves and respect that it deserves.

“But yeah, it was difficult trying to find a different voice, another kind of lyric but at the same time, if you take, say, the title track Fire On The Mountain, that’s my Dio tribute and it sounds like a Rainbow song title. But yeah, the song is about the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman empire in 1683 where King Leopold I and the Holy Roman See defeated the Turks, and those, I think, had a lot to do with saving the European culture and the Enlightenment and all sorts of stuff. So if you were to actually look at it, you’d go ‘Actually there’s something being said here, but it’s written in heavy metal vernacular, which was handed down to us from Iron Maiden and whoever. But it’s a challenge for sure, and it’s also a challenge to write a chorus that people could sing. You’re sitting there for the first time thinking, actually how could I write this in such a way for people at a show or at a festival to get behind it, you know? It’s just a traditional, hard rock structure, which is a breath of fresh air for all of us, because we’ve all, for the past 20 years, been playing extreme music and darker music to some degree, so it’s a bit like something fresh for all of us, despite the fact that it’s all old.

Is it difficult to write simple lyrics?

“It is. It’s only when you try to write a simplistic lyric, which has the onomatopoeia, which has the rhythm, as the rhyme, has the meter and you have to make it fit into the timing and the framing of the riff. This is something I don’t have to do in Primordial because it drifts along and you sing over that, and you do move with the structures, but this is a much more disciplined thing and it’s only when you start to listen to something like Judas Priest, when you listen to Rapid Fire or Grinder or something where you’ve got the vocal moving against the rhythm of the music and yet meeting it. So, yeah, there are some very clever disciplines because we have had no structures like that in our other bands. It’s all a heavy metal/hard rock discipline that we weren’t used to. It was very challenging to be honest and again trying to put some meaning onto the music.”

I guess it’s that mix of journey of discovery and what’s been internalised.

“Yeah, you’ve been living this for 20, 25 years so you should be able to know when the key change comes in. We should all feel it and go, ‘Hey, maybe we need to go to F sharp from C’, or whatever, and then you go, ‘Is that too Maiden? It doesn’t matter’.”

It’s liberating to know that you can be obvious?

“Sometimes because if you listen to Primordial what you listen to Rune’s work with Ordo Ad Chao, it’s not obvious stuff what we’ve all been trying to do. Maybe Einherjer is close to his heavy metal straight

Is Twilight Of The Gods going to be an ongoing project?

“I don’t know. It was really enjoyable. The vibe between everybody is really good. We all read off the same page. If you were to see us all before we went onstage [TOTG were originally conceived as a live tribute band, and they last played at 70,000 Tons Of Metal in January 2011], everybody was just chilled out having a glass of wine. Everybody just clicks into a good groove together as personalities, and then you go, ‘We can write some songs’. Personally, if I’m going to be a musician then you do need music as a challenge. You do need new people around you, you need things to explore, and so only doing Primordial or something I find a bit limiting. So I’ll always do things like this. Whether there’s another one I don’t know, but I don’t see why not. It just depends how things are received. It’s a crowded and difficult marketplace. It’s very difficult to pop your head above the parapet and I’ve said to the guys, ‘Look, I think we’ve made a great record’, but it could sink without trace. It could sell 3,000 copies and the people who like it love it, but your average Gravedigger or Manowar fan goes, ‘Meh!’. I hope not, but you never know.”

There’s something in the air now and old-school metal is back. Everyone seems to feel the need to dress it up in some over-arching occult concept. I was just wondering where you stand with that as far as TOTG is concerned. Is there going to be some kind of dress code?

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be metal whatever, but I’m going to have to have a different stage persona to Primordial. But yeah, I totally know what you mean in that bands at the moment are able to sell their early 20s idealism as a concept, and because we are all batting for the same team where it’s our us who are into real metal against everything else, we stick up for people that we see like that without really questioning the value of the concept sometimes. And we let people away sometimes with cod mysticism where everybody is dressed up all of a sudden, every band with a female singer now has some 70s occult concept. Does anybody ever go, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ It’s just become part of our siege mentality because it’s us against Five Finger The Death Punch and all this kind of crap.

“I’m just very fascinated by the concept that if you look at a band like In Solitude, who are great, new young heavy metal band and can barely push over 10,000 sales after three tours, all these festivals. Lamb Of God sell half a million records. In Solitude are inspired by bands who sold 60 million records. LOG are inspired by a band that only sold three times as many albums as they did. AILD are inspired by bands that only sold 300,000-400,000. Something is not right here, in that I feel at the moment the heavy metal scene and what we’re talking about is very much like the punk scene in the late 70s/early 80s journalistically, in that people at the time were banging the drum and waving the flag for punk, but it made little dent on sales. Especially not in the US. Yes sold 6m copies of whatever album, punk didn’t really make any impact on anything, only journalistically and critically, which is somehow how I feel a little bit that sometimes what we’re doing is we’re beating the drum for a band like In Solitude, they should be selling half a million records, but they’re not. 5FDP are selling half a million records. The fact is, we’re banging the drum and kids don’t give fuck.”

You say ‘heavy metal’ to an AILD fan, and they’ll have a very different meaning for it than you will.

“Sure, but we’re in a position to place our opinion across critically, and all the bands we talk about are critically acclaimed, but don’t sell any records. Like last year Metal Blade had more albums in the top 20 of every end of year albums list than they ever had before, from Primordial to 40 Watt Sun to Portrait to In Solitude. All of those albums together didn’t sell as much as the last AILD album. So something is amiss with the kids – Iron Maiden can fill stadiums but they need to be bringing obviously In Solitude with them.”

People get what they ask for. These bands are trying to resurrect an arcane aspect of heavy metal, which by its nature is never going to be mass market.

“Do you really think so? It is catchy heavy metal. Surely they could sell half a million records. The problem is that heavy metal has become a nostalgia trip. Everything is about fucking nostalgia. Go to any festival now and nearly always the headliners in Europe will be bands aged 50, 60-plus.”

Are you going to be a touring band?

“I hope so. Again, it depends what we’re offered. It depends how it’s received. I’ve totally prepared the guys, like, ‘Look, people might not like this; the wrong person might get it to review and go, this doesn’t sound like Primordial’, and some 20-year-old with an Ensiferum t-shirt might fucking hate this. You never know. It could blow up and sell 50,000 records, it could sell five.

You said these songs are made to be played live, and songs that know how to push people’s buttons usually do quite well.

“I hope so. I could see it going down well at Bloodstock or Wacken. You just never know. Because I’m the eternal cynic and the eternal pessimist, so I prepare. The rest of the band are a bit more positive about these things.”