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Last Updated on 05:44 PM by Giorgos Tsekas
Cruachan are one of the best Irish bands out here and not only the -undeterred and- courageously pugnacious pioneers of the genre Celtic Folk Black Metal. We talked to the founding member, guitarist and screamer Keith Fay about their new album that closes the fabulous ‘Trilogy of the blood’, which began with the 2011 full-length „Blood On The Black Robe”. „Nine Years Of Blood” is a thrilling concept album that sings about the great, historic war between Ireland and England that lasted from 1593 to 1603. Let’s see what Keith told us about it!!!
The album is the third and final of the ‘Trilogy Of Blood’, that also birthed 2011’s ‘Blood On The Black Robe’, and 2014’s ‘Blood for the Blood God.’ What should we expect in ‘Nine Years of Blood’?
Expect to hear something a little different to previous albums. We always experiment and try new things and this is certainly the case on the new one. There is still extreme metal, lots of it and of course lots of folk music but we tried bringing in a lot of different styles of metal. There is everything from power metal to death metal. We have also brought in a lot more classical music elements, John Ryan plays a lot of cello and bowed bass along with his trademark violin. Even in the vocal department there is a lot fo experimentation, I made my own choir sections by recording my voice many times in many different octaves and in different harmonies.
Lyrically this is a concept album so again, very different to previous albums.
How difficult is to write a concept album?
I guess it’s not exactly difficult if you understand and are familiar with the subject that the album is based on. I will say one thing, I found it frustrating haha because I was constantly coming up with other ideas that I wanted to write about but, obviously, wouldn’t fit with the theme of the album. Having said that there are two songs not fully related to the Nine Years War – “Queen of War” is a simple song written about the Morrigan. As far as I am concerned she is there at every historic Irish battle so why not at the nine years war as well. We also do a version of a famous Irish song “Back Home in Derry”, which has no connection to the album concept …. But fuck it sure.
Tell us more about the writing procedure and some details about the recordings.
We have no real set way to compose music. For many years all the song writing was carried out by me and me alone so it’s been great to have some help these last few years. Usually I come up with some melodies, record them, send the recordings to the guys then we hit the rehearsal room and see how we can expand on them. Maybe some other members have some riffs and we find they work with a certain part etc.
We’ve finally nailed the recording process as it’s been something that has plagued us for years. We get in, lay a guitar guide track, Mauro does drums. Bass goes down next, guitars then all the crazy shit at the end followed by vocals.
The Nine Years’ War or Tyrone’s Rebellion took place in Ireland from 1593 to 1603. How close to the real story are your lyrics? I mean have you kept the story as it is in school history books or have you searched in bibliography for more details?
We kept it pretty close to the actual history of the war. There were many battles and minor skirmishes that we didn’t include as I simply didn’t have enough songs to cover everything interesting battle but I got the main ones covered. A lot of people don’t realize how close Ireland came to defeating England. If that had happened, the world we know today would be completely different, everyone would be Irish and drunk hahaha.
Is history a safe place to look for answers for our present and future? Has mankind actually ever learned from its mistakes?
Wow that’s a pretty deep question for a Monday afternoon. Well the famous saying is “we should learn from our mistakes” and human history is full with mistake after mistake so it is safe to say we really should learn from them but the reality is very different. Mankind is a warring, territorial animal, we have always fought with each other and I think we always will fight with each other.
As I know you are an atheist, as any reasonable paganist and lover of nature would be, so how do you feel about the Islamophobia or the anti-Semitism that still is strong in Europe and the States?
I don’t like it but as I said in the last question, mankind is a territorial animal. We should all try get along with each other. …. Or kill each other, fuck it.
As this year marks the 25th anniversary of the band please tell us more about the early days of Cruachan.
Yes, it’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for 25 years. I was a kid when I started Cruachan, as in I was literally a kid. I wrote Tuatha Na Gael aged 15. I can still remember coming up with the idea of adding Irish folk music to the metal music I was listening to. To show how innocent and stupid I was, I thought only Ireland still played folk music. In my defense, I was slightly right. Europe was enjoying a folk music revival at that time, whereas Ireland never needed one because folk music had never died out. Anyway, I was playing in a death metal before Cruachan called Crypt, I was the vocalist. The rest of the guys were all older than me (I was 13) but they couldn’t believe the Black Metal style vocals I did. I started learning bass guitar while in Crypt and slowly came up with my plans to start my own band, combining the folk music and metal that I loved so much.
Your first ever effort is “Celtica” demo back in 1994, do you plan to celebrate the 25 years anniversary with a re-release?
No, no plans to do anything with that, maybe in the future. I am planning to release our first album Tuatha Na Gael on vinyl in a very limited quantity.
Is it true that CRUACHAN enjoy far more success abroad than in Ireland? How do you feel about it and how do you explain it?
Yes very true. The Irish media don’t really acknowledge heavy metal. Things have gotten a lot better though in recent years. We have a section in the Irish Rock N Roll museum, that is a great honour for us but our general success and popularity goes relatively unnoticed in Ireland.
So what’s next for the band? More shows? Summer’s coming up so there are obviously festivals. Have you any planned?
Well, the big show we are excited about is our 25th anniversary show here in Dublin with Skyclad and Waylander as special guests. We have a lot of suprises lined up for that show, it really is not to be missed. All three bands could be considered as the founding father of folk metal, so to see us together is a real one off experience. Our new album also comes out in April this year. We have some festivals lined up as well – Brutal Assault and Kaltenbach are two we are looing forward to, we also have a tour of South America in the summer.
How was your visit in Athens in September of 2016? Shall we expect you again here?
We loved it, it was great to finally be in Greece, and we have wanted to play there for so long. We have always had huge support in Greece so it pained us that we had never played any shows there. We would love to go back, I personally had no time to explore or see any sites. Also, the whole time we were there was really stressful as there was a strike at the airports and we didn’t know how we were going to get home as there was reports that we could be stuck there for a week. In the end it all worked out ok.
The closing is yours.
Thanks to everyone reading this for your support after all these years. Here’s to another 25 !!!
