By Andrew Bansal
German power metal stalwarts Primal Fear are currently on a North American headline tour, their first in the continent after a long four-year gap, and they are out promoting their stellar latest album ‘Delivering The Black’, along with an assortment of material from their impressive catalog. They put on an absolutely fantastic show at the Grove Of Anaheim last Thursday May 15th, fully pleasing the gathering of their devoted cult fan base and getting an appropriately great response in return. A few hours before the gig, I sat down with singer Ralf Scheepers for a one-on-one chat about the current tour, the latest album, playing in North America, his solo career, future plans and more. Enjoy the conversation and get a taste of Primal Fear’s new music below.
It’s good to you see you again, Ralf. It’s been such a long time! How are you doing today?
Absolutely likewise! How about you? It’s quite hot today with 104 F, isn’t it?
I’m doing well, thank you! And yes, it is really hot today.
Yeah, well we’ve done 52 shows and about to do our 53rd show of this year, so we’re warmed up already (laughs).
And as far as this North American tour is concerned, how are things going for you guys?
Really well! We can’t complain. We always have to compare what’s going on in the market. So many things are going on, so many bands are around, and we can really just be happy that so many people are showing up for our shows.
Exactly, there’s a lot of competition and it’s just good for you to be out touring.
Absolutely, and people have to save their money together. They have to buy CDs and see many, many concerts. I say ‘have to’ because we want them to (laughs), and in the end we’re really happy that it works out pretty well for us.
It has been a while for you though, and I think the last time was in 2010, was it? You’ve put out a couple of new albums since then, so it’s almost a completely new show for the audiences here, so that’s the good part about such a long gap.
The last time was indeed in 2010, and yes exactly, we have a long set list. It’s hard to choose songs for the set list as we can’t please everybody but we think we have a good mixture together from every album and that’s the most important thing. So far the reaction from fans has been great and we know it’s going to continue like that.
You released ‘Unbreakable’ in early 2012 and that was pretty successful. It was the highest charting album you had in Europe. I don’t know whether you define that as successful or not, but at least on paper it is. So, there was a lot to follow up to, and you did that with the new album ‘Delivering The Black’.
This is the highest charting album now, and in Europe we went number 13 and that was just amazing for us. And yeah, you can really consider this as a success because it shows how many people go out in the stores and get it. We’re absolutely satisfied with this album. To be honest, it is the very first time that I think I’m really happy about the sound and everything. So it’s an amazing album, the songs are blasting and it’s great.
You outdid yourself as a band in a few ways too. There’s a couple of really long songs. What was that whole process like?
Yeah, we thought about doing a long epic track and we did that with ‘One Night In December’, which is nearly 10 minutes long. Matt and Magnus really compose a lot of stuff together also for other bands and they know each other as a writing team, but we’re four members writing in Primal Fear, with Alex, Matt, Magnus and me, and that’s what we did again for ‘Delivering The Black’. It’s easy nowadays as everybody can swap files around and you don’t really have to go together into a rehearsing studio anymore, which sometimes is not a good thing, but it helped us a lot that we could do it via file swapping, because Magnus lives in Sweden so it’s long distances and we pretty much work together on the internet. But we also worked in the studio when Randy came down to record the drums. It was a mixture of the old-school working process with the modern version of working together.
But before actually hitting ‘record’, I guess you must have rehearsed the material to some extent. Otherwise you don’t get a feel of how it sounds as a band, right?
Well, I received files in the demo phase and I rehearsed for myself, so the songs they wanted me to put my lyrics and melodies on, I really went through them and rehearsed them in my studio for a few takes before going for it.
There are also some other elements in this new album like acoustic guitar and orchestral layers. That’s always great on an album because you can do whatever you want, but in the live setting do you replicate that with extra instrumentation?
Yeah, to be honest we do that with samples because we don’t want to have an extra keyboardist just for that. We use samples for orchestra stuff, and for violins, keyboards and piano sounds.
So even on this tour we’re still getting the actual full sound of the new songs.
Absolutely. Those songs we play live from ‘Delivering The Black’ are, keyboard-wise, from the sampler.
A couple of years back you also did a solo album, and you write in this band as well. So how do you keep it separate and when you come up with new material, how do you decide which one goes for which band?
So far I don’t have any new material for any new solo album. It was just a try, the record company gave me the chance to do that and Matt was the motivator behind it to somehow keep it rolling and make sure it happens. I collected many ideas over the years and used them on the first solo album, but right now as I said I don’t have any music for a solo album and my focus is totally on Primal Fear playing live this year. It’s going to be a totally huge tour for us and that’s my focus right now.
And you’re playing the Grove Of Anaheim tonight, which I don’t think you’ve ever played before. I’m happy that you’re getting a big stage in a great sounding room. That also is something you must be looking forward to.
You’re right, we’ve never played here before and yes, absolutely. We’ve done everything from the smallest club to Wacken, for instance, but it’s always great to have the medium sized venues like today.
In the US you obviously have what I would describe as a cult following, but seeing all these people at shows has to be satisfactory for you because even though it’s a small audience it’s still a devoted fan base which turns up every time you come here, and you don’t do that here too often either.
That’s true, and that’s why we come here. We want to please those fans that show up, they have a good time and we have a good time with them. I think the thing that’s going on live is this giving and taking for everybody, for the audience and for us.
So it’s like a house party for everyone.
Absolutely, and we’ve really had fun so far.
Awesome. And what plans does Primal Fear have after this tour?
We head home for five days and then fly to Japan! We do three shows there, then we have the summer festivals coming up and then we have a South American tour which is in negotiations still. We’re going to the United Kingdom for 11 shows in the fall, and several talks are going on right now for Australia. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with it but it’ll be the first time in our career if it does and we’ll see what happens. And then of course, the fall will come and we’ll somehow be collecting ideas again.
Right. Japan must be fantastic. All the bands get to go there, specially bands of your kind of musical style. There’s a big fan-following for it.
It is! For me it will be the 13th time in my career in Japan already. It began in 1990 with Gamma Ray, but it’s always great to go back to Japan. The people are really enthusiastic in their own style, and the fans we have are amazing.
Related: Review + Photos – Primal Fear & Ninth Circle Perform At Grove Of Anaheim
Primal Fear links:
PrimalFear.de
facebook.com/PrimalFearOfficial
Remaining US tour dates:
5/21 Atlanta, GA – Masquerade
5/22 Louisville, KY – Diamonds
5/23 Pittsburgh, PA – Altar Bar
5/24 Rochester, NY – Montage Music Hall