Irish online metal radio station MetalHertz FM is back up and running. Go listen to it people!

Dublin’s Criminal Jammage plan on changing their name. So says their Myspace anyway. Not sure why…

Not metal but! Carlos Fucking Santana is coming to Dublin in September.

The entertainment section on RTE’s website gives a glowing review to Hellbent for Cooking – The Heavy Metal Cookbook. Only a matter of time before they review the new Rotting Christ album…. Not really!

If you missed it, here is Slayer on Harry Hill’s TV Burp.

Death metal fans take note; Dublin’s Warpath have posted two new tracks, Malevolent Reprisal and Point Blank Execution on their Myspace Page.

Ireland’s very own folk metal heavyweights Cruachan have uploaded a rough cut of an as yet unnamed new track to their Myspace page.

Some clips from the new Mael Mordha album Manannán.

Via Nialler9; Cloudeater are at number two in Road Records list of Irish artists they are really into right now.

Here’s the video for AC/DC’s rerelease of Highway to Hell as part of the soundtrack to the Iron Man 2 movie.

Via Blabbermouth. Its now every day you see Jim Carey and Slash jamming down your local pub.

Glyder rocking The Village, Dublin last night - during the second half of their show...

After completely forgetting about Gama Bomb’s gig in Dublin on Friday night (still kicking myself) I made sure I got to The Village for Glyder’s album launch show last night. For a band that’s got such a lot right recently I won’t kick them too much over a few things they got wrong in staging last night’s gig.

I’ll keep it to one sentence and simply say that the venue was too big, start too early and playing the entire new album, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow from start to finish without even a support act to warm the crowd up, just didn’t work. Thankfully the second half of the show was excellent with the band playing tracks from their first two albums to a very enthusiastic audience before being very loudly beckoned back for a number of encores.

This band are made for the big stage (and big audiences) and its only a matter of time before that comes. At just two listens so far the jury is still out on how the new album stacks up to the other two, but if you are a hard rock fan and don’t have at least one of them then you are missing out. Check out what the band’s guitarist Bat Kinane had to say in an interview in The Ticket on the new album, recognition in Ireland and how the band is faring abroad.

Airbourne on Wednesday night – grounded for the rest of the week. Photo: © Damien James O'Farrell

After dazzling a sold-out Academy in Dublin on Wednesday night with the kind of aerial acrobatics that would make a kangaroo sick, Airbourne were kept well and truly on the ground in Dublin for the rest of the week. The volcanic ash clouds that closed airports and airspace across Europe meant that the aussies had to reschedule the remaining two dates of their European tour, which had been due to finish tonight in Barcelona.

No ropes....Honest!! Photo: © Damien James O'Farrell

Stranded in Dublin (and reportedly still here) the four lads were spotted getting tattoos and walking around the Temple Bar area. I heard this from several people (ok so some of them were intoxicated at the time).

To see more excellent photos from the Academy show please visit Damien James O’Farrell’s photostream on Flickr here and here.

For the record; I refer of course to today’s confirmation that Type O Negative frontman Pete Steele passed away yesterday aged 48. While the man may now be gone, his fantastic music will live forever. R.I.P

So here goes;

Jonny interviews Airbourne before their show in Belfast tomorrow night. Check it out here

Objection says goodbye - Dead Man’s Headphones says hello.

In case you missed it, there will be no Slane this year and that means no AC/DC at Slane (there were rumours again this year).

Reports of Iron Maiden’s newly announced Dublin show appeared in all sorts of (mainstream) places. The Irish Times was however the one that stood out for me.

Mael Mordha’s new album Manannán gets a global release on May 14th next

Blabbermouth reported on Phil Lynott’s inclusion in RTE’s (rather abysmal) Ireland’s “Greatest” list.

And finally, not since Jani Lane was interviewed in a Dublin GAA jersey has something this important happened. Yes folks, the official ‘Republic of Ireland Football Jersey’ makes a small cameo in Megadeth’s new video - The Right To Go Insane. Go 2:05 mins in to see it.

Will Dublin Airport’s New Terminal 2 be ready for Ed Force One??

The unique (so far) attraction of seeing Maiden in the more intimate indoor surroundings of The O2 would suggest that Irish fans may have to compete with fans of the band from around Europe for tickets. It is already expected that Maiden will also run a Bruce Air Flight for Fan Club members. Add to that the fact that “special guests” on the night will be the also enormous Heaven & Hell, the Ronnie James Dio era Black Sabbath line-up. Thus, I predict paying on the door will not be an option for this one….

Tickets priced at between €59.80 and €65.70 (hefty enough) go on sale exclusively to Iron Maiden Fan Club members on Tuesday 13th April at 9am, O2 mobile phone customers on Wednesday 14th and to everyone else (if any are left) via the usual suspects on Friday 16th of April.

“I met Mustaine in 2001….very nice guy, spent quite a bit of time with him actually.” For Ruin’s John Murphy hints at Megadeth’s reason for playing Cork this year. Photo © www.forruin.com

Having taken some time (ok, ages) to digest For Ruin’s rather excellent Last Light album, I thought that the band’s recent announcement of a UK tour with Belphegor, along with a slot supporting the mighty Bolt Thrower in Dublin, made it an opportune time for a chat with front man John Murphy. That and I wanted to try and rise him about Cork football…

You’ve just announced that For Ruin will be doing a short tour of the UK with Belphegor soon. Congratulations. What do you expect from that?

John: “Yes we’re happy with that announcement, its a while in the works. Fingers crossed that it’ll all go well now and that the shows we be well attended. We’d expect to find a few people familiar with our stuff but for the most part we’ll be playing to people that have never heard us before - we’ve only played the mainland UK once before this, so its fresh meat all round! There’s a few bands on the bills of these shows, we’re not concerned by where on the bill we play, its just a matter of getting there and doing it. I’ve always felt that a band should be able to play anywhere on a bill, and if they can only cut it as headliners then that says a lot…I love Camden, I used to live not far from it 12 or 13 years ago for a while, and I know the Underworld well from playing there in May 08 with Skyforger and from seeing many gigs there myself over the years. Dont know much about the other 3 venues, looking forward to finding out about the scenes in those areas!”

What else can we expect from For Ruin in 2010?

John: “We have been asked to open for Bolt Thrower in Dublin in May - thats a really nice one. In fact they said that we were the best band that applied to open a show for them out of the 100+ bands that applied so that’s great to hear. Karl said “For Ruin - Hailing from Cork, Eire…a veritable hotbed of good bands! (quite a large amount of bands from Eire of an extremely high standard applied, making this choice especially hard). We also liked Nephridium and A Distant Sun…however For Ruin had that edge. Some real solid melodic death metal, with interesting harmonies, whom have played with Rotting Christ previously, so the night will be like a friends reunited occasion.”

“Outside of that, its mostly a question of gigging outside of Ireland. We’re looking at some European possibilities for later in the year, once the festival season abates, then we’ll focus on that. Its expensive and time and money are needed to head off so we need to consider that as well. We may pull together a “bonus” limited CD with some previously unheard demos that we’d include free with the collectors edition of Last Light too. We have a few ideas outside of that too….”

Two albums and 3.5 EPs to date and a big promo effort. Can you see a following developing?

John: “Thankfully, yes and it does take a lot of effort and pushing and an awareness of the modern promo mechanisms. Our sales and enquiries are coming from all corners of the globe I’m pleased to say, and our web traffic reflects this. We’ve done media promo (reviews, interviews etc) far and wide this time, its been our biggest push to date - and that’s because its coming from us, not a label or anything that has many things to juggle - we give the band our full attention when it comes to promo and the effort is spread in many directions or diluted as a result.”

How has Last Light gone down?

John: “Really well with both press and fans - a look through the reviews on the site (no censorship!) shows that the press have liked it, and some of the bigger metal press outlets (like or loathe them, they are necessary) have also liked it and given us column inches. We’ve only done a few shows since the release last October and they were well attended - but we’re still a relatively unknown band internationally and we have a lot to do. Being fairly well known in a small underground scene in the North-West of Europe is fine, but our view is fixed more so on the horizon and further afield, than on the local scene for obvious reasons. Anyone who has heard Last Light really has liked it with few exceptions and thankfully there’s no talk of production issues now - people can hear the songs they way they should sound - and they’re liking them.”

The Production of the new album is far better than the last. What did you do differently? What else do you feel is different about it?

John: “We brought in an outside set of ears and skills. We still recorded at home (my home!) and had a studio setup there in January 2009 for two weeks with Alwyn from Komodo living with us during that time for tracking. A very professional and meticulous guy - we co-produced the album between us and he took the tracks home and mixed it in the studio himself with our input on various draft mixes. Mixing remotely was excellent. No endless hours of listening to drum fills being looped… the technical side of me is interested in that, but the artist in me is far more concerned about the finished product, not the journey taken to get there. So we heard 6 or 8 draft mixes of the album, listened to it ourselves, made notes like snag lists in a new house, and sent them back for repair! It worked really well - studio spekers and acoustics are often false images of the sound of an album - we listened to it on our home stereos, in the car, on the computer, ipods etc. It gave a more realistic idea of how it sounded on the type of equipment that people use to listen to music these days.”

How much has poor production held December back? Would you ever consider re-doing it? It’s a great album otherwise.

John: “December has mostly strong songs on it - we still play a lot of them live today. We have had Towards an End remixed (it appreas on the Enlightened EP) and it’s a powerful sound. My time was strongly divided when we were mixing the album and it suffered as a result. We may remix it someday (there’s a rights ownership issue of course), and we may re-record it sometime, but not anytime soon. The band then was in an early stage of development with a non-final lineup too so I’d love to hear the current lineup play those songs in the studio again…but we’re looking forward, not back.”

You’ve done everything without a label this time and seem to be doing ok? Would you encourage other bands to go down the same road? What are the drawbacks?

John: “Yes it’s going quite well - but largely down to a major promo campaign I think, and stubbornness! Distro could be better and promo costs are high - postage in Ireland is sinfully high and prohibitive. The rewards are ours and ours alone which is nice, and so is the workload so if a band is casual about it they shouldn’t bother. We had the album freely available until recently as a promo tool which worked very well. That’s run its course now and we may well use it again in the future, but its more useful for a fairly unknown band to draw people in, to check out a band’s sound without shelling out. Of course music is available on the net for free anyway - but its up to people to decide if they like the band enough to support them or not - and in many cases they do.”

Have you had any label interest since Last Light came out?

John: “Yes we have - but we’re not looking for a “record deal” at the moment. A license deal with good distro is more interesting for us right now - the industry is in such a state of flux, in a grey area, that it doesnt know what’s happening, where it will all level out. We’d rather the band be free agents right now and masters of our own destiny than being small fish in a big pond of bands competing for attention.”

The music itself it’s probably fair to say has been the real eye catcher or ear catcher should I say, but I’ve noticed with the new album that lyrically the band is quite strong too. What comes first? Are there things you want to write songs about or does the music always lead?

John: “Music comes first, always I think, but I have lyric ideas that I note down, a thought, idea or theme that springs to mind - these get fleshed out later if they’re worth it. All of our songs start out as instrumentals and as we go along I start to think about the song in terms of structure and sections and what parts might work with vocals over them. The inspiration for lyrics is the same as it always has been for me, surroundings, life experiences, maturing, current issues etc… I always say that we don’t write about horror, gore or Satanist shit because real life is far more terrifying. ‘In Suffering’ is a good example of this that many have picked up on, but ‘Solace’ is a good example of a song with simple lyrics about my adapting to the new role of being a father and finding the transition a little tough initially. Other songs are more abstract or dealing with death and fear and those sorts of things, which can be personal in nature too, or more general commentary.”

You seem to love instrumentals? Again there are a number on the new album. What’s the story with that? Songs you can’t find lyrics for or do they say something else without words?

John: “That follows on from the previous question I suppose - everything starts out instrumentally, and if there’s no ideas or obvious “vocal parts” then the song remains an instrumental. But not all pieces are strong enough to stand alone as instrumentals - everyone familiar with our sound knows we hold the idea of hooks and melody very highly and an instrumental without these is probably not worth its salt. ‘Enlightened’ was an old-ish piece I wrote post December in the rehearsal room one night, it’s simple and to the point and we always knew it would open the album. I like the idea of instrumental openers for some reason, always did. Crawl on the other hand started out with some lyrics for a day or two, but we ditched them - the song is probably the most aggressive tune we have and it was burdened by the lyrics so I ditched them. It’s got a great Sepultura-Arise-esque mid section. The early demos had instrumentals on them and I’m sure we’ll continue the trend next time.”

"The band is very much that - a band..... I'm quite sure that it could happily exist without me!" John Murphy. Photo © www.forruin.com

Who writes the songs and comes up with the ideas? What about the band? You’ve had a few changes over the years, is the current line-up likely to last? Is For Ruin still just John Murphy? Could it exist without you?

John: “Lots of questions! I still write the bulk of the material, but on Last Light both Pete and Drew contributed to 3 of the songs between them, but also with arrangement ideas and that sort of thing so it’s really a band effort to form the final song. The initial idea comes from one person and then everyone gets a say in it. Even today we have some new song ideas between us and the guys have some material that they are bringing too so everyone knows that I have wanted that sort of collaboration since the first lineup took shape - I don’t want to be the sole driver - that’s just the way it was at the start but those days are long behind us. Pete Lawlor and Drew are in the band a good while now and we are good friends - it’s a great lineup. We knew that Steve’s itchy feet and teaching career would take him away from Ireland so we had the perennial drummer issue - but Pete Alcorn is the best drummer we’ve had - and I say that in the knowledge that we’ve had two of the country’s best drummers on the stool before him. He’s still getting comfortable with the songs but he’s a savage drummer and a great guy. Our rehearsal schedule means that his living up North doesn’t pose that much of a problem, its fine. The band is very much that - a band - and while it would sound different without me (guitar and vocals) I’m quite sure that it could happily exist without me!”

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt in the last few years?

John: “Christ there’s so many. Musically - do your own thing, go it alone and be prepared for hard work and don’t hide from it. Personally - family life is amazing and a never ending source of curiosity and ups and downs. I think I’m still figuring that one out and will be for some time! I lost a very close friend to drowning last year (Last Light is dedicated to him) and that really drove home the fragility of life to me.”

Longevity or at least sustaining impact over a long period in the Irish scene can be difficult. How do you plan to keep the intensity up?

John “I think we’re doing ok on that one for now, but as I say the Irish scene is not our focus. It has been a nursery ground for the band, and I love playing here - knowing so many people in the scene by now and having made so many close friends through it - I owe the scene here a lot and I’m very much aware of that. We haven’t had the successes yet that we’re striving towards and we will continue to work towards that. The intensity is the key - it comes from continued hard promotion, networking and touring. Those things require time, money and hard work. So if we have all of those we will keep at it, however long it takes, but it’s important to enjoy the ride and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

I remember once explaining to you the virtues of Myspace (self plug) – you’ve come along way really using online channels to push the new album? What are your views on this? Will people pay for music online if it’s being given away so easily?

John: “We grabbed the thorn of online promotion with both hands really - it fell naturally from the self release I suppose. You need to use all the available channels that are freely available and these days anyway it seems like most people spend a lot of time on line and I’d guess that paper media is declining somewhat over its heyday. We have a strong online presence and some of the bigger relevant websites seem to like us too so that helps. Any exposure we can get it useful. The free download helped a lot as I mentioned, but that has a shelf-life too as the torrents and blog-spots are widely known and used by everyone now. Music is free - merchandising and gigging is where the cash to support the band’s existence is. We don’t make a living from what is really an expensive, time consuming hobby - it will remain such for the foreseeable future, and we’re dead happy with that. People have supported us financially since the release of the album - all we want to be able to do now is tour, promote the album and have enough cash to record and promote the next album ourselves.”

You seem quite a progressive thinker (I guess that maybe comes with being a career academic). The majority of metal fans in Ireland unfortunately have no awareness, interest in or will ever give a chance to Irish bands. Why do you think that is and will it ever change?

John “My status as career academic ended in 2005 really haha… I work for a private company these days (though still in the field I studied to keep the brain active while paying the bills!). There’s always the idea and feeling (maybe it’s not limited to Ireland) that such-and-such local band will never come to anything because we went to school with them, or drink with them or just know them or something like that. It’s that “beat you down” attitude and I think there are always those closed-minded people out there. Maybe I’m just stubborn (there’s no maybe about it…!) and I’ve just kept pushing ahead. I guess you need a streak of that for this game. You can’t spend your time wondering what people think… if there’s enough people that like what you do and help you sustain it then it doesn’t matter what the bitter guy in the corner thinks.”

How are you managing to juggle the band with your personal life, being a father etc?

John “It can be tough, no doubt about it. I’m the only one in the band with a wife and son and music is like another child for me I guess (I also whore myself in a non-metal pub-band to bring in a few quid on the side) so any free time that I do have is taken up with music really (and the odd bit of sea fishing). Family comes first though. My son is the best reason to get up in the mornings, he’s 2 and a half and the centre of our family. My wife has mixed feelings about the music but she knows how important it is to me and she’s very understanding and patient. Not every wife would let a band record metal in their house for the best part of two weeks! But we make it work and it balances out in the swings and roundabouts.”

With Cork’s small scene many musicians end up in more than one band at the same time? Is there anything else taking up your time lately?

John: “Just my pub band really, booking shows in bars when we can and hounding owners to book us. That keeps us busy maybe not every weekend but a lot of weekends, it pays a few bills and I enjoy it, but lately with cash so tight it’s more of an earner than a for-fun thing, but we still enjoy it. I don’t play in other metal bands (no time), and neither do any of the guys. Not that we wouldn’t want to or anything, it’s just that we work and have other interests too and there’s only so much time in the week for music and this band takes up a lot of our focus.”

How healthy is the scene in Cork now? It looks like Winterfest has maybe run its course? It seems like the scene there has had a mix of highs and lows in recent years?

John: “I’m not really one to ask about the scene in Cork - I live in the countryside and am with my family if I’m not playing somewhere and I don’t have a lot of free time for going to shows like I used to, at the moment… I miss that and will get back to it sometime I guess when my son is older. My experience of the local scene though is that there has been too many bands playing every week and saturating the few venues that we have here. We don’t play Cork very often for a reason, the same reason that many bands don’t play their home town too often - saturation. There was some well documented trouble in one of the venues here last year that we had no involvement with and that has hurt things. I didn’t make it to Winterfest this year for family reasons, but I didn’t think much of the lineup personally this year - I don’t subscribe to that idea of going to every show that passes through town to “support the scene”. I don’t expect people who don’t like For Ruin to come to our shows - the same way I don’t go to see bands whose music I’m not into. Especially these days - if I had the cash and time to go to check out new bands these days I would - I love seeing new bands - but these days things are very tough financially and people are entitled to choose what they spend their few bob on, because in many cases it really is a very few bob.”

How much would you like For Ruin to support Megadeth in Cork in June?

John: “A lot. We’re the wrong style though I think. I met Mustaine in 2001 on a few consecutive nights on the East coast of the US. Very nice guy, spent quite a bit of time with him actually. I should drop him a line to jog his memory ha ha….I used to be a big fan, but their recent few albums were weak to my ears.”

Who else in the Irish scene do you listen to right now? Who would you point to as having the most potential?

John: “Not through any prejudice or anything but I don’t really listen to the styles of metal that are more prevalent in Irish metal bands than our style. I listen to the odd bit of the more recent Primordial stuff (which I like a lot) but no one else’s stuff has really grabbed me. I’m not really into the doomy/metal-core or hardcore stuff, and I can’t get my head around the folk style to be honest. I love I’ll Eat Your Face from playing with the lads; their new (freely available!) album is well worth hearing. The “post” metal stuff has pretty much passed me by too, it’s not my thing, though I can really appreciate the artistic quality of that style.”

What do you all do when you are not playing music?

John: “Drew produces his genitals and plays x-box more than is good for him and works full time…. Pete Lawlor works full time in the sign business and occasionally turns into an elder statesman of some ilk, and Pete Alcorn finished college not so long ago so he’s job hunting and drumming (bless him)…As for me, well as I say above, music takes up a good bit of my free time but mostly I spend as much time as I can when I’m not working with my family in the countryside - yesterday I collected firewood on my in-law’s farm and my son drove a combine harvester so that’s a snapshot for you. My job is with a small high-tech detector company in Cork and while they don’t pay enough it’s a good crowd to work for.”

Guinness or Murphy’s?

John: “Do I really need to answer that?! There’s only one stout in Cork for me and it’s got my name all over it.”

What are you listening to at the moment?

John: “The new Alice in Chains, new Rammstein, new Nile, the latest Unanimated, Storm of the Light’s Bane, Angel Dust, Sting and some Dire Straits and Gallagher have all been on in my car or Zen in the last few days. Lots of variety for me.”

Anything good on the telly these days you want to tell the world about?

John: “What is with all those cosmetic surgery and body-problem shows on lately? My wife and I watched the TV3 thing there with Dr Ray on it (Doctor Nick Riviera more like it). What a mess of car crash TV. Sad as it may seem to some I watch a lot of food/cookery shows and some outdoor/farming/garden. We’ve been watching that Flash Forward thing but it’s starting to wear a bit thin for me anyway, started out well enough though. There was a priceless show on recently about “big fat gypsy weddings”. Comical.”

"I always say that we don’t write about horror, gore or Satanist shit because real life is far more terrifying." John Murphy on the realities of life in Cork. Photo © www.forruin.com

How do you rate Cork’s chances in the Hurling and Football this year?

John: “The hurling is my interest really - will be interesting to see how Walsh handles a full year from the start now. I was at the football final last year against your fellas (Kerry) and I thought Cork played very well and I’d say they have a good chance this year against some aging teams that are knocking about The hurlers could use a bit of freshening up, I know that the half forward line is being looked at (no harm), and hopefully Cork hurling will get back on track after all the shite over the last few years.”

What’s made you laugh recently?

John: “Willy O’Dea’s audio interview that was released to the media. My mistakenly calling the Colin Farrell film “Phone Box” which just sounded too Irish…and my son makes me laugh every day, parroting things i say, mostly stuff he shouldn’t repeat, but that’s kids for you. Drew and Pete make me laugh constantly… they’re like the odd couple or something.”

For Ruin play The Button Factory with Bolt Thrower and Rotting Christ on May 2nd next. More info here.