Everybody into folk metal should know them by now, the (in my view legendaric) band CRUACHAN from the republic of Ireland. After 3 full length albums and 1 mini album, on which they combine traditional irish folk with classic metal it was time and reason enough for me to fire some questions away to CRUACHAN?s main man and songwriter Keith Fay. In 2 months from now their new opus "folk-lore"will be released upon the masses through Hammerheart records which features an interesting guest performance by Shane mc. Gowan aswell as their hitsingle "Ride on" that entered the irish charts. Check out what the always friendly and correct Keith had to say..

How is life treathing you these days ?

Life is good I suppose, can't complain.

First of all i would like to thank you for donating another masterpiece of celtic-folk metal, your new epos Folk-lore contains in my opinion a few of the best cruachan songs ever made. You told me the material on it was almost a year old ? What happened the last year, I received my promo only a week ago.

Well it's not really a year old, I lied!! We originally finished recording in January 2001 but had to go back to the studio for another week in March to finish mixing. With FolkLore we have used many different instruments and it took a lot longer to mix than the middle kingdom. Then the mastering was done in May in Holland at EAT studios, so it was this month when everything was finally ready.......except the artwork. But we did not want the album out yet because we were releasing our single "ride-on". Eventually a delay did come from John getting the artwork done but this was finished in October. Hammerheart will do promotion for the album for 2 months before the release in January.

The first thing i noticed while listening to "folk-lore" was the huge diversity of the songs, some slower (Death of a Gael, Ride On) and some faster more old-styled cruachan songs (Ossian's Return, Exiles) where we also can hear you sing again. Did you do this on purpose or is cruachan still searching for the perfect combination ?

I don't think that I have a set style of songwriting, I just write what I feel like at the time. A lot of people said that "the middle kingdom" was very different to "tuatha na gael" but some of the songs on the middle kingdom were written at the same time as songs on tuatha na gael. The same with FolkLore, the track Exiles was written at the same time that I wrote Cuchulainn from tuatha na gael. (kass says: i already thought so)

The lay-out of the album is once again simply amazing, your brother john (also whistle and flutes in cruachan) is responsible for the painting job i asume ? Don't you think he is wasting his talents ? He only did a few covers for bands (primordial, cruachan and some others) while he can do so much more. Doesn't he want to paint more or keep his abilities exclusively for Cruachan ?

John is very lazy, he will tell you that himself. He also works full time. He does want to get involved with doing album covers but with his first experience of this, Primordials' Imrama, he never got paid which understandibly made him lose interest .

How was Shane mc. Gowan ? I mean the man is a legend (we all still remember his performance at the pinkpop festival a few years ago ofcourse.haha). How did you get in touch with him? And what was he like to work with ?

Shane is fine, at the moment the pogues (who have been split up for 10 years) are getting back together for a few shows at christmas. We got in touch with Shane through our old manager, Peader Gaffney, he was a roadie with the pogues and is a good friend of Shanes. Shane heard the middle kingdom and was totally into working with us when we asked him. It was crazy working with him, he has some weird ideas but he really does know his music. He was actually more into the production side of things and we really had to talk him into singing spancill hill, but when we heard him put the vocal track down we were all in awe in the studio, the man really is a legend in his own time.

Cruachan also recorded some old traditional irish drinking songs for the new album, such as "The Rocky road to Dublin", "Spancil Hill" or "Ride on", why did you decide to re-arrange and record those songs ?

It is something I will always do, I love all those old ballads and so many different versions of the songs exist. I think the versions we do are so unique that they will hopefully be remembered for a long time. Thin Lizzys version of whiskey in the jar is remembered by everyone, so why not our version of the rocky road to dublin? We have gotten a lot of praise in Ireland for our version of Ride On, I am really proud of it.

You are also slowly re-recording some songs of your first album, on the "ride on" single we could find a new version of "meaves march", and on the digipack versions of "Folk-lore" and "The middle kingdom" we could also find 2 songs of the first alum re-recorded. Why didn't you simply re-record the whole "Tuatha Na Gael" album? (Hammerheart re-released "Tuatha Na Gael" a few months ago, remastered with some bonus demo-songs) Can we expect some more re-recorded songs in the future ?

Probably not, I think I will leave that alone now. I began re-recordng the songs because I thought tuatha na gael would never be re-released but because that has happened I don't think I will re-record anymore.

After the first album cruachan decided to split up, but you reformed afterall. Do you regret this decision looking back on it now ? Because cruachan was definetly a well established name in the underground scene back then, and you were really on your way up in my opinion.

I don't regret the decision because we were forced to break up as we literally hit a brickwall with the band. After turning down Century media we really did not know what to do, some members left the band and the rest is history.

As mentioned earlier most of the material on "folk-lore" is over 1 year old, so i assume you are already working on new material ? What are your future plans with cruachan?

Yeah, I'm working on a lot of stuff at the moment. I only have 2 finished songs that I am happy with but I have many many parts for future use. We have just recruited a new member, well as of writing he is not 100% confirmed but should be soon enough. He will be taking over all the stuff I do on album but cannot re-create live such as banjo, bouzouki etc. All these instruments feature a lot more on the new album than ever before.
Future plans, and I feel foolish saying this again, are to play abroad. I know I said this last year and nothing happened but I feel this year will really be different, already hammerheart are planning to bring us to Holland and Belgium for a few dates, I am really looking forward to it.

I was fortuned enough to see Cruachan play live in Dublin last year, when are you finally heading over to the rest of Europe to perform ? And how important is the visual aspect of a live performance for cruachan ? When i saw you play you were wearing celtic war dresses and had some suncross banners up on stage, which gave me goose-skin for sure.

Firstly, before anyone gets the wrong impression, on our celtic war banners we have the celtic cross which is an ancient celtic symbol, to us it is worlds apart from that other, more ominous symbol. (Kass says: thanx for explaining, there are sill tons of ignorant motherfuckers out there who mistake celtic religion for racisme.)

Anyway, as I said above it looks like 2002 will at last be the year we get to tour and bring our celtic music and live show to all our fans. Apart from the Holland and Belgium gigs we are negotiating gigs in Russia for St. Patricks day, a metal festival in Portugal and others. Hopefully we will get to play at the Wacken festival this year!!!!

Now a more standard question which i ask most of the time, but i am really interested in your opinion.
What do you think of the internet ? Also cruachan has gone into cyberspace lately (http://cruachan.cjb.net) how important is it nowadays for a band to have a decent website (such as yours, justin the incredile..haha)

I really like the internet, actually my full time job is an IT specialist so I use the internet everyday. I don't know if it is important for a band to have a website because in my own situation I rarely would check out my personal favourite bands websites, but I do check them now and again for latest news etc.

How does the celtic believe influences your daily life and activities ?

Unfortunately with my job it is not as much as it used to be, when I first started cruachan I had no job.....it was great, I could do what I want but now I have a morgage etc. It is not as easy. I still hold true to my pagan beliefs but i am not really a practising pagan anymore, anyway, fellow pagans will know that it is a very personal religion and dependant on the individual more than anything.

I think i have stalked you enough for now (haha), hope to see you again soon on the road. As i missed you a few weeks ago at the metal party in Dublin, where the hell were you by the way ? Thank you for your time and loads of respect towards you and cruachan for keeping the celtic believes and music alive.

Ha ha, I was probably at work.....thanks for the time Kasper, always a pleasure talking to you.

Want more info on Cruachan?
Visit Cruachan's band information page!

Other articles for Cruachan:

Festival		Arnhem Metal Meeting 2007»	by Kimberley 14 Feb, 2008
Album review		The Morrigan's Call»	by Isaak 19 Jan, 2007
News article		New album completed»	by Marcel 01 Mar, 2006
Classick review		Thuata na gael»	by Ron 31 Oct, 2005
Interview		Irelands pride!!!»	by Marcel 21 May, 2004
Album review		Pagan»	by Marcel 27 Mar, 2004
Album review		folklore»	by Kasper 09 Feb, 2002
Album review		Ride on»	by Ron 01 Apr, 2001