Neifenbach Interview

One of the necessities of dwelling on an island as small as ours is that on a musical level, boundaries between underground subgenres are in many cases less strictly observed or enforced as they are with larger territories.

The ever decreasing  number of outlets for extreme music such as metal and hardcore in Ireland has often led to bands of both side of that dividing line crossing paths, and sharing common ground musically.

Now, while there will always be puritans who will detest this kind of sonic and aesthetic crossbreeding, for the rest of us who appreciate well written song and crushing riff regardless of what particular pigenhole it originates from - this is an exciting time.

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It’s been fascinating over the last 2 or 3 years to chart the development of something of a “scene within a scene”  of bands who come from a hardcore punk background but are essentially playing some of the heaviest metal-based music currently coming from these shores.

One of the most noticeable acts to spring from this mire over the last year is Galway’s Neifenbach, who may have come to the recent attention of MI readers on the back of the freshly released (and thoroughly shitkicking) “Reason Will Falter” cd and a series of Irish dates with german prog metallers The Ocean - a tour that true to their DIY roots, the band actually booked themselves.

“The Ocean were supposed to come over last October.I had noticed that was very poor organization going on so I had mailed the band personally and when the tour was called off I told them to just mail me if they wanted to come over again. They basically booked this tour themselves with a little help from me,” begins guitarist/vocalist Daniel on the pairing.

“We are not really established enough to do our own headline tour around Ireland I think, so this is a great opportunity for us to play to some people that would otherwise probably never ever see us.”  

Vocalist Liadain continues “It was really great for us to play that many gigs in a short space of time. We played the Siege of Limerick a few days beforehand so it worked out at 5 gigs in a week. I think the tone of the week was captured nicely the morning after the last gig when we were walking down the street in Belfast, sun shining, birds singing, all right with the world.. and then the lads started swapping porn site recommendations and Nicola promptly threw up.”

Indeed, while it’s their tireless “get in the van” approaching to playing live (the band played 23 gigs in their first year together) that has brought them to the attention of many, the aforementioned “Reason Will Falter” showcases that the band are just as confident in the studio.

This is a band who clearly put a lot of time into their songwriting - possibly by default more than any grand design: “We all have our different ideas of what we want to do and the songwriting process can be quite protracted because of that. We argue a lot in the practice room but it’s all in the interests of playing songs that we are all happy with”.

Dan adds “We are still experimenting a lot with different styles and we need to all agree on a more focused direction I think. I guess I have one vision for the band but everyone will have some different notions.”

As with much music in this field, Neifenbach project a degree of aggression through their sound, but on further inspection there’s somewhat of a melancholic undertow to their output - due in no small part to Liadain’s  lyrics, which often refer to traumatic familial situations.

The question has to be asked, does she use the band as a form of catharsis? “I don’t deliberately use music as catharsis but it seems to work that way anyhow - writing things down and/or talking about them has always been my way of dealing with the world.

It’s probably that passage of time that lends the melancholy tone in a lot of cases I think the various dimensions and phases of emotion that you go through after an event are a more interesting subject than the inital response in any case.”

Further still, the artwork ties in with the lyrics too it seems - and after much debate as to what exactly that is on the cover, MI can reveal it is in fact a fruitbat: “Nicola was the driving force behind the artwork (and she’s stuck without internet at the moment or she’d tell you the rest herself) - she really loves them because they remind her of growing up in Sligo when they had bats living in the back yard, and finds them to be beautiful animals in themselves and also intriguing symbolically, with the darkness that surrounds them.

So conceptually that works on a couple of different levels, with the bat symbolising both family/home and darkness simultaneously, and this ties back into the some of the recurring lyrical themes of the record.”

With local bands such as Trenches, Them Martyrs, Only Fumes and Corpses, Bacchus, Rites, Murdoch and Legion (to name but a few) all not only thriving but also breaking down walls between subgenres in heavy music, Galway is surely becoming an epicentre for some of the best extreme music currently being made in this country.

Neifenbach are proud of their hometown’s scene, with at least two members of the band sporting “Galway Hardcore” tattoos, does their location influence their sound?

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Dublin, Cork and Belfast over the years and Galway has definitely been the most fun of the lot. To a large degree it’s a city of blow-ins (note:O’Driscoll herself is originally from Cork) and that does have an indirect impact on our sound because we all grew up in different places and are all bringing different musical histories to the table.

In terms of how we operate..we do spend a lot less money on renting practice spaces than we would if we were in Dublin - at the moment ourselves and couple of other bands are sharing a four-room warehouse and we pay something like €30 a month per person”

And so with a strong debut and a hectic first year now under their belts, the future surely holds both plenty of promise and a slew of releases in the future - will they be continuing down the DIY path with future releases? “As far as labels, yeah I wouldn’t mind having some financial and logistical support in the future.

I took care of a lot of the arranging and accounting on this one and it was great but pretty draining. The old software business pays well enough that cashflow wasn’t really an issue but I wouldn’t say no to having some external support in future! Probably only small labels and co-released type things though, I’m too much of a control freak to go handing over much responsibility to anyone else..”

To hear more, or order a copy of “Reason Will Falter”, please go to www.myspace.com/neifenbach

- Jamie Grimes ::: 13/06/10