When one thinks of countries that have produced some of the greatest Metal, countries like Sweden, Norway, Germany and England will inevitably come into the discussion. However, the Irish have gone neglected in such conversation... unless you were there to witness MAEL MÒRDHA at the second annual Heathen Crusade festival this January in St. Paul, Minnesota. Few had heard of them when they took the stage, but less than fifteen minutes after their set ended, all of their merchandise had been sold. Donned in war paint, the world's only Gaelic Doom Metal band stunned the crowd with an amazing, high energy set of great songs that will be remembered by all who witnessed them for years to come.

First off, what are your thoughts on playing the U.S for the first time?

"I'm absolutely delighted - plenty to drink, meeting up with a few mates and hopefully have a good time."

What does the band name mean in Gaelic?

"All right, well... (laughter) It translates... okay, first of all, the actual name was the high king of Leinster at the time, Brian Boru, but if you translate it literally, it kind of means 'great big, baldy fellow'. (laughter) Serious. No joke. If you were to take the words and break them up in old Irish, 'great big, baldy fellow', but it was the high king of Leinster."

Tell us a little bit about the new album you have coming out in... April, is it?

"April, hopefully it will be March, but we're saying April just in case there's some delays. It's called 'Gaeltach Mael Mordha', which means basically 'The Madness Of Mael Mordha'; it's taken over from... it's kind of a similar theme running through it - it's about the hardships that he went through, loss and depression and then eventually, he walks into the Irish sea, but it doesn't quite end there because you're not quite sure if he's dead, so the theme is going follow on then into the next album. We recorded in the same place we did the last album, which is Trackmix in Dublin with Mick Richards and it's going to be released on Grau, who have MOURNING BELOVETH, which are another Irish band on it as well, so hopefully they'll push it a bit better than our last record label (Karmageddon), who were a shower of bastards." (laughs)

Speaking of pushing the albums, are there any plans of getting better distribution of your albums in the States or Europe?

"We hope so. That's what we're relying on Grau to do, basically. Plastic Head had been doing the distribution, but it just wasn't pushed... the first album wasn't pushed at all and there's still copies of it left sittin' in a warehouse. The main aim is to just push it as much as we can. We've got a guy who's working with us now who's looking after getting us some gigs, we're doing a few... hopefully we've got one festival organized for this year, which is Doom Shall Rise; I think it's in Germany... and hopefully get a few more of those and just get the name out there. There's a lot of stuff going on the web now, so I think that's where we'll be the most heard about."

How did the split seven-inch with PRIMORDIAL come about?

"Sentinel Records, which is an Irish kind of web store/label, run by Scobes or Brian Tobe... (laughter)... and they did a few of them. They did MOURNING BELOVETH and WRECK OF THE HESPERUS, there's a series of them. Basically, whenever they get a little bit of extra money, they're doing these splits and they're actually picture disc, as well, and they're all gone as far as I know, but it was good thing happen that PRIMORDIAL allowed us to go on the other side, because they're more widely known than we are, so of course then we get out to a bit of a wider audience. So Sentinel, at the end of the day when they've finished the whole series of the Irish bands, they're going to create and a box and then all of them will be able to fit into it, so it'll be a nice little thing to have, you know."

What's the Metal scene like in Ireland?

"Shite. (laughter) No, no, it's untrue - it was shite; it's far better now than it's ever been before. There's a lot of people putting a lot of their own time and effort into it. We've got Day of Darkness Meta festival, which is kind of helping a lot of bands to come up, we've got Akron Promotions in Cork running gigs, we've got Hedge which is putting on a lot of bigger bands from outside of Ireland, but is giving the chance to smaller Irish bands for support slots and again, getting out to a wider audience, so I think over the last two years people have felt it getting better and increasing and it's kind of like one little happy community now. It's a lot better than it was; it's unfair for me to say it's shite." (laughter)

Next, tell us a little bit about the incident that happened on the airplane on the way over. (laughter)

"Ah fuck... do I have to?" (laughter)

You don't have to get super detailed.

"Okay, well, I'll give you the shortened version - I blame the Dublin Airport Authority for giving out free samples of... what's it called? (pauses) Danziger vodka schlager at about half ten in the morning... and we were having a few beers, I had a sample, this lovely lady bent over, I bought two bottles. (laughs) We were having a few beers, our flight was delayed by two hours and there was a long queue for the bar, so I decided to buy a few bottles of Coke and I put the vodka into the Coke... basically, the next thing I remember is waking up with my T-shirt on backwards on the wrong seat on the airplane with all of the lads looking at me with scowls on their faces. (laughter) ...and to call a long story short, nobody had their lasagna for dinner and the pilot was one inch away from diverting to Canada to have us deported and arrested and that's all I'm going to say." (laughter) [FIN]