Interview: Tom Naumann of Primal Fear
05.08.15
Before their Seattle stop at El Corazon, guitarist Tom Naumann of Primal Fear sat down with Seattle Music News to chat about touring life, the current string of musicians passing, and what he’s listening to. Check it out below.
SMN: Testing, testing. I’d like you to introduce yourself and say what you do in the band.
Tom Naumann: My name is Tom. I’m the guitar player of the German Metal Commando Primal Fear. Enjoy it.
SMN: Fantastic. Welcome to Seattle, Tom.
TN: Thank you.
SMN: Thanks for taking the time out to talk with us today.
TN: Sure.
SMN: I have a couple questions for you. Basically, how would you introduce your band to a new listener today? You’ve been around for almost 20 years.
TN: Yeah 20 years.
SMN: But for a new generation of listener, how would describe your music? How would you bring someone to the band?
TN: I would describe our kind of music like power metal music with a lot of melodies in it. Twin guitars, two lead guitars, interesting guitar riffing, amazing voices, high screams, low growls sometimes, groovier songs with double bass, also very slow songs sometimes. We have a lot of long ballads like 11 minutes every track, so it’s very hard to describe in one or two words. German power metal, that’s not enough. It’s more than that. We have power metal songs, we have rock songs, we have a lot of melody in it. We do long epic tracks. It’s very hard to describe our kind of music. We’re not thrash or death or fantasy metal or whatever you call it. It’s power metal with extra stuff in it.
SMN: Twenty years as a band, what drives you creatively as an individual and what drives you musically as an individual?
TN: Very easy to answer that. The love to music and the love of music. We love being on stage. We love being creative. We love writing songs. We love to record the songs, we love to perform the songs, that’s what we’re here for right? For us, for me personally, it’s a great moment to be on stage and have a live crowd in front of me who listen to our kind of music and they are enjoying themselves, having a couple of beers, singing to it, screaming to it, head-banging to it, and probably forgetting their private problems for maybe two and a half hours. I saw a great show of Primal Fear, they kicked my ass, that’s what it’s all about for me personally.
SMN: That’s great. What drives the band musically these days?
TN: The fun. I think it’s fun to hang around together. To play music. The opportunity to do music and to do touring. Nowadays it’s very hard for bands or musicians to raise any money with that because the music industry kind of changed in a bad way. With all this download shit, and stuff like that.
But we’re still in a good position so we can make records and we can do touring and we love it that way. The band exists for 20 years right now and I’m doing professional music for 30 years right now, so it’s more than half of my life I’m doing this. Why should I change that?
That’s my life. I’m living, I’ve tried to live the dream. So we all try to live the dream. Sometimes it’s a good dream, sometimes it’s a nightmare.
SMN: I know what that’s like.
TN: Yeah? Sometimes it’s really but most of the time, hey. We play Denver, and then from Denver to Seattle. Everybody’s…
SMN: It’s a long drive.
TN: Yeah it’s a long drive and everybody’s saying you know you lead such a good life you went to the Denver, now we in Seattle, tomorrow in Vancouver. Said, hey but do you know how to get there? Having the jet lag and driving for whatever, how many hours and lying in your bunk just waiting to get there and then there is no shower. Or it’s raining or whatever. It’s not always… The grass is not always greener on the other side. Huh?
So you have two sides of the coin. But most of the time you really enjoying being around and playing the kind of music we love.
SMN: That’s great. What are you listening to these days? What is inspiring you creatively, musically? That you like.
TN: I don’t know if you can say that I got inspired by that music because I normally just do different kind of music than metal.
Just now we watched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Sheryl Crow was playing an Eagles tune. “New Kid in Town.” And we start playing “New Kid in Town” so nowadays I’m listening to the Eagles for example because Glenn Frey died and it’s a great musician. He was a great musician and the band was great.
It’s like I’m into every kind of music. There’s only good… good kind of music. Good and bad. If you listen to bad kind of music that’s up to you but I try and listen to good music. It’s doesn’t matter if it’s the Beatles or if it’s the Rolling Stones of if it’s Papa Roach, for example, or Breaking Benjamin, or if it’s Iron Maiden, or Judas Priest, or Five Finger Death Punch, or Eagles, whatever. I’m wide open for that.
I also listen to country music sometimes. So…
SMN: That’s great.
TN: Maybe that’s the problem. I not really… can’t get inspired by country music because there’s no hard metal riffing in it. But it’s kind of cool listening to it.
SMN: As you were saying before, watching Sheryl Crow, and playing an Eagles song with Glenn Frey passing away, we’ve lost David Bowie this year, recently Prince, Lemmy of course in December last year. What do you think of all these people? Is it the time now? What’s going through your mind when you think about all the losses of such legends?
TN: Probably they all met our back liner Neil Richard from Newcastle. That’s why they died. They died in awe.
I know like, to be honest Lemmy, I think he was ill for a long time. You can see that on the pictures though. He lit the candle on both sides. Doing drugs, doing alcohol all the time. It was just… It was a wonder that he turned 70 to be honest. Every other guy would have passed away with 35 probably. So he made it double that life.
David Bowie got cancer, so I don’t know. Rumor says that Prince died of AIDS… yeah it’s tough. These times there are a lot of really good musicians that are passing away. But I hope it will stay that way because I don’t want to die today, this year. But I’m not telling you that I’m a great musician.
SMN: So Primal Fear has toured quite a bit. You were just describing a bit of what you’re about to be doing for this tour cycle. Can you repeat that to our readers?
TN: Yeah, sure. So we did a new European tour in January and February. Then we took a little break because some guys of the band had a lot of project and went on tour with that project. Then we start our European and Canada tour in Hartford on April the 26th and tour will go until June 1st. This year we’ll be in Toronto. So it means like 5 weeks doing America and Canada. Then we will go fly directly from Toronto to Japan, playing a couple of shows there. Then we are going to Australia for the first time playing shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Then we’re coming back home and festival season in Europe will start. After the festival season we are heading for South America. Doing a three-week tour there. Then I think in October we will do the second leg of our European Tour.
So really busy this time.
SMN: A really busy tour cycle, and that’s what you normally do. Is there any place that the band is not played that is on your wish list still? Or a possibility in the future?
TN: I think there must be some places in Asia which are really good, which we never played. Singapore, Sri Lanka or something, Thailand, probably really good.
I never played Africa but I’m not sure if Africa is a heavy metal continent. I don’t know if they’ll… probably not.
SMN: Surprisingly they have quite a few festivals there.
TN: Really?
SMN: Bands, friends have gone over and played. I’m sure they would be pretty pleased to see you in certain places.
TN: Yeah. I think a lot of good places in Asia which I would like to play there.
SMN: Cool. That would be awesome. So this last question is kind of a three-part question. It’s our Seattle Music News bonus question. If you were stranded on a desert island, and you could only take one book, one movie, and one album, what would they be and why?
TN: One album? Probably right now it would be The Best of the Eagles. Or maybe, The Blue Album of The Beatles. One of those.
A movie? Movie’s very tough decision. Probably Spinal Tap. That keeps me alive all the time, I’m stranded somewhere.
And a good book. Probably some biography of Paul McCartney. Or something like that. That would be nice.
SMN: Great. Well thank you so much for taking the time.
TN: So. How about your beard? Why is it colored in German colors?
SMN: I love Germany. Toured there several times with certain friends. Actually, it’s ironic that it is like a German flag, but it’s more like fire. So people give me both and I’ll take both compliments either way.
TN: So what do you expect from tonight’s show?
SMN: I’m expecting it to be loud, fast, and just hearing those screams. I’m really looking forward to it because, ironically, I have not seen you guys play before. I’ve been listening to the music for a little while but when I’ve had the chance to see you play, something or another’s always come up. This is a great opportunity.
TN: I think it’s actually the third time we are playing in Seattle I guess.
SMN: Oh wow.
TN: Last time we played it was 2014. So every two years…
SMN: Every two years you come over. Yeah it’s probably harder with a lot of the schedules in Europe and festivals and everything like that.
TN: So normally what we do, America we do in like April/May is the best time for us because normally we release our albums in January then we go on tour in January/February in Europe, then we go on a break, and then April/May we do it in America. Going back in June and doing festival stuff.
SMN: So how has this tour been since it’s only been a couple dates so far?
TN: It’s doing great. Yeah. It’s always great to be back in America. But as you probably might know it every band is playing in America, so when we are on tour we can see like Behemoth playing two days before us, and the next day… We play tonight I think, we play Seattle. Tomorrow there will be Amon Amarth so it’s like going between Behemoth and Amon Amarth sometimes we are lucky, and sometimes the crowd isn’t always that good as we’d like to have it.
SMN: Yeah.
TN: But that’s life.
SMN: Yeah but it’s awesome that you’re here and I know the fans will appreciate it.
TN: Yeah I hope so.
Interview and photos by Neil Lim Sang
