[recording] was a fuckin nightmare and if you knew how we did it you wouldnt believe that it sounds like it does today, we hadnt a fuckin clue what we were doing but the spirit within the songs was right and it survived all the shit that went on in the studio. I have great memories of that recording though and finally getting the album out you know. And I still think its a great album and doesnt sound like anyone really.
A. A. Nemtheanga / Primordial interview, Metal Fan NL, 2003
PRIMORDIAL released their debut album, Imrama, on this day in 1995 through Cacophonous Records.
I remember the first time I ever got Imrama as clear as day...I stared at it for like 30 mins before I could talk...
A. A. Nemtheanga / Primordial interview, Unrestrained, 2005
From the official PRIMORDIAL biography:
In November [1994] without any idea of the machinations of recording an album we went into where we recorded our demo, spent a lot of money hiring equipment and desks and this and that, after 12 days we were left with a sub standard album (demo!)... not awful but not fit for release.
We had to wait until May [1995] to remix the album. Not knowing our arse from our elbow we had recorded the album on one inch reel tape (which for anyone not familiar with recording, probably the least professional and least used size!) so Nihil and myself from Cacophonous had to haul a one inch reel machine around London and then all the way to Yorkshire... to Dewsbury and Academy to transfer reels and remix "Imrama". We found channels with nothing on them that should have been drums, things recorded in mono... you get the picture. That "Imrama" is at all listenable is down to Mags at Academy. That was the beginning of a long friendship between the band and him. "Imrama" was remixed in three days and finally released in September of 1995, just shy of one year after it was recorded. That year also saw us play our first gig outside of Ireland at a Devils church festival in London together with Occult, Gomorrah and Bal-Sagoth among others. A very important step for the Irish scene in general, not just the band. Following the release of the CD, without one single interview it sold by all accounts quite well in the not as yet saturated market. Talk of tours with everyone from Gehenna and Bal-Sagoth to Samael and Cradle of Filth went around but nothing transpired. Relationships between us all were very strained and it was four young men very at odds with each other who went over to play with Cradle of Filth and Gorgoroth in late 1995 at the Metal Hammer fourplay night in London at the Astoria 1. 1995 closed out with us just having done our biggest ever gig, the album being received well and the future looking well... well it should have been, instead it closed with tempers fraying and blood boiling...