Who remembers the Roadrunner United Album (The All-Star Sessions) released in 2006? No? Then look it up after checking out Aiséirí. Released on September 17th 2021, Aiséirí (the Irish word for resurrection or resurgence) is the first offering (of three) from the All Ireland Metal Project. The All Ireland Metal Project is a national initiative to unite musicians from all four provinces of Ireland and sub-genres of metal. This is the largest collaborative effort the Irish metal scene has ever witnessed and the first time this has ever been done. The outcome of this project will be three charity albums unlike any other in the history of Irish metal.
All Ireland Metal – Aiséirí – Album Artwork
Like most industries during the current global pandemic, the Irish metal scene has been hit extremely hard. With live venues, recording/rehearsal studios and international travel for tours out of action, a wealth of creative Irish metal talent has witnessed their revenue and careers collapse overnight. The project is designed not only to breathe life back into a creative community who have had their livelihoods devastated, but also to give back to other communities in need.
Founded in 2021 by acclaimed Irish metal musicians Darragh O’Connor (Horrenda/Aborted Earth) & Shannon Bowman (Aborted Earth), the core concept is modeled after a similar U.S. project in the 2000s with the legendary Roadrunner United. They assembled a team including Restive Nation’s Tony Carberry, Zhora’s Tom Woodlock and Two Tale of Woe’s Carl King to help lead the project and work to produce the songs.
The project will release three albums and a documentary. Each album will feature tracks from teams made up of over 120 musicians from all across the island of Ireland. With members from the biggest underground bands in the Irish scene today.
Darragh talked about where the idea came from “myself and a lot of folks my age in the scene grew up with Roadrunner United, so it appears that this project is something that a lot of us wanted to do for years. I like side projects and I love working with other musicians. In fact, I was halfway through my next solo album (which was going to feature a lot of artists from the scene) when I saw a Facebook post from Burning Metal Ireland’s Phil Keaveney talking about Roadrunner United. I was just like “okay how can I actually do this?” And I went from there. I believe this was the right time, thanks to technology and the position we found ourselves in to make this happen. Roadrunner United gave us the roadmap to do a project like this. But never before has an entire country made a set of albums.”
“No matter what genre of metal you like, or which of the bands you like, you will find something here for you across these three albums. Each album will take you on a journey through what this amazing country has to offer and may serve as a starting point to discover more of what we do in our metal scene.”
While the album(s) will end up on Spotify eventually, the crew have emphasized that this is for charity and as such urges metal fans to buy the album & merch (including limited edition bundles) directly from the team to help the charity (Barnardos).
All can be ordered online here – https://allirelandmetal.bandcamp.com/merch
All Ireland Metal – Aiséirí – Bandcamp
The project can be contacted for information, sponsorship, press etc via email [email protected] or on their socials http://allirelandmetal.com.
And direct donations can be made to Barnardos Ireland via the link at http://allirelandmetal.com
Track Listing:
1. Venus de Vilo W/Team Oiwa – Oiwa Monogatari
2. Oleka – Aphasia
3. Downer
4. Extreme Metal Is PC Now, Get Used To It Boomer
5. Outis feat. Jamie Murphy – Fire in the Sky
6. Red Flag
7. Gorgo
8. Local Man Ruins Everything
9. Make Them Suffer
10. Necro Terror
11. TORANN
12. We Couldn’t Think of Lyrics So We Just Ripped Off Huey Lewis
13. **Bandcamp Bonus** – JSR – Money, Money, Money (Abba Cover)
All tracks mastered by JSR Audio
Personnel of first album:
Cormac Jordan, Darragh O’Connor, Jamie Murphy, Conor M James, Tom Woodlock, Carl King, Hytham Martin, Tony Carberry, Veronika Švecová, Thomas Doherty, Simon Cochrane, Stephen Cannon, Jim Spillane, Ciara Hayes, Shannon Bowman, Colin ßólger, Shaun O’Brien, Keith Smith, Tomás Hynes, Josh Sid Robinson, Sean Doyle, Jack Penders, Dave Quinn, Lisa Harris, Dave Mooney, Michal Bugajski, Chris Craig, Jonny Scimitar, Tom Moylan, David Fogarty, Jimmy Wynne, Roni Vox
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