Interviews - Live 4 Metal


Interview with Eamonn O'Neil of This Weary Hour October 2009 by Steve Earles

Cork-based doomsters, This Weary Hour, have just released a most impressive EP, No Hand To Comfort You. Vocalist Eamonn O’Neill, gave me the lowdown on his fine band. Eamonn, could you tell us the history of the band? “Sure! I guess the short version is: Seán (Murphy-guitars) and I got together in the summer of 2007 to write some material with hopes of starting a band. We recorded as a two-piece later that year (with James of Altar of Plagues filling-in on drums) and released a demo in January 2008 called, “The Shadow of Time”. The rest of 2008 was spent recruiting a full line-up and, eventually, writing new material. We made our live debut in January of this year and the new EP, “No Hand to Comfort You,” finally made it out in July.” Your CD, No Hand To Comfort You is self-released, yet on many levels it would put to shame a name-label release, not only in terms of musicianship and song-craft, but also production and artwork and presentation? “ We’re very glad you think so! Personally, I believe in the experience of the “complete package.” Like many others, whenever I pick up a new CD/LP, I love spending some time perusing the sleeve and digesting the artwork, lyrics and liner-notes – often before I’ve heard a single note of the music itself. It frustrates me to see bands/musicians that write and record incredible music, yet let themselves down with the presentation aspect. I made sure to spend some time coming up with something that we felt suited the mood of the music. In the end the music is the most important part, obviously, but having good art and presentation makes it that much more special, especially for those who still purchase records.”

Grand production too! “As far as the production goes, we’re very happy for the most part. We’re not overly-enthused at the drum-sound, but we’re pleased with the overall result. It’s certainly a huge step up from that first demo anyway!” Would your intention be to sign to an established label in future? “It would certainly be nice, there’s no doubt about that. However, the size of the label is less attractive to us than that of its understanding of the kind of music we want to play.” Musically, what inspires you, I can sense Neurosis and some doom metal elements in your music? “You’d be right there. At least some of us are huge Neurosis fans. And some of us are big doom fans. But between the five of us, the inspiration
ranges from the many, many aspects of metal, to obscure noise/drone, punk, hardcore, trip-hop, blues and whatever else takes our fancy. Portishead’s latest LP, Third, had considerable influence on me during the writing of No Hand To Comfort You, for example. We like to consider ourselves open-minded and hope it reflects itself in our music.” Eamonn, I can also sense a lot of unique elements, certainly you sound very organic and the music has a lot of time to breathe? “The last thing we want to do is sound like clones of the bands in our collective libraries. We try hard to avoid that. The songs on the EP were written over the space of a few months and nothing was rushed. After we had the core aspects of the songs written, we basically jammed them out again and again, until they felt right to us. Also, I think to achieve a certain atmosphere you do have to give the music time to breathe and let the mood sink-in.” What about lyrical inspiration? “The lyrics on No Hand To Comfort You come from a mixture of my own frustrations with my self and my own fuck-ups, and attempts to relate them to observations of the world around me. Once you’re in a certain frame of mind it’s not hard to have a bleak outlook on things. Some of the ideas were derived from feelings during the times when I was at my absolute lowest, so parts of the record are very personal to me. Others are a little more ambiguous, I guess. I’m generally not a gloomy person (!), but I do find writing and performing to be a wonderful release when needs be.” I find Ireland is producing many great metal bands right now, Eamonn. How do you rate the Irish metal scene? “Ireland has a very vibrant and talented metal scene. You have the likes of Primordial and For Ruin leading the charge for more classic styles and, if you’re feeling somewhat avant-garde, there’s the fantastic Altar of Plagues. There happens to be a wealth of doom and sludge bands in the country too, one of my favourites being the terminally slow Wreck of the Hesperus. Every-so-often another quality band pops-up and grabs people’s attention. Recently, an incredibly talented death metal band, Atheos, came out of nowhere and gave us a kick up our collective arses. I think it’s an extremely worthwhile exercise spending a lazy afternoon checking out what our country has to offer.” Have you played live often? “Since our debut at the start of the year we have played a total of twelve gigs around the country, with five more scheduled before Christmas. In this (so far) short run we have been extremely lucky to have played shows with some amazing bands, including Thou, Altar of Plagues and most recently, Dragged into Sunlight.”



We live in a very dark time, with the recession biting hard in Ireland (as in the UK and elsewhere), do you feel that manifests itself in your music? “To be honest, I think it has had very little direct impact on our music. If it has any influence, it’s entirely unconscious!” What are This Weary Hour’s aspirations for the future? “For now, we really want to better ourselves. Write better music. Play better live shows. We would love our music to reach as many different people in as many different places as possible. Next year we should be ready to hit some venues in the UK and maybe Europe. We’ll have toured Ireland to death by then anyway. The response we had with the latest release has been wholly encouraging and we just want to take everything further with whatever we do next.” Finally, anything you’d like to add? “I’d just like to reiterate what I said about the metal scene in Ireland; there’s a lot of talent over here that is well worth checking-out! And, of course, thank you very much for the interview.” Thank you, Eamonn, and good luck to This Weary Hour in the future, I’m sure you have a lot of good music and gigs to come! www.myspace.com/thiswearyhour