Primordial

Bassist Pól MacAmhlaigh and guitarist Ciarán MacUiliam first came together in 1987 to create a band that straddles the seemingly disparate worlds of black and doom metal and Celtic music. Recruiting Alan Averill aka Nemtheanga for vocal duties, Primordial blazed a trail for Celtic-informed black metal in Ireland—the group hail from Skerries, County Dublin—with the release of their Dark Romanticism demo in 1993, and were duly snapped up by UK extreme metal outpost Cacophonous Records (Cradle of Filth, Bal-Sagoth) for their debut album Imrama, released two years later. They introduced folk-oriented instruments like mandolins and whistles for their sophomore LP A Journey's End in 1998 and continued to evolve their sound on subsequent albums like 2000's Spirit the Earth Aflame, 2005's The Gathering Wilderness, 2011's Redemption at the Puritan's Hand and 2018's Exile Amongst the Ruins. The band released their tenth full-length studio album How it Ends in 2023 following a five-year break.