It’s one of contemporary metal’s best-known stories, but it bears repeating: in the mid-’90s, German vocalist Ralf Scheepers sang in a Judas Priest cover band called Just Priest.
He was damn good. So good, in fact, that when Judas Priest were looking for a new vocalist to fill the massive shoes of Rob Halford, Scheepers was high on their list. Eventually the gig went to Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, but Scheepers was so motivated that he formed Primal Fear with two of his Just Priest bandmates, bassist Mat Sinner and guitarist Tom Naumann.
Primal Fear signed to Nuclear Blast Records in 1997, cracked the German top 50 with their debut album in February ’98, and are now considered power metal pioneers. With their new LP Rulebreaker just released, Primal Fear are touring Australia for the very first time this June.
“It’s always been our dream to come there,” says Scheepers. “We hear so many good things. I mean, it’s after our North American and Asian tour legs and it’s going to be a long road to go.”
Since this is the band’s first Australian tour, the setlist might be tweaked a little to please the long-time fans. “We have a setlist that features a mixture of, not every album, but in our opinion our strongest albums,” Scheepers says. “We’ll have five tracks from our new album: ‘In Metal We Trust’, ‘Angels Of Mercy’, ‘The End Is Near’, ‘The Sky Is Burning’ and ‘Rulebreaker’. We try to promote the new album as much as we can. And then we’ve picked a ‘best of’ of our albums. It’s going to be a longer setlist and people can really expect highlights of our entire catalogue.”
While Scheepers, Sinner and Naumann remain, Primal Fear have been through multiple lineup changes over the years.Rulebreaker finds the band at peak fitness.
“We’re five writing members now, and that’s a big advantage, to have so many hands, so many creative people behind it,” Scheepers says. “It’s very democratic. We’ve been doing this for very many years, and if a song is not going to be on this album, why not the next? Sometimes we have 15, 20 songs, which is way too many for an album, but it doesn’t mean the song is bad. Sometimes they’re just lying around for years and you find them again and think, ‘This song is not bad,’ so you bring it back.”
Although the official lineup includes three guitarists, Magnus Karlsson won’t be coming to Australia. It’s no surprise, really – he’s one of the most in-demand guitarists in the power metal and progressive metal spheres. His credits include Starbreaker, Midnight Sun, Last Tribe, Planet Alliance, The Codex, Bob Catley and many more.
“Magnus has his family, he has three kids, and understandably he can’t always go on tour with us,” Scheepers says. “He’s basically a riff machine. He’s a composing machine. He’s absolutely amazing at what he does.”
So don’t expect an Iron Maiden-style triple-axe attack on this tour. And Scheepers isn’t planning to strap on a guitar anytime soon. “I play guitar, but not on the albums,” he says. “I’m not a good guitar player but it’s great for composing, which you’ll find on my solo CD. That’s basically what I wrote on my guitar, and Magnus helped.”
Ah yes, that solo album. Scheepers, released in 2011,is a great record, although it pretty much just sounds like Primal Fear. “Of course,” says the singer. “I have collected so many songs I couldn’t use for Primal Fear at the end of the year, and it goes back to Gamma Ray [Scheepers’ pre-Primal Fear band]. So I thought, together with Mat as a team again, why not release the solo CD? It’s not a one-hit wonder, but it was just a one-time thing. It’s always difficult if you’re breaking pieces away from a major enterprise to a smaller solo thing.”
Scheepers is a vocal teacher in his downtime, passing on the secrets of his powerful, multi-octave metal voice to his students, who study with him either in person or online via Skype. He also lends his skills as a vocal coach in the studio, helping other vocalists to reach their full potential. He stresses the value of getting plenty of rest.
“You have to just relax when you’re at home, which is not so easy because I have a boy, I have students to teach – I go to a school to teach lessons – and I’m trying to do all the exercises I teach to my students; vocal relaxing exercises and things like that. But hey, it’s a muscle, and I can feel a difference already as I get older. I’m glad that people don’t hear it, but I have this instrument in my throat and I can really feel what’s going on and I hope it’s going to be lasting for a while, and I’m confident I can still do this for decades.
“Singing is totally different to speaking. When I had a cold on tour recently people were asking me, ‘How are you able to sing when you can’t speak?’ It’s a totally different technique. You use a lot of support from the diaphragm and it’s a different technique for breathing. Sometimes I sound horrible in the morning but I belt out the highest note in the evening.”
Rulebreaker is out now through Frontiers. Primal Fear perform, supported by Hazmat, at Newtown Social Club, Sunday June 12.
