Complan First saw Cormac singing with The Dangerfeilds and I couldn't get over what a good front man he was. Jumping running around the crowd, going all the way to the back of the venue singing in people's faces, etc. Next I saw him with Complan a few years later doing a more hc sound still full of energy. 1. What's the history have the band? Complan is Cormac, Donal, Eoin, Stanto, and a gorilla. We all first met by playing various punk gigs around Ireland with our old bands, as we are all from different parts of Ireland except for the gorilla, although I am currently the only one not living in Dublin right now. We got together around May 2003 or so, and played our first gig at the end of August 2003, after fuck all practice. Our second gig was the warm-up gig for the last ever Warzonefest in Belfast, I'm really glad we got to play that one. We haven't really done that many gigs over the two years, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that they have all been fun even if no-one was there! 2. Is complan very differant than your past bands, or do you think a fan of The Dangerfields or Scientific Bong, would listen to yis? Well Complan have a bit of a mixture of styles really, most of our stuff is kinda old-school hardcore sounding but there are definitely a load of other influences thrown in, mainly from Eoin and Donal as they listen to shite. The Gorilla keeps adding in weird chest beats too. But I reckon most people who've heard the old bands could definitely listen to Complan, and I reckon everyone else could watch us live and have a laugh, then again I always reckon that. It may be a bit different, but sure it's all punk rock at the end of the day. At the end of the day, when all's said and done, when it comes down to the wire, putting aside all the rest, etc etc. I'm going to use phrases like this for the rest of the interview now. 3. Who writes the lyrics what kind of things are you singing about? I do most of the lyric writing, but Stanto the bass man does a bit too. Eoin and Donal are welcome to as well, but they do seem to concentrate on the music more, good thing really because their lyrics are shite. Our lyrics are generally just about that fact that we're living in this shit world where pretty much everything the government does is fucked up but they still get elected every time there is an election, and they refuse to stop trying to fuck up the whole world too. Stanto wrote a couple of great songs about scumbags and Bertie Ahern. The Gorilla writes all the choruses. The rest of our lyrics are about Schwarzenegger films and Falling Down. Really. Think about it! Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. See we have our serious side and our fun side. Except for the gorilla, he's always serious. Don't try and steal his banana. 4. Is it awkard traveling from Belfast to Dublin for practise? Yeah it's a pain in the hole. Actually it's not so bad right now, Aircoach are doing return tickets for 8 quid sterling, and you get this fuckin cool comfy bus and all, it's great. Plus the bypasses make it pretty much two and a half hours each way which isn't so bad now. The main reason we hardly ever practice is that 'certain' of our members spend a lot of time travelling around crusty squats in Europe trying to make themselves cleaner, DONAL, and being smelly hippies in general. That and the fact that the gorilla has to escape from the zoo everytime we have a practice, but he's actually pretty good at that. But yeah it is quite awkward with me living in Belfast, maybe I'll move to Donegal to make things easier, I hear it has a great bus system and there are punks everywhere these days. 5. What's been the best/worst gigs so far? Personally I reckon all our best gigs have been at house partys, but that's just because I love playing in small spaces and house partys are always really tiny, house partys fuckin rule. Like I reckon our best gig technically was actually in Cory's garage in Wexford at his brother Colin's birthday party, for some reason the sound in that garage was amazing and it was just a great gig and a great party! Of course pretty much all of our gigs are brilliant, naturally, and we never make any mistakes ever. I really enjoyed getting to play in the Warzone just before it closed, but that was just cause it was the Warzone more than anything. We also played the Lower Deck in Dublin one time with this band called Bincharge, they were shite though, the gorilla threw bananas at them the whole gig. Worst gig would have to be the 7 Seconds gig in the Hub in Dublin, because we didn't actually get to play at all, and we were really looking forward to that gig. What happened was the venue fucked everything up, they didn't book a soundman so John Foley who was doing the gig had to find one at the last possible minute and there wasn't enough time for us to play. I don't mind though, the same sort of shit has happened to me doing gigs before, there's nothing you can do about it as a promoter, some venues are just unreliable dicks and insist on fucking you over, it's really horrible when you're in that situation actually. It's too bad we couldn't play, but at least 7 Seconds were amazing! 6. What's your view on the Irish d.i.y scene at present? I think the Irish DIY scene is doing really well for itself right now. Theres loads of good places to play around the country, and we seem to be getting more places to play more than we are losing places to play, it's great. The Leechrum fest is coming up soon and it will be amazing fun, sooo many good bands playing at it. We can't play because the gorilla threw Donal to Finland and told him not to come back until Donal found all his bananas, so that could take a couple of weeks. Belfast-wise, the scene up here is fucked up ever since the Warzone closed. Theres people doing gigs, but none of them seem to go to each other's gigs, and they all get different crowds at their gigs, it's just really fractured right now. With Giros, everyone would have been in the same place helping each other out, now everyone is doing different things and there's no real communication going on, I personally find it very frustrating. 7.Future plans for Complan? Well we gotta couple of gigs coming up in August, then at some point I would like to do a proper tour round Ireland all at once, and we've been thinking about trying to get over to Scotland for a bit in Autumn too. And we have a demo recorded which we need to release properly at some point, and we should write some more songs too I reckon, maybe practice a bit more, try and be a bit more organised. I'd actually love to go to Europe and do some gigs next year, we'll have to wait and see about that I reckon, the gorilla doesn't have a passport. Anyway things are looking good for the future when all's said and done at the end of the day, hopefully it will be a fun year! Cheers for the interview Sean!