The Boys Are Back In Town. JACK LANGRIDGE talks to CORMAC NEESON of hard-rocking new Irish quartet THE ANSWER.

Everything about Northern Irish group The Answer is big: big hair, big hype, big name producer and bloody big rock.

Their debut album, Rise, produced by AC/DC board wrangler George Young is a sonic afterburner fuelled by the spirited rock & roll of Free and Led Zeppelin.

Complete with vein-popping falsettos, hints of funk and an authentic blues hum that came to the fore in 70’s rock, The Answer have already been named Best New Band at the inaugural Classic Rock Awards and hailed as Best British Newcomer by Kerrang!.

Recorded in London’s Olympic Studios, where Led Zeppelin put down II and the Rolling Stones’ forged Let It Bleed, Rise takes on an almighty challenge in its attempt to eliminate the scepticism surrounding new generation bands taking on the classic rock & roll genre.

“We’re trying to establish rock & roll as a serious genre that kids can really get there teeth into again,” says softly spoken lead singer Cormac Neeson. Talking from his home in the tiny town of Downpatrick south of Belfast, Neeson is quick to shrug off “lazy” comparisons with The Darkness.

“It’s important to differentiate between the rock & roll which The Darkness’ play; it’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, it’s pretty gimmicky live with all the catsuits and pyrotechnics. The Darkness’ second album absolutely flopped. We’re interested in making seven, probably eight rock & roll albums before we start relying on catsuits,” he says.

These are just words considering the way in which The Darkness’ piss-taking antics have made once revered, even elitist sound, into a much maligned joke. However, the mystical spirit of groups like Led Zeppelin, Cream, Free and Thin Lizzy have been rekindled by a string of bands (Wolfmother, Diamond Nights, etc) packing considerably more substance than Hawkins’ and Co.

“The first music I listened to when I was a kid was Rory Gallagher. He’s an Irish electric blues guitarist. From there I moved to old American blues like Howlin’ Wolf, Sunhouse, Robert Johnson, people like that, and then I moved on to the classic rock & roll bands of the 60’s and 70’s. I like emotional music because the people who play it and sing it are obviously so passionate about what they’re doing. Bands like Free and Led Zeppelin and a modern day band like The Black Crowes, who obviously love what they’re doing – I really tuned into that.”

The first band suited to Neeson’s piercing vocal howls, The Answer’s frontman first met guitarist Paul Mahon at university where they were both studying for a degree in ethnomusicology. And when bassist Micky Waters and James Heatley drums were thrown headlong into the fray, it seemed the foursome had stumbled upon the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“It was pretty intense. It was the first band I had ever sung in that really catered for my kind of voice. Up to that point we were coming out of the whole grunge era when all the bands wanted to sound like Nirvana and after that the Foo Fighters. It was great stuff but for the kind of stuff I’m looking to sing, it didn’t really suit that too much. The first song we played was Free’s All Right Now, the standard band getting to know each other song, but from that first song we were looking at each other with smiles on our faces and we knew there something quite special going on. I remember going home fuckin’ buzzing after that first days practice and it’s just got better and better which is great.”

Rise is available now through Red Label/SonyBMG

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