Page 5 - Black Velvet Issue 84

BV84 pg4,5,6,7:BV84 pg05 19/03/2015 01:55 Page 2

BlackVelvetMagazine.Com - 5

...AND A little hell!

a record is a very joyous occasion – where of the bulls Maese posted informing the band they mention how bulls are prodded onto the
we’re concerned anyway,” answers Cormac. that a lot of animal suffering goes on in the streets with electric shocks and before they
“It’s a very liberating feeling being able to just runs, and urged them to investigate. enter a bullring they have petroleum jelly
get up in the morning, fall into the studio and Cormac says that after reading Maese’s rubbed into their eyes. That’s just for starters.
start making music all day. Just across the comment, “We went and delved into it. Obvi- There’s a lot that the average person probably
board we did a lot of laughing and a lot of cel- ously at the time it was just part and parcel of doesn’t know about these events that take
ebrating. It was a week-long fiesta. It was just the festival, and the festival spirit that there place in Spain. Even Cormac is unaware of
outside Madrid, in a relatively small town up in were bulls running down the middle of the town that.
the mountains, and the annual fiesta was tak- every morning. Having never experienced any- He adds, “I found the bullfight quite disturb-
ing place, which included bull runs through the thing like that before in our lives we found the ing actually. It was brutal, y’know. But what re-
town. Afterwards we’d go into the bars. It was whole atmosphere of the festival exhilarating, ally amazed me most was the amount of small
basically one street, full of bars, just drinking y’know. But yes, you’re right, we did go on and children at the event. It was a family event like
and dancing on the street, from midday until 5 ask about the conditions of the bulls, but even a gaelic football match here in Ireland on a
or 6 in the morning. So we would generally go then, people’s opinions in the town anyway Sunday afternoon is a family event. Except
and have a couple of beers after a bull run and were kind of split between the animal cruelty of those bulls get killed. It’s one of those experi-
then go and work all day and then go back to the bullfight itself, which is very cruel, ab- ences that will stick with it. It has a very cruel
the bar at night. Each day the rest of the village solutely very cruel, but then you have other element to it.”
were more inebriated than any Irish man on St. people in the town that go “Well, the bulls have
Patrick’s Day. We would have a great time, ob- a great life up till that point and they live the ut going back to the music and new
serving life around us and how drunk people rest of their lives and live longer than a lot of Balbum, Cormac tells us that there’s a
had gone and then go and work very hard at the animals in Spanish farms”. I don’t really certain challenge to maintain a high level of
getting drunk ourselves, obviously.” have a clear-cut stance on it but we did go and performance. “You want to really do the songs
Black Velvet is opposed to the running of find out more information about it. For us it was justice. Talking from experience here, five
the bulls and bullfighting in Spain as they’re just one little snapshot over the course of a records in, you can go in with the best song in
cruel events. And looking at the band’s face- month of experiences that we’d never come the world and whenever you hear it after it’s
book page, one of their fans, Maese Leiva, was across before.” been mixed a couple of months later it can be
too. After hearing the band mention the running We tell Cormac that on PETA’s website a massive disappointment. There’s no worse

THE ANSWER