Era Vulgaris, who formed in Dublin in 2004, wanted to create the kind of music they only wished someone was writing. The band recruited drummer Chris Con in 2005, a drummer with a new found passion for metal, that only had prior drumming experience in break beat, jazz and electronica. Their debut album, called "What Stirs Within" which was entirely self-financed, was then released through Open Your Ears Music, a label which was started by the band to gain the attention of distributors and press who would otherwise have passed them off as another unsigned metal band. Hard work is the central element that keeps Era Vulgaris together. Having secured a full UK & Ireland distribution deal with PlasticHead/Code7 they are now looking to play in every town they can across Britain. The album has been lauded in all corners, with Rock Sound Magazine naming them as one of their 100 bands to watch in 2007, calling them "prog-metal overlords in waiting"

Here to talk about the band is vocalist Chris Rob:

ADRENALIN:  With the growth of progressive metal, how do you keep ahead of the rest in terms of originality?

CHRIS: Eh, I don't think ahead is really the way I'd look at it, it's not like there's a contest for originality going on that we're aware of. But really the only way of knowing whether what you're writing has been done before or not is by listening to as much music as possible. Which is a double-edged sword of benefit to any band or musician; on the one hand you know what you can't copy and on the other, you are also being influenced by more and more styles which is

really the only reason people call us progressive, because of style mixing. It's not like we're virtuosos or anything like in most prog-metal bands, just diverse. If you're in a metal band and the only influences you have are prog-metal bands then I don't think you can possibly call yourselves 'progressive' ...you're just copying what has gone before which is the complete opposite of progressive. So because a lot of new bands seem content mimicking their heroes it's not that hard to stand apart from the pack if you're sole aim is to not mimic anyone.

ADRENALIN:  Can you tell us about the metal scene in Dublin and how they react to you?

CHRIS: When we first came onto the Dublin metal scene the vast majority of them didn't know what to make of us at all. We'd open a set with a slightly technical death metal song, the next one would be sort of 90's thrash, clean singing and screams mixed all over the place; we had a lot of criticism from the Irish scene at first to 'stick to one thing and do it well'. But we just persevered and kept honing our own sound so that within 2007 since the release of 'What Stirs Within' in Europe our home scene had really warmed to us and we've done pretty well in Ireland since…not an easy

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