Hi? introduce your band, I mean where do you come from, what meals do you like, do you prefer blondes or dark-haired, your accounts numbers, your good and bad features and of course your penal index, just everything our readers could be interested in, because I am sure you are a completely unknown band here in the Czech Republic!
Haha, well since not many people have heard of us before, I?ll start by giving you some more basic information about our band...Alright! We are DETONATION hailing from Utrecht, the Netherlands. We are a melodic Death/Thrash metal band, active since 1997. We started under the name ?Infernal Dream?, but changed it into DETONATION after we recruited bassist Otto Schimmelpenninck in 1998. Our line-up furthermore consists of Mike Ferguson - Guitar, Thomas Kalksma - Drums, and myself, Koen Romeijn - Guitar&Vocals. The first 2 songs we recorded were for the Skullcrusher compilation CD, released by Skullcrusher records in 1999. Since we received a lot of good reactions towards those 2 songs, Skullcrusher gave us a deal for our first EP, ?Lost Euphoria? which was released by them in 2000. This CD gave us the opportunity to play numerous gigs throughout Holland, and this helped us to become a well-known band in the underground scene. In July/August 2002 we recorded our debut full length album ?An Epic Defiance?, which is now re-released by Osmose productions! Those are the facts....our soul purpose is to create intense and brutal melodic metal with lots of variation, the way it should be! We actually played in your country last year, at the Open Hell fest in Volyne, so probably some of you might heard of us!
The name of the band is clear, why such a clear name? do you think, that the name should itself say what the band plays? In your case a detonating death metal, haha? then there should be a warning on the cover, because it could be something that kind!
The name is indeed very clear, we were looking for a name that would fit the musical atmosphere best without making things too vague, and suddenly we came up with DETONATION...In my opinion the best description for our band, our music is at times highly explosive and sometimes also very calm and atmospheric. Besides, it is also a compact name which can be remembered easily, haha!
It is clear that you as a Dutch band, like Swedish style like AT THE GATES, DARK TRANQUILITY, DISSECTION? or do you think OSMOSE?s info is a bit extravagant and you don?t like some of the talks? What do you like on the Scandinavian style, like the sound of guitars, vocals, etc?
All 4 of us are very much into Swedish acts such as At the Gates, Dissection etc, which is something you can obviously hear from our music. But we do like to state that we are not trying to copy any of those bands whatsoever! We just like to play melodic metal, an this is the style we feel most comfortable with. The boundaries of melodic metal are very wide, and it is a suitable genre for us to experiment with, giving us the room to play extreme fast parts as well as atmospheric mellow parts. Looking form Osmose?s point of view, it is kind of logical I guess that they compare us to Swedish acts. I can imagine not many people are familiar with our kind of music, so this is a good way to convince people to check out our CD.
Are you satisfied with OSMOSE? I like they have still be producing limited editions in LP, what do you say about it! I?d like to know what was before the ?An Epic Defiance?. I mean what projects had you had, or recordings, how successful were they, if you had personal problems etc? because the ?An Epic Defiance? is a kind of ability and skills to be heard!
The cooperation with them has been very good so far, and they have fully full filled our expectations up till now. We?re also very pleased about the LP release, I think it is a really cool thing to have as a band, and it is something to cherish when you?re old en you have all of your LP releases hanging on the wall in frames...hehe. Before we signed with Osmose, we were an independent band without a label. We did release ?Lost Euphoria? through Skull crusher records, as I mentioned before, but we only signed with them for one release, and made no real commitments whatsoever. ?Lost Euphoria? did quite well actually and it got us to the point where we are now. Originally 500 copies were made, but we?ve sold many more because there are still people asking for it. As for projects, Thomas Mike and I were all in our own separate bands before Detonation, and that is were we started as musicians. But most things we?ve learned are with Detonation itself. We just rehearse a lot and are very motivated to create technical and well thought-off music, and besides this we?re also very eager to improve ourselves as musicians. We never had any real personal problems within the band....it is a dull story, I know haha!
I very like ?Crawling Through Vile?, ?Voices Beyond Reason?, what am I saying? just all the tracks are outstanding. Who is the composer, what does the composing in your band look like? And what are the lyrics about and who is the author?
Glad you like the album! As for songwriting, we work as a team. Usually Mike or I come up with a couple of riffs, and then introduce them to Thomas during rehearsals. If they are good riffs, a song will be written spontaneously and finished within a couple of hours, if not we usually end up throwing the whole song away! A song has to have that ?special? vibe from the first moment on for us to continue playing it. You?ve noticed perhaps that the songs itself vary in style and atmosphere, this also depends on our ?mood of the day?. There are periods when we can only come up with extreme fast blast beat orientated metal, and at other times we create more experimental, mellower stuff. The lyrics are written by Mike and I, so again some sort of teamwork, al though we write them separately. Advantage is that we share the same opinion on a lot of subjects and we kind of use the same style for our lyrics. All of the lyrics are personal reflections of our thoughts and feelings towards certain issues, and how we deal with our worst and most evil thoughts. They are merely descriptions of the way we react towards people/things. For example, ?The Collision of Despair? is about when something goes wrong in your life, it is most likely to happen again within a short notice of time, and it explains how we our minds deal with this, so it is mainly psychological.
Track ?Lost Euphoria Part II? is signed as ?Part II? so there has been a ?PART I? I suppose. Where is it and what is the difference between 1 and 2?
?Lost Euphoria part I? is actually our first EP, and there is no particular song called like that. We just made the link between the 2 songs to get people interested in buying our first album, haha! But seriously, ?Lost Euphoria? features the song ?Euphoric Loss?, and when we came up with part II we thought it had a certain atmosphere that is also to be found on our EP in several songs, so that is why we made the link between those titles. And it is also a theme which is very often used in our lyrics, so perhaps there will be even a part III written in the future...
What was the recording in Excess studio like? Everything was all right and without problems? Why did you choose this studio? I like the sound very much, I didn?t expect it when listening to your album, I thought you were Swedish, haha?
Well, we are definitely not Swedish haha! The recordings in Excess went without any problems whatsoever. We spent 14 days in total there, from which we used the last 4 days for the mixing and mastering of the album. We intentionally choose to record ?An Epic Defiance? separate from each other, meaning that Thomas and Otto first went there to record drums and bass, and after they were finished, Mike and I went to Excess studios to record the guitars and vocals. This way, we had plenty of space to move in the studio and we did not have too much people around giving comments or making us nervous. We also have a lot of trust in each other in this band, so this was the perfect way for us to record this album, we knew it was going to be good. We had chosen for Excess because of its reputation here in Holland, and the possibilities it has. We have certain visions towards our own sound, and Excess was on top of our list of studios where we could achieve our goal. Producer Hans Pieters really did an excellent job, and helped us all the way.
What are your plans, are you going on a tour or are you working on a new album?
Both actually! Our next small tour is being planned at this moment, doing 6 shows in the UK at the end of October/beginning of November. We haven?t made plans yet for a European tour, first priority is to promote ?An Epic Defiance? by doing as much interviews as we can. Furthermore we are also very busy writing new songs, we have completed about 6 new ones this far, which will be very much in the same vein as the songs on ?An Epic Defiance? but better structured and more varied. Some songs are even faster and more brutal than our old ones, and we?re really looking forward to record these new tunes in the studio.
When listening to it, your music can get to the listener?s head very easily, that is great. By the quick tempo you don?t forget the technical parts. Are you going to continue with this?
Absolutely! We?re very eager to improve our technical skills, and this is something that is very important to our music, but at the other hand we will continue writing catchy tunes and melodies that instantly get stuck in you head. The most interesting part of all this is to mix the technical progression with the catchy melodies without losing focus of the brutality, which is something that keeps the music interesting for both ourselves and the fans...
Did the album ?An Epic Defiance? fit your expectations?
Yes, even more than that! This was our first experience with Detonation in a professional studio, and we did not really know what to expect concerning the way the album was going to sound like. Of course we had our visions, but you never know for certain what the actual outcome will be...but the result even amazed us, and we are 100% satisfied with the way it worked out! The album sounds fresh and still brutal, without things being too distorted or whatever, and there isn?t actually one thing about it which I?m personally not satisfied with!
And what to the end?
Well, thank you for this interview, and my cheers and salutes go out to the Czech readers! Check out our album if you will, or visit our site www.detonation.nl for more information about Detonation! C-ya!
