Raw & Wild - '80 heavy 'zine / Web

:: INTERVIEW TO DETONATION

PLEASE, PRESENT YOURSELVES OUR READERS...
Hi, this is Koen Romeijn. I am the vocalist/guitar player from DETONATION. We are a melodic Death/thrash metal band from the Netherlands. Our debut album "An Epic Defiance" has been released by Osmose Productions last year.

WHEN DID YOU FOUND THE BAND?
I believe it was during the summer of 1997. Thomas our drummer and I started the idea to form a new band in the vein of Dissection, Dark Funeral and Dismember but mixed with melodic thrash metal.

PLEASE, TALK ABOUT THE VERY FIRST MOMENTS OF "LIFE" OF THE BAND...
Well, when we got the idea to form DETONATION all 4 of us were playing in other bands, and basically doing whole other things than extreme and fast metal. So when Thomas and I formed the band we soon ran into Mike and asked him to do 2nd guitar. We started rehearsing together just with the 3 of us during the first year of existence, but things went so well that we started the search for a bass player to be able to play gigs and record demo's. We will still called "Infernal Dream" back then actually. After placing an advertisement we got in touch with Otto in 1998, and only a couple of months later we did our first gig and recorded our first demo songs. By then we had changed the bands' name into DETONATION.

WHY SUCH BAND'S MONICKER?
Monicker? You're talking about our logo? If so, we really wanted a logo that suited the atmosphere of our music, so I created the "D" logo which represents the band.

WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR BIOGRAPHY?
Well, it basically sums up all the important things that happened in the history of the band, to give the reader an impression what we have been doing from the beginning up till now!

HOW DID YOU HAVE BEEN COTNACTED BY OSMOSE PRODUCTIONS?
After we recorded our debut album "An Epic Defiance" we started our search for a suitable label to release the album worldwide, and so we send out about 70 packages worldwide to record labels. A lot of labels were actually interested, but only a few gave us interesting offers. By the time we were almost signing to one of those labels, Osmose called us on one night and told us they were very interested in signing us for 3 albums, and so we did!

I GUESS YOU'RE HAPPY TO BE ON SUCH LEGENDARY LABEL?
Absolutely! They are a cult label and so far they have been doing a wonderful job distributing the album and promoting us. We still have 2 more albums to make and release through Osmose.

I'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOUR FIRST ALBUM...
We recorded the album in 2002, before we signed to any label. It took us 2 weeks at studio Excess, Rotterdam to finish the entire album, and when we finished the mixing the result turned out even better than we expected. We were determined to get signed to a significant label with this album, and luckily for us, several labels showed interest and this led to Osmose singing us and releasing the album in 2003. But about the album, most songs were written long before we recorded the album, so there's some pretty old work on the record, although still representative. We also had Niklas Sundin from Cabin fever Media do the artwork together with our own artwork wizard, Martijn Kalksma, which turned out really well actually. And furthermore...the album sounds really tight and intense and we're still really happy with the way it turned out!

WHEN DID YOUR START TO WORK AT?
As said before, the songs on the album we're written in a period of several years, since we had no record deal or anything, so there wasn't any pressure as well. The oldest song on AED is probably "Starve" the closing track on the album, although still one of my favourite tracks! I guess we wrote that song back in 1999 or something.

SATISFIED WITH THE FINAL RESULT?
Absolutely, as mentioned before...but we are determined to surpass the result with the next album. We've learned a lot the last time we visited the studios, and things will go even better next time I hope.

THE MOST INTERESTING ASPECTS?
Interesting to know is that the artwork is based upon the concept of time. Look closely at the artwork and you'll discover several aspects of time. The lyrics are also written in a conceptual way, as they all deal with our inner psychological problems we struggle with each and every day. There is no fiction in our lyrics, they reflect directly how we feel about certain subjects, although they are written in a poetic kind of way to avoid being to direct if you know what I mean haha. Another interesting thing about the album is that we had the honours to use 3 guest vocalists in the songs. George from Orphanage did a couple of vocal lines, together with Jorre Jansen from Engorge and Daniel Nak from Virulent.

WHAT'S ABOUT THE TRACKS?
They rock! Haha. But seriously, there is a lot of diversity to be found among the tracks, of course it is all melodic Death and Thrash metal, but we are also not ashamed of using black metal influences as well as acoustic/clean parts. Almost anything is possible in our music, and this will surely be worked out even more on our future albums. Lyrically, the songs on AED deal with our personal problems and struggles in life, as mentioned earlier.

WHICH ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF ALBUM?
To me personally I would say "Sword-carved Skin" and "The Collision of Despair", probably because they are the newest songs on the album.

WHY 'AN EPIC DEFIANCE'?
It actually has several meanings...one of them is that we want to make a statement against everything we despise in our lives. I won't be too detailed here, since those things are pretty personal, but in general we want to get rid of our anger and hatred through this album and defy ourselves with our music. Another meaning is that we want to show the world that melodic metal is still very much alive, and that not all melodic metal has to sound as soft and mellow as most bands sound nowadays within this scene.

IT SEEMS YOU'RE READY FOR THE BATTLE...
Oh yes, we are, and we have been for a long time! This is just the beginning of our Detonation upon the scene!

WHAT IS THE MOOD OF YOUR ALBUM?
Since our music is highly melodic, I would say that the mood isn't very depressive at first, but still I think that our songs are pretty emotional...well at least to me they are. The fast stuff, due to the blast beats is also very brutal I think.

ANYTHING INTERESTING TO TELL US ABOUT THE ALBUM?
Well, I already told you most things about it....perhaps it is worth mentioning that with this album we are the most brutal melodic Death metal band hailing from the Netherlands ? I don't know what else to say about AED, except that it is definitely worth a listen if you are into fast and melodic metal.

AND THE FUTURE OF THE BAND?
The future looks bright...we are currently working on our new album which will probably be released early next year. All new songs have been written and things look very promising indeed! The new songs sound very brutal and fast, but we also have written a couple of mid paced tracks which show an improvement in song writing when comparing them to older songs from Detonation, I actually can't wait to get our 2nd album released, it's going to be darker, more varied and simply better than our debut!

ANY TOURING PLANS SCHEDULED?
Not at the moment, except from a couple of loose gigs here in the Netherlands. We have done a European tour last February with Dimension Zero from Sweden, which was a big success and a really cool experience! Hopefully we'll be able to do another tour with them or another band when our 2nd album hits the stores!

ANY LAST REMARKS?
Yes, thank you for this interview! To all the readers, please feel free to check out our debut "An Epic Defiance", and if you already know it by heart, hang on a few months and wait for the follow up album, it is going to be a real killer!!

For more ifnos:
http://www.osmoseproductions.com/
http://detonation.wingsofdeath.nu/

EMANUELE GENTILE

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