Interview With God Dethroned
By Chelf
An important part of the Dutch black metal scene, God Dethroned originally formed as a death metal band. When they reformed in 1996, they switched to blackened death metal and stayed that way until the release of Into the Lungs of Hell, when they shifted to melodic death metal. Continually getting high ranks in the metal charts these guys sure know what they are doing. On February 7th, they will release their new full-length, Illuminati, album via Metal Blade Records their most varied material to date. With a cover by Polish master Michał ‘Xaay’ Loranc (Nile, Evocation), Illuminati is conversant in the tenets of death metal – experimental where it needs to be, and indomitable in spirit. It’s the kind of album that will bestow the Dutch heroes with accolades and push them across Europe and then the rest of the globe throughout 2020. Song titles like ‘Spirit of Beelzebub’, ‘Broken Halo’, ‘Book of Lies’ and ‘Satan Spawn’ leave very little to the imagination as to what to expect from the band from a lyrical point of view.
But we do have other kinds of questions. Lots and lots of questions.
Hi Henri.
- You once mentioned that coming back into the metal game was easier back in the day because death metal was still a big thing, but now it’s a bit harder because new sub-genres in metal have become big, such as female-fronted bands. That could be interpreted in two ways: Either meaning that back then there was less competition or that today the scene has been oversaturated with new abundant content so that no one really pays attention to what the bands do. Or maybe both?
Yeah, it’s a bit of both I think. When death metal became popular by the end of the ’80s, there was not much else. You had heavy metal, you had thrash metal, speed metal, maybe black was already there but since then so many sub-genres of metal came about. Female-fronted bands, deathcore, there are a lot of new hypes coming fast, going away fast but it means that there’s so much content so many bands having releases. And everybody knows that the sales are dropping nowadays, there are streams which is a great thing of course but it has become a great battle, to stay alive between everything else that’s out there. And death metal has become just one of the subgenres of metal, and it’s not as popular today as it was back in the day. So when we had a break in 2012 until 2015, we came back and of course, people still remember us and we still could do a lot of shows and a lot of festivals but it’s more difficult to fight for your space, to get a spot on a festival. It’s not so easy anymore even if you are an established name, in the metal scene.
But we do have other kinds of questions. Lots and lots of questions.
Hi Henri.
- You once mentioned that coming back into the metal game was easier back in the day because death metal was still a big thing, but now it’s a bit harder because new sub-genres in metal have become big, such as female-fronted bands. That could be interpreted in two ways: Either meaning that back then there was less competition or that today the scene has been oversaturated with new abundant content so that no one really pays attention to what the bands do. Or maybe both?
Yeah, it’s a bit of both I think. When death metal became popular by the end of the ’80s, there was not much else. You had heavy metal, you had thrash metal, speed metal, maybe black was already there but since then so many sub-genres of metal came about. Female-fronted bands, deathcore, there are a lot of new hypes coming fast, going away fast but it means that there’s so much content so many bands having releases. And everybody knows that the sales are dropping nowadays, there are streams which is a great thing of course but it has become a great battle, to stay alive between everything else that’s out there. And death metal has become just one of the subgenres of metal, and it’s not as popular today as it was back in the day. So when we had a break in 2012 until 2015, we came back and of course, people still remember us and we still could do a lot of shows and a lot of festivals but it’s more difficult to fight for your space, to get a spot on a festival. It’s not so easy anymore even if you are an established name, in the metal scene.
- You chose to self-record in the confines of your home. I can tell the numerous pros of that. Could you spill the tea on the cons as well?
Well, the first negative thing I have to say is that your house becomes a mess. Guitars everywhere, cables everywhere, you can’t live properly for a couple of months. Then you do nothing else than record and play guitar and sing.
So there’s no proper time to cook food. So you end up having lots of junk food.
One of the main advantages is that you don’t have time pressure. At least not as much as in a studio. But you should not forget to finish the task at a reasonable timeframe. But Metal Blade always gives us a deadline so we don’t have unlimited time and that’s a good thing. But to be able to put so many details in music, as we did with this album you need to work without time pressure. When I play my guitar I know exactly what I’m doing but when I’m doing special things with vocals and keyboards I have to experiment and figure out what’s best. To do that in the studio would be so expensive! Then you would have to decide not to do it at all or make very quick decisions. And we needed a lot of money for the videos so this helped us to divide the money a little bit better.
- You filmed a very occult video for Illuminati. Do you keep anything as memorabilia from the music videos that you are shooting?
Yeah! I kept the ring that I’m wearing! I also get to keep some of the props because we made a lot of stuff for the video like the caskets and the capes. It’s nice to have something! We also used the same items for the second video and there will be a third one as well. This one will be more like a band video because the first two were like short movies. If you want to get a lot of viewers you need to promote, you need to advertise. And that goes through Google. So the downside here is that there so much violence in those videos that we can’t advertise that. So we need to make a proper band video that we can promote and that leads to more views and more exposure for the other videos as well.
Thank you so much, Henri!
Thank you for a really nice interview!
Chelf on behalf of MHF magazine
God Dethroned online:
https://www.facebook.com/goddethronedofficial
https://goddethroned.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/villavampiria
MHF Magazine/Chelf
