{"id":5446,"date":"2016-08-26T16:03:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T23:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/?p=5446"},"modified":"2016-08-26T16:05:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T23:05:32","slug":"doomier-than-death-asphyx-vocalist-talks-about-new-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/2016\/08\/26\/doomier-than-death-asphyx-vocalist-talks-about-new-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Doomier Than Death: Asphyx Vocalist Talks About New Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview by Nathan Hernandez<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ever since their resurrection in 2007, Dutch death-doom pioneers Asphyx have been as inspired and powerful as they’ve ever been in their three-decade history, as proven by post-reunion albums ‘Death … The Brutal Way’ (2009) and ‘Deathhammer’ (2012). Fast-forward to 2016, Asphyx have been hard at work on the follow-up effort, and are finally ready to unveil their ninth full-length studio record ‘Incoming Death’ via Century Media Records on September 30th 2016. Our writer Nathan Hernandez recently spoke to vocalist Martin van Drunen at length about the album and much more. Enjoy the in-depth conversation below and while you’re at it, listen to the crushing\u00a0new Asphyx track embedded within.<\/p>\n

So, first things first, we have\u00a0to talk about the new record ‘Incoming Death’. It\u2019s very rare for me to be blown away by a newer death metal record. But this album does it for me. It\u2019s been four years since ‘Deathhammer’. Why did it take so long to put out a new record? Generally, I think that\u2019s a good thing because usually you get a quality release like with ‘Incoming Death’.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah true, but normally the thing is, Asphyx would take two years for an album which I think is OK for a death metal band. If you were to name a good progressive band like Rush, I think those guys need a little bit more time since they are fantastic musicians, but we are playing death metal or death\/doom or whatever. The reason it took us four years was of course we had to deal with the fact that Bob couldn\u2019t play in the band anymore , as he wanted to spend more time with his family, which is normal if you have children,\u00a0so first we had to look for a replacement.\u00a0Luckily for us, it became Husky from Desaster and he was actually the only one that really fitted in well. First thing he had\u00a0to deal with was\u00a0to learn the whole repertoire. He is an Asphyx fan and always has been, so he knew the songs, but it\u2019s different to play it with the band live and in the practice room. We have a huge range of songs that we choose from to play live and we never want to have the same set over and over, like some bands do. You just get boring and then you just want to surprise your fans like, “Wow, they never played that song before”. So it took us overall I think one-and-a-half to two years till Husky knew like thirty songs, and it\u2019s also because he\u2019s a German and we are all Dutch. So for him to practice it takes like a three or four hour drive. So he couldn\u2019t practice like “Oh let\u2019s meet on a Thursday evening and go for it”. So it wasn\u2019t all that easy. In total, writing the whole album and finishing it, that\u2019s what took us like two years and all the rest was focusing on the live shows and doing all kinds of stuff and learning together all the old material we play live. So that\u2019s why it took four years. But as you said, we took our time too. It\u2019s not like we go “Now the world or our fans need another Asphyx record”. It\u2019s just when you are ready and you think you have really good material to deliver a good album where everybody is happy about. First of all the band itself and then you should really start think about recording things. Otherwise\u00a0it\u2019s just like, put a record on the market and that\u2019s it, but no, that\u2019s not how it works for us.<\/p>\n

What I really like about this record is it\u2019s quality death metal. Do you feel this record is a natural progression since ‘Death … The Brutal Way’?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, very much. I can say a lot but I think it is because if you compare it with the songwriting of Paul, and also especially on this one where they improved the production and the mastering and the mixing and the overall sound together with Dan. They really worked a lot on it this time and took their time also, and I think it wasn\u2019t as easy but we did improve from the sound of ‘Deathhammer’ too. We\u00a0created the sound that\u2019s so important to Asphyx, to have that Asphyx sound and that Asphyx atmosphere but yeah, it did evolve if you can call it that, for a band like us.<\/p>\n

You know, my problem with a lot of modern death metal bands is that there is no focus on the atmosphere or the songwriting. Do you feel that\u2019s like a problem with the modern bands in general?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think so. There are certain younger bands I really like. A lot of people come after shows to see me and they say \u201cHey, this is my band, here\u2019s a CD\u201d and I always do listen to it and most of it I\u2019m like “meh”. You know, it doesn\u2019t really get me excited. They try hard but there’s something just missing. Something you miss is kind of a song structure, it\u2019s not that difficult to write a song with a kind of a structure that you can actually just recognize. So this is a song and it\u2019s different from the other songs that you wrote but it’s\u00a0still a song too. For us that\u2019s very important, because the bands that we like ourselves and still listen to, they did that too, you know. May that be old Venom, Possessed, Slayer or Celtic Frost or something, or Motorhead or Kiss, it doesn\u2019t really matter. With all the songs these bands were creating, they had a kind of a structure and we just have that in ourselves too. For this album we didn’t plan to write a fast song a slow song, it\u2019s very natural and in the end we were lucky this album turned out with a lot of variety. We have fast songs, we have up-tempo pace,\u00a0heavy metal pace, we got doom paces and all that kind of stuff in it, and it was not even planned, it was not intentional. It was just spontaneous instinct kind of feeling that Asphyx has in the band. I miss that sometimes with a lot of bands. It\u2019s hard for them to get their own style and get a kind of sound that\u2019s very recognizable. What\u2019s important is that a lot of singers really sound alike and you put them on and you can\u2019t hear the difference between the singer I just heard and the other one. It\u2019s not that I want to talk about the whole \u201cgood ol’ times\u201d and all of that but there was a really big difference. You could really hear people like Jeff Becerra or you can hear it’s Tom Araya, John Tardy or you can hear it\u2019s me or Chuck Schuldiner. You can name all these brutal vocalists but they all have their particular kind of voice and you can hear that\u2019s them, that\u2019s their style, their voice and that\u2019s what I miss sometimes with vocalists nowadays.<\/p>\n

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The title ‘Incoming Death’, if I remember correctly, you said was a reference to incoming shelling like if you were in the trenches hearing the artillery coming. The Song ‘Division Brandenburg’, is that about the German Special Forces unit during WWII?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly, the reason I came up with this was the beginning of the song has a sort of a twilight riff and I thought “Wow, this is a fantastic way of styling it”. I have a fantastic book written in German by a German author who wrote about it, and I was just blown away by what this first commando unit really did and how trained and well-equipped they were, and also how high the casualties were and they are completely forgotten. Because everything was completely secret and probably the highest decorated soldiers in the whole German army really, they were trained in more than just one language so after the war they just slipped away into another country knowing the language and just vanished. So yeah, it’s about that.<\/p>\n

Is the song ‘Eisenbahnm\u00f6rser’ about the Paris gun? Or what is that song about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘Morser’ means mortar and ‘Eisenbahn’ means railroad, so it was a railroad mortar. The Germans had these huge mortars and huge railway guns. That\u2019s what it\u2019s about. They only used it on siege of the Russian city of Sevastopol because of its fortification they could only bomb with those guns. The guns were too plump, way too expensive and vulnerable for air attacks. But it\u2019s something you see coming and it\u2019s like “what the hell is this shit!” (laughs)<\/p>\n

To go back a bit, in 2008 is when you came back to Asphyx. For people that don\u2019t know they did a record ‘On the Wings of Inferno’ in 2000, so it was a while before Asphyx got moving again. How did that all come together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically, Party-San Festival, which is an extreme festival in the Eastern part of Germany, they only do death metal and some black and some thrash, so all of the extreme things. No nu-metal, no whatever, there\u2019s no heavy metal there. There\u2019s no poser crap, it\u2019s really just a true kind of festival. The promoter ask the visitors which band do you prefer to seen next year, and for years it was Asphyx on number one. So they kept on mailing us like all the time and asking us what we think. We would say “It\u2019s impossible because you know Eric is not going to play. He\u2019s completely not into it”. Until we found Paul and the first thing Bob thought, “No, without Eric it\u2019s not going to happen”. and I agreed with him but then we were like, why not give it a try at least, and then Paul just blew us away with the sound and all we had to do was ask Wannes again back because he did a good job in the band and always been very loyal and that\u2019s how we did it.\u00a0Then we said, “OK, let\u2019s just do this 2007 Party-San show then and that\u2019s it”. But then the whole thing was just so overwhelming, it was like a roller coaster we got into and never got out. Now, it still keeps on rolling. We had no idea what we set in motion for ourselves and for the fans. From that moment on, it was all about show offers and everyone wanted to see us in every country in the world and every continent. And then we slowly had this ‘Death \u2026 The Brutal Way’ single out and we thought “Well, OK, why don\u2019t we try and make an album?” That\u2019s how it\u00a0became the first Asphyx album since 2000. From there, as I said, it just kept on going, and yeah\u00a0we like what we do and from what we hear from the fans, they really like that we are back and not disappointing them since ‘Death … The Brutal Way’ at all. So\u00a0that\u2019s where we are now.<\/p>\n

Asphyx was one of the first death\/doom bands. I\u2019ve always been curious about what the band’s biggest influences were when it came to doom?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, definitely older Black Sabbath, but also the Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio and then there\u2019s Trouble, who are now going under the name of The Skull. You\u2019ve got Winter as a doom band and probably St. Vitus too. I was really pleased actually that some of those bands came out to see us at festivals. So yeah, there you got a few of the doom things. And of course, what people forget sometimes when they talk about death metal is\u00a0that it has a lot of doom influences too. Back in those days a lot of death metal bands used just like simple slow parts. It was part of the whole genre. But I think that\u2019s where you get the main doom influences, and perhaps Hellhammer had some doom stuff too. But yeah, those are the main influences, unless\u00a0I’m\u00a0forgetting anything. Well, may be the first Paradise Lost album\u00a0too,\u00a0but that came out at the same time\u00a0we started.<\/p>\n