A little less than a year ago, my buddy Leif Jensen of Dew-Scented asked me to help write a new Dew-Scented album. He told me, he pretty much reached the point in his career where he wanted to do a record with people that he had always wanted to work with, but never really happened somehow. He didn’t want to work with people who’s only benefit would be the fact that they were just available to be in a band. He told me he needed to be inspired and therefor work with people who would not only inspire himself, but also eachother. Oh yeah, and make an awesome thrashmetal album in the process! With that said, we left off on our musical journey.
Me and Leif go waaaaay back.. Actually… It dawns on me right now that we did our first tour together, this week 16 years ago exactly! That was my first tour ever. Me and my best friend Pascal, with whom I played in a local deathmetal band called Manifest, helped out Dew-Scented on a tour alongside Edge of Sanity, Lake of Tears and Sadist. Great memories of that tour and I made friendships that still last to this very day.
But back to the album….Together with a trimmed line-up that recorded the previous album, we started writing new material. A few months into the writing process some cracks started to show in the collaboration. Me and Leif already had a really good chemistry going and completed the first songs at a record-breaking pace. The rest of the lineup didn’t share the same chemistry, which left us consequently without a drummer and guitarplayer.
Without losing any sleep over it, I didn’t hesitate one minute to contact my friend Koen Herfst to handle drum duties for the album. I knew that his style and talent would fit perfect to the songs we had written up to that point. When we started demoing an rehearsing we could conclude that this indeed was the case.
Now with me being the sole guitarplayer in the band at that point, all songwriting duties where left up to me. And honestly, this was the coolest thing that could’ve happened! I had full artistic freedom to write and record a killer thrash album! Without having to compromise on anything for the sake of band democracy. Ideas for songs kept coming in. Leif and me shared the same vision and vibe for the album, and Koen’s drumming just naturally filled in all the blank spots, which made it a breeze to round up 10+ tracks for the album.
As we neared the final stage of writing tracks for the album, Koen brought in Joost vd Graaf to handle bass duties. This guy is, hands down, one of THE best bassplayers I ever had the chance to work with.
So there we were, january 2012. All songs written & demoed… we headed off to Germany to record ‘Icarus’ at the Soundlodge Studio with our good friend @Jorg Uken. After 2 weeks the end result turned out super. A dark, heavy and fast album displaying some stellar performances by everyone involved. All in all a unique experience which I never wouldn’t have wanted to miss.
Now that the album was recorded we all realized that the writing and recording was such a cool experience, that it would be cool to also do live shows together. We brought in our close friend Rory Hansen on guitar and started preparing for the live shows. This guy is a phenomenal guitarplayer and I can’t wait to see how these gigs are gonna turn out!
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