Rockezine.com interview with Detonation on Oct 26, 2005

with Koen Romeijn on Oct 26, 2005

After a long, very long time the second album of the Dutch melodic death/thrash formation Detonation, "Portals To Uphobia" finally has been released by Osmose Productions. The follow up to the successful debut album "An Epic Defiance" was plagued by all sorts of misfortune which would have been reason enough for a lot of bands to just give up. Detonation however are fighters and are already thinking about the third one!. But first singer/guitar player Koen was kind enough to answer my questions.
		Hi Koen, good to hear from you again after the interesting listening session earlier this year. How are you guys doing? Very good actually. “Portals to Uphobia” is by now finally released here in Europe as well as in the USA. We’re very busy at the moment promoting the album and arranging gigs for the upcoming period.
		It’s has been a rough year for Detonation I guess? First Thomas was injured, the mastering of “Portals…..” was not right and had to be done again thus forcing Osmose to release it late and then you were dropped of the Decapitated/Gorerotted tour. Calling it a rough year is pretty much an understatement...it seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong. It indeed started with Thomas his arm injury, he got it after our European tour in 2004. He had just obtained a new job at an office which mad him work with computers all day. This was new to him and it didn’t take long before he developed a pain in his arm, but he ignored it. Some time later Thomas let us know that he wasn’t able to rehearse any more for a while due to the pain. We actually thought it would heal within a few weeks, but unfortunately it took about 6 months before he started to recover. By then we had already decided to postpone the recordings of “Portals” to further notice. We also still had to write about 4 or 5 songs to the get the album filled. Finally after waiting for a long time Thomas told us he was ready to record the drum takes, and we immediately entered Excess studios. This was in December last year. The recordings took about 2 weeks, and we wanted to start mixing straight after that, but unfortunately the co-owner of the studio Dennis turned very Ill, and Hans had to take over his duties as well. We were forced to postpone the mixing to January, and when it finally took place the days had to be spread over several weeks due to Hans his schedule. Then the mastering had to be done, but since still didn’t have enough time, we had it done by Robbe K from Disavowed. This also took some extra time, and by then we realized that it was impossible to still release the album on April 25th. We discussed things over with Osmose and they decided to postpone the release to September 12th. And to top all that we were kicked off our most recent European tour...not because the other bands couldn’t stand us no more, but because the tour bus had 18 beds instead the necessary 22 for this tour. We slept the first 4 nights on the floor of the bus and in the luggage compartments, but then the organization decided to kick one band off the tour. The bus wasn’t insured with so many people in it, and they decided to kick Detonation off the tour. Why us and not the first band (DAM, rvdb)is actually still a mystery to us, but there’s was nothing we could say at that moment to make them change their minds...we tried of course, but without success. When we got home after the show in Gent/Belgium, we instantly decided not to let our heads down and to do this our own way. We rented a car and arranged our own transportation to the shows, so we could still do a lot of cool shows from this tour. In the end we managed to do 14 out of the 28 scheduled shows, and those shows were absolutely great.
		What exactly went wrong with the mastering the first time? It just wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. Robbe made several versions from which we could choose the direction in sound we wanted. I didn’t have the possibility to be present at the mastering sessions, but in the end it turned out great, it just took a little longer than normal I guess, that’s basically it.
		On the listening session the tracklist only mentioned nine tracks, as I recall it correctly, yet the final version has ten tracks? Where did that extra track come from? It were actually 8 tracks you listened to that day. 2 songs still had to be mixed and finished, that’s why we couldn’t let people hear them at the time. If I remember correctly, it were the songs “Solitude Reflected” and “Beyond the Margin”.
		Eventually you did several gigs on the Decapitated/Gorerotted tour. Was this the first foreign “tour” you guys went on? No, we’ve been on a European tour before. We did 11 shows with Dimension Zero last year, but it wasn’t really an extensive Euro tour, because 7 from the 11 shows were in Germany. But still, that really was a great tour, and especially a good one for our first nightliner experience.
		Is there any interest for Detonation outside Holland? Did you sell a lot of merchandise for instance? We are doing a lot better in countries such as England and France than we are doing in Holland actually. England is absolutely the best market for our band at the moment, the fans are really crazy and dedicated over there. We also sold a lot of Cd’s there last time. But our own country is also becoming better for us lately, it seems like people are finally picking up our albums and giving us more credit than before, it just takes a lot of time and effort to establish something here.
		Now that the album finally has been released, how are the reactions from press and fans? Really overwhelming I must say! We’ve got tons of reviews already, and most of them are really positive. The fans have also been very supportive towards the new stuff, almost everybody seems to think it’s a better album than our debut, which was already very positively reviewed. In general, I think it’s always great to see the increase in interest in your band after the release of a new album, keeps you motivated!
a lot of people finally seem to understand that we are not a Dark Tranquility tribute band		How bad were the Dark Tranquility comparisons this time? Not that bad actually ;) Luckily for us, a lot of people finally seem to understand that we are not a DT tribute band, but Detonation. We have more or less our own style I think, and a lot of reviews have been supportive of that opinion as well, so that’s a good thing to see. You know, it all just started with that damn sticker on our debut album, saying that “An Epic Defiance” could have been the follow up to DT’s “the Gallery”. That sticker was only meant by our label to show people what kind of music we more or less played, to get them interested, nothing more. But apparently a lot of metal heads took it too literally, it wasn’t meant to be that way. But I’ve said it a thousand times before, and I’m going to say it again; listen to our albums and judge for yourself. And don’t follow somebody else’s opinion without having heard our music yourself, that’s how simple it is.
		Portals… was a long time in the making. In hindsight would you do things different? Or was the delay unavoidable? The making itself didn’t really take that long actually, we just had a lot of bad luck the last 2 years. But you know, it’s all behind us now. I’m glad the album is finally out and that we can start looking at the future for this band. And I believe it might just be a very bright future if things continue like this, at least we’re more motivated than ever before.
		Are there already some ideas for a new album? Indeed there are. We already have 8 new songs written and finished to put on the 3rd Detonation album! Due to the delay of the album, we had plenty of time to start working on new material, and of course we did. We had to do something with all the frustration and stress we’ve been building up ;) The new stuff is turning out very good I must say, pretty much in the vein of “Portals” but with more varied influences and an even more own identity, and groovy as hell.
		You and Thomas are also playing in Cardamon, a rock band. I guess the music will be more mainstream then Detonation. What if this will become the next big thing after let’s say Within Temptation. Would that be the end of Detonation? Haha, of course not. Detonation has my priority at the moment, but if Cardamon gets successful, I will just have to adjust my schedules, nothing else. Detonation will continue as long as we’re able to, the musical style is exactly what I’m looking for in music. Would be great however to get a little success for once with one of my bands, I’ve been doing this shit for more than 11 years now. I desperately need money to buy me some new equipment! ;)
		I saw you making your television-debut on a regional station. The program ofcourse depicted metalfans and -bands as mindless fucks. Did you get any reactions on that broadcast? Unfortunately yes, haha...guess I was stupid to actually answer his questions, but this guy had been harassing me all night if he could do an interview with me. I said no a couple of times, and when I eventually agreed he asked me to perform another song...while Gorerotted was on stage playing! I told him how the hell I was supposed to do that, I basically told him to fuck off...then an hour later he asked me again, and I answered his questions reasonably to get rid of him...it seemed like the only way haha. I’ve seen the footage in the meantime, at least half of my comments are cut out, as you might have suspected ;)
		Anything to add? Some news updates, random ramblings or threats? Yeah, we’re planning to do another UK tour in a few months, hopefully we’re going to combine forces with Fuelblooded this time, stay tuned for updates about this matter...furthermore we’re very busy with promoting the new album and writing more new songs for the 3rd album, and we have some Dutch shows scheduled next month. November 5th in de Melkweg/Amsterdam with Kutschurft, Flesh Made Sin and Brutus amongst others and on the 12th of November we’re headlining in Popfront in Zwolle.
		Last minute question: Yesterday the sad message of the quitting of Orphanage was made public. What do you think of this decision? Coming both from Utrecht must have meant that you knew each other well. The guys from Orphanage are pretty close friends of Detonation, especially George since he’s a band mate of Mike in another band (Kutschurft, rvdb). So we kind of already knew this was coming and that there were problems within the band. I believe it was a wise decision to stop, even though I have always highly appreciated the bands’ music. But the band never found a steady line-up the last period of time, I would have done the same. Hopefully Guus will remain active in the music business, he probably will, he’s a great musician. George has plenty of other bands though, he’ll manage to keep himself busy ;)
		(Roy van den Brink)