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Interviews
The Monolith Deathcult - Michiel Dekker
14/08/08 || Global Domination
Global Domination: Cheers and welcome to Global Domination, your band will now increase it’s popularity with 200% after this interview goes live. I trust you’re extremely familiar with GD since we’re all famous and stuff, just like you.
Michiel Dekker aka Wordfuhrer TMDC aka The Alpha and the Omega: Well, to be honest. We have never heard of Global Domination, you already noticed that I thought you were a USA magazine. Second; it is very lonely at the top of the Heavy Metal Olympus, I and you weren’t there.
Come to think of it, just like us, The Monolith Deathcult doesn’t seem to have gotten nearly enough of the recognition you deserve. Why do you think that is? Considering how awesome “Trivmvirate” is you should at least be on the level with Behemoth.
Well, Behemoth started already some 15 years ago as a very brackish
black metal band before they got the deserved status they have now. We
exist since 2003 and released just 3 albums and every album was a
milestone. We missed the support of a big label, but we didn’t have the
luck of being signed by a label like Metal Blade or Nuclear Blast. But
let’s see it from another point of view…
TMDC released all their albums on real record labels. I know plenty of bands which didn’t have that opportunity and were forced to release their stuff self-financed. We play just our music under our conditions. I realize that we break out of the narrowed unwritten laws and borders like “How to act like a metalhead” and “The do’s and don’ts in heavymetalmusic”. We love what we do and you don’t have to dive deep into the TMDC history to find the real reason why we never get signed by a big label… You will notice that Cold Blood Industries and Karmageddon Media both got bankrupted. We have a special relationship with record labels. TMDC could be compared with a swarm of locusts. We choose a label, eat away all their money, joy and happiness and leave them with nothing but an overwhelming sense of loss. Signing us will, in time, become a permanent loss of happiness. The Twilight-Vertieb label is extreme courageous and the guys have a total disdain for catastrophe and disaster. They sealed their fate by signing us and they are hopefully aware of the fact that all record companies who’ve ever worked with The Monolith Deathcult are completely bankrupt.
I think we aren’t on the same level as Behemoth, we are better. Our writing skills are better than theirs. Their last albums are very good but they sound almost the same. They use the same tricks and licks over and over again, but why should they change that? NEVER change a winning team. Cannibal Corpse is making the same album for already 10 years. Get our three albums and see what real development means.
You started out in 2002, what were the goals of the band then? Just have fun and get drunk or get signed and outsell Shakira?
Well, that is a difficult question. TMDC is a band who needs to be tickled to get into action and now, I am afraid, we have a problem. We made the perfect extreme metal album with TRIVMVIRATE. People from the whole musical spectrum like it, from the most obstinate Hate Eternal fan to my 12 year old students. At the moment we notice that the last resistance against TMDC is capitulating and even our most obstinate criticasters recognize our talents and bow their heads down for our appalling megalomania. We don’t drink, so what’s left for us?
With your latest album, I hope you’ll be able to get both drunk AND outsell Shakira, but since there’s no guarantees here in life I’ll just let you explain to all the readers why “Trivmvirate” should be bought and cherished by everyone on Earth.
- Because “Trivmvirate” is the best death metal release since the drying up of the Nile.
- Because “Trivmvirate” will be a fixed point for the future of death metal.
- Because “Trivmvirate” is for 95% written by me.
- Because “Trivmvirate” don’t follow a Zeitgeist, but IS the Zeitgeist.
- Because if you still need reasons after hearing it, you’re either deaf or a retard.
There are quite a lot of unorthodox details in your take on death metal; where did all the electronic passages come from, not to mention that robot-voice in “Deus ex Machina”. That’s some 80’s flavour right there!
Well, the robot voice is Decepticon Lieutenant Soundwave. It just
happened. For example, we played a sort of “Hell Awaits” riff with the
rolling 16th double basspart. Carsten started unexpectedly a sequencer
who triggered the bassdrum pattern. We had something like ”What the fuck
was that?!? Did you hear that? Let’s use that!”. I
had already for a long time the strong feeling that we must create a new
genre in extreme metal. In my opinion there was always a vacuum between
Ministry/Strapping Young Lad/Rammstein and Hate Eternal/Morbid
Angel/Nile. We are the missing link between the industrial and the
brutal side of metal. We filled in that gap with the style which can be
heard on “Trivmvirate”. That is another reason why “Trivmvirate”. sounds
so killer. We stole all the coolest stuff from every genre and mixed it
in one style. We, the Gods are back on earth.
Over all it seems like you invest quite some time in your lyrics, do you feel that it is something that more bands should pay attention to or is it just something you decided to do instead of watching porn in the tour bus?
I am a tutor in history on a high school and I study history. I just write lyrics about things which interests me and those things are mostly topics from historical events. I don’t understand why people have a big focus on our lyrics. In my opinion we aren’t doing anything special. Iron Maiden is using this sort of lyrical subjects already for 25 years.
I seem to remember reading some disclaimer from you guys when “The white crematorium” came out that you weren’t right wing or something. What was that all about?
We had to defend ourselves many times about right winged ideologies in the past. When you talk bad about the Islam, leftish people call you right winged. If we were right winged we should call the album “The Black Crematorium”. Besides the fact that most people are too retarded to give a good look at our lyrics is a point people never understand about us: yes, we write songs about atrocity such and such committed by regime this and that. Just the fact that we don’t explicitly condemn these atrocities doesn’t automatically mean we condone or endorse or in any way approve of these events. We state these in a neutral, matter of fact storyline with bits of possible personal viewpoints of those involved. Then we move on. When you open a good history textbook, you don’t see the authors constantly inserting dismissive adverbs and adjectives such as ‘terrible’, ‘inhuman’ and ‘atrocious’ all the time, right? Unfortunately, there are some decidedly unhealthy organizations out there (eg.: Metalheads Against Racism), which, despite their undoubtedly noble cause, went haywire in their devotion to ‘denounce’ people as racists. It kind of reminds of the statement George W. Bush made in 2002: “you’re with us, or you’re against us”. If you don’t explicitly state that you’re anti-racist and you write songs about certain delicate issues, you must be a racist, and boom, you’re a branded band. It doesn’t work that way. But until people will finally realize that there is no absolute black or white in these issues, we’ll probably stay part of the leftist axis of evil for ever. So be it.
So,
let’s get a little more personal. Since I don’t really know which one
of you will be answering my questions I’ll keep this pretty general, but
tell me something about your musical background. How did you get
started playing music (and metal in particular)? Did you grow up in a
musical home or did you have to discover things on your own?
I started as a young lad in drum corps where I played the snaredrum, In the meantime I did some organ and piano lessons. I did an exam in music in high school and picked up the guitar when I was 17. Then I played for some years in a Cradle of Filth like black metal band. After black metal became less popular I had to find out where the real money lies so I started with Martijn, Sjoerd and Robin The Monolith Deathcult to bring 400 years after the Dutch slave trade another atrocity upon mankind. And we succeeded.
Who are your favourite artists and do you feel they can be heard in your everyday playing?
Ehm, my favourites are Cradle of Filth, My Dying Bride, Slipknot, Laibach, Ministry, Slayer, Rammstein, Type O Negative, Morbid Angel, Skid Row and Guns n’ Roses to name a few. I can hear it in TMDC’s music and in our image. I mean, they way we act in the sensitive world of death metal isn’t very usual. It is funny to see how big evil death metal giants do a lot of boohoo when we provoke the death metal scene internally. We really like to fuck around and that is the Skid Row/GnR attitude we use from that sort bands.The statements we made are so grotesque and hilarious that you must be a total numskull for taking it 100% serious. People who take them seriously and make a furious reaction (preferably on our website, interviews or on Blabbermouth) are nothing more than fuel for our perfect oiled propaganda machine. I should learn to play the guitar like those bands, that would be better for everyone….
Got any other side-projects going? It’s mandatory for Scandinavian bands to have at least four side projects at all times, you know.
Not really, I reach complete musical satisfaction with TMDC.
As a sidenote …obviously your webmaster has the reading skills of a Microsoft Encarta proofreader because I noticed that on your website you had gotten 80/100 from “Global Domination USA”. I’m not sure if you refer to my review but if I may be a picky cunt I’d just like to say that the score was 8/10 and GD is not American but Swedish actually.
Well, that was my fault, I thought you were American.
Will there be any tours in support of the album? I for one would be very interested to see you guys pull off “Demigod” live. Preferably in the north of Sweden… like say, Umeå. You don’t mind playing for a couple of crates of beer and some slutty Swedish wenches (of manwhores, depending on your fancy. Bestiality is also legal here), do you?
We received a lot of tour offers but it is very difficult for Martijn and me to get off days outside the school holidays, so a tour must be very attractive for us to jump on it. We wait patiently for the ultimate telephone call.
Rate the following Dutch bands from 1-10 (1 being Teh Suck and 10 being Teh Fo’shizzle) and explain your score. And don’t worry about pissing of some of your countrymen; we both know that most of them are too doped up on weed to even speak.
Another misunderstanding. The Dutch aren’t doped. Foreigners are almost doped when they are in Holland. We laugh our asses off when we hear foreign bands talk on stage about our weeeeeeeeeed, and then they tell the crowd that they are sooooooo stooooooooooned and that the will smoke some moooooooreeeeeee weeeeeeeeeed in the tourbus. Smoking weed is for lowlifes, morons and hippies. Let me give you and your Swedish fellow musicians an advice. Don’t talk this shit on stage here in Holland, we are sooo bored about wankers who try to be cool by acting like a fucking junkie. If we visit a concert we want to see a fucking band and not a bunch of stoned losers.
The Occult:
It is Occult, not The Occult. I and hate thrash metal.
Legion of the damned:
Occult changed their name, not their music and I still hate thrash metal.
Gorefest:
Youth heroes and our buddies.
Asphyx:
Never heard of.
Nox:
Does Nox still exist?
Prostitute Disfigurement:
Very good band, but boring music. They already left the building.
God Dethroned:
Holland’s number one extreme metal band, youth heroes.
Hail Of Bullets:
Hail of Bullets is a great band, but I am afraid they will die of an old age before they hit the big success. Stephan Gebedi might be 60.
2 Unlimited:
Holland’s number one export product in the nineties.
Sinister:
Overrated.
So yeah, that’s about it… no more questions, you can get back to whatever it was you were doing before this inane interview landed in your mailbox. Thanks for the time and good luck with future endeavors!
http://www.monolith-deathcult.com
GD note: All pictures taken from their site without permission becoz we don’t give a fuck.
