(What an obvious question) what's your opinion on "Ravenous"? Do you
consider it the best work you've managed to come up with so far? At least, I do...

- Thanks, that's really nice to hear! Well, the obvious thing for me to say now is: "yes, this is our best album". And what a surprise, that's just what I'm going to say! :)  No, really, we're very satisfied with the way his album turned out. It took us quite some time to get it finished, it was a difficult process, but now that's I've been able to take some distance from it, I think we could't have done a better job! We're 100 % satisfied with the result.

This one appears as the most fast-paced and brutal CD you've ever released, don't you think?

- Well, it was not a thing we planned to do conciously. It just happened that way. When our Roel left, we decided to go for a drummer who would be able to do all the things Roel could do and who would be able to go a bit faster, at some points. Tony was the obvious choice for us. However, we didn't adapt the songwriting to it and honestly, we didn't think it would turn out to be this fast.

Not the kind of usual "musical evolution" (at least, that's how THEY call it) for a modern death metal act... THEY are mostly striving towards more heavy metal-based crap nowadays...

- True, but there's also the opposite movement in death metal, that turns up the pace and goes for a more brutal style. Take for example bands like NILE, CRYPTOPSY and freaks like GORGUTS. Little to no melody there! I think with GOD DETHRONED we go in both directions simultaneously. On the one hand, the album is generally faster and more in your face, where on the other hand, I think the melodies on 'Ravenous' are stronger, more mature and more present than on the 'Grand Grimoire' and 'Bloody Blasphemy'. Looking at the album as
a whole, I 'd say the contrast between melodic parts and brutal parts in a bit bigger than on previous releases.

Has Tony (the drummer) influenced this metamorphosis?

- Actually, we tried to make sure that the drumming on this album was not too different from the previous albums. However, Tony did play a lot of fills and that makes it a bit more intense. Combined with the increased speed, which changes some riffs in essence, this might have an effect on the evolution you describe. He's a session drummer for this album and will remain so in the future. Most songs were already written before he came over to record them. He was involved in the creation of "Crown For The Morbid", which was created in the studio at the time when he was there.

Currently he's a NILE full-time member, isn't he?

- As far as I know, not really 100%. He's replacing their drummer  Pete Hammoura, who has a serious arm injury. It's not ertain if he'll be able to return, but there's a chance that he will. So, Tony's not a permanent member yet, for all I know.

This will be a huge problem for your band, I suppose...

- No, not really. It does take careful planning to combine our schedules, but Tony's very much willing to tour with us. We're a flexable band who have the opportunity to choose from several good tours, so we just pick out the ones that suit us all best. And in case Tony's not able to join us because of a NILE tour, we have a couple of other candidates who can fill in for him, so I don't see any  problems arising in the near future.

What's your opinion on the band he took part in formerly, the ANGELCORPSE?

- I very much like their last CD 'Inexorable'. Very intense album, with some great inventive drumming! There's some brilliant grind parts, where Tony uses techniques that I've never before heard applied in a band. It's a shame they split up...

What's your attitude to the present Dutch death metal scene in general?

- After a period of stagnation, I've noticed the death metal scene in
Holland is slowly growing again. You see the development that a couple of older, more experienced bands rise above the masses (like ALTAR, CONSOLATION, SINISTER, us, etc.). Underneath these bands, a lot of talented, new bands are forming, which are bound to get noticed sooner or later. Some examples are PLEURISY, KATAFALK ("hearse" in Russian - ED), AS IT BURNS, etc. It's about time this new Dutch death metal scene gets noticed a bit more internationally.

Getting back to the lineup again. Whom is the band comprised of at the moment?

- Well, there's Henri on guitar and vocals, the main man so to speak, there's Beef on bass and me, yours truly, on guitar. There's no drummer in the band right now, and we're not really acitvely looking for one either. Most Dutch drummers either lack the time or the talent, or they are so good that they already have one or more serious bands, which is no good for us. No, we're satisfied with the relationship we hav with tony and as I said, we have other drummers, also Americans, standing by just in case. So, for now, we'll leave it as it is.

Why did Roel, your previous drummer, leave GOD DETHRONED?

- There was a couple of reasons for that. For one, he got a promotion at his job, which made his financial situation very good, but that would not allow him to tour more than a couple of weeks per year. He didn't want to hold us back, so he decided to quit. Also, his other band INHUME is beginning to be a powerful force in the grind scene and he wanted to devote more tme to them. Also, they rehearse a stone's throw from his house, whereas we live some four hours driving away from him. All in all, the choice for him was clear, and we respect his decision. He remains a close friend of ours.

"The Ancient Ones", yet one more CD, has been released under the banners of GOD DETHRONED lately. Any comments on that one?

- It contains previously unreleased old material, an unreleased, uncensored video of a song of the first CD, some live tracks from the 'Christhunt' CD presentation and the old 'Chrishunt' demo. A lot of people who are familiar with the demo like it more than the first CD. So, it was an obvious choice to re-release this demo, together with the other rare stuff of the old day for the fans. Henri released it on his label Cold Blood Industries. It nicely bridged the gap between 'Bloody Blasphemy' and 'Ravenous'.

GOD DETHRONED definitely is a kind of band with 666% antichristian attitude... the lyrics of yours are no less blasphemous, so... I guess you know what the question is, don't you?

- When G.D. was formed in the early '90's, Henri and his fellow bandmembers were living in typical small Dutch villages on the countryside, drenched in conservatism and extreme christian lifestyle, the church in every way in the centre of the community. They grew up amidst intolerance and of course this influenced them in their choice of topics and music. This style and message was also influenced by the tremendous power of the rapidly expanding,
revolutionary deathmetal scene of that time, with bands like MORBID ANGEL and ENTOMBED arriving on the scene. Nowadays, we try to approach the antichristian topic in a bit more humoristic, sarcastic way, but our disgust and mistrust in organized religion remains to this day.

A couple of tunes off "Ravenous" strike as undoubtedly stupendous ones, so let's talk about some of them, such as, for example, "Swallow The Spikes", "The Poison Apple" and "The Iconoclast Deathride"...

- "Swallow The Spikes" projects all the christian intolerance and all the torture and killing by man 'in God's name' on a reverend, who gets punished for his hypocrisy and abuse of power, for his every sin, in an awful way. "The Poison Apple" is about Eve in the Garden of Eden. The good 'ol serpent Serpentio tries to persuade her to eat from the forbidden fruit on the tree of Wisdom, while at the same time he's also interested in eating the fruit of Eve, hehehe! "The Iconoclast Deathride" is pretty much about the desruction of all the mages, riches and power of the church. These are the three songs with the most anti-Christian lyrics. Other songs are about post-nuclear life ("Winter Campaign 2002") and the amazing world of insanity
("The Crown For The Morbid", "The Mysteries That Make You Bleed).

As far as I know, some of the lyrics off your former albums are based on the biblical passages...

- Yep, true. Take for example "The Poison Apple" or "Under A Silver Moon" on 'Grand Grimoire'. On tracks like these we try to give our own, alternative, humoristic or down to earth version of certain bible pasages. You see, the Bible is what you make of it, you can extract some pretty valuable lessons from it, probably, but it was not written to be taken literally, so we give our interpretation of the stories. It's fun to do, and generates extreme responses from organized Christian society, which makes it all the more fun
to keep doing it!

Holland has a reputation of quite liberal country, however it seems like it doesn't concern religion. Have you ever had any problems with censorship? The rumors say that that your debut album's cover was censored or something like that...

- Holland is a pretty liberal coutry, also in a religious sense, but there's always exceptions to the rule. On the highest levels, it's no problem, but outside of the cities, in a lot of rural towns, the churches have retained much of their power. They've tried to ban our shows a couple of times, usually during times of community elections, when the small right-wing christian political parties try to show the people what they stand for at all cost. They even tried to get one of our shows banned by going all the way to the top, the government, but they were waved away like small children, hehehe! Of course, all this nonsense gave us free publicity, as the press jumped on it like vultures. But usually, we're left alone. As for the artwork of the first CD, it was censored by our German label Shark records at that time, because it depicted a rather distasteful dead rat on it. So, this was not a religiously oriented decision. I really don't expect any more trouble in Holland,  since they're used to us here. However,
Germany is another matter, since censorship is much more of an issue there than it is here.

You have shot "Under The Golden Wings Of Death" video some time ago... Did it turn out the way you expected?

- Yeah. I remember seeing it a quite a few of times on national music television. The artists who were also responsible for the artwork of the 'Grand Grimoire' album and the inside photos of the 'Bloody Blasphemy' album made the clip. We were not involved in the making of the clip, only Henri appeared in it a couple of times. We gave them carte blanche, since we knew their work and were convinced it would turn out great.  They were under considerable time pressure, so the result didn't turn out as good as they had hoped. Next time I'm sure they'll do an even better job!

You've done a USA tour with CANNIBAL CORPSE last year; was it a good experience?

- Man, that was a dream come true! We had toured with Cannibal before and we got along really well. So they asked us to join them on their U.S. tour. An honour, but we didn't expect to get much of a response there However, we were mistaken: every night (about 30 shows) was a revelation, with great responses, huge pit, lots of stagedivers and we sold a lot of merchandise. Also, because we slept in hotels and travelled in a van at daytime, we got to see more of the country than any tourist gets to see. We travelled all across the country, more than 20.000 kilometers and saw the Grand Canyon, Statue Of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge, Meteor Crater in Arizona, Niagra Falls, etc. As you can understand: an experience to last us a lifetime!

Any plans regarding possible USA and European tours?

- Yes, we'll be on the next No Mercy festivaltour through central Europe and are planning to arrange a European headliner tour in the Fall or Winter of this year. We're hoping to be able to play in Spain and Protugal too, since we've never had the opportunity to play there before. Another U.S. tour is scheduled for the Fall as well, but I have no details yet.

You've played in Japan as well...

- That was an awesome experience. The U.S. was a dream come true, Japan wasn't, because we had'nt even thought of dreaming of ever going there. We didn't believe it could ever be possible. Japan is so different from all we have see and experienced that it would take me two more pages to describe it all. Different world and a different audience. We did three gigs there in the three biggest cities of the country, saw a lot of the culture, ate only Japanese food and had a wonderful time.

Do you still consider GOD DETHRONED an underground band?

- Yes, and we will always be an underground band. Any metal band that
struggles for recognition, doesn't sell millions of records and isn't hyped on a large scale to me remains an underground band. We are no different. We still rely on the underground a lot and are thankul for its support!

Lastly...; I guess you're interested in medieval history... would you
like to take part in one of the medieval wars if there was such an opportunity?

- No, I think I'd travel further back in time. I'd like to take part in the struggles between the ancient Romans and the many Germanian tribes in what would later become Holland. I find this historical period tremendously interesting, since so much remains unknown of life and battle in those times.

Thank you very much for your time...

- You're welcome. Thanks for your interest and the interview. I hope to see you and your readers on tour soon! Stay metal!