How would you try to describe RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION to someone who has never heard you before?

- Well, in the beginning we described our music as "symphonic pagan metal", but I don’t think someone gets much wiser from that. I think you can describe it the best as a form of melodic/experimental mixture of black, doom and death metal. I think the best way to understand is listening to our music.

How, when and why was RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION spawned unto the earthly realms, and who are the characters behind the band? Furthermore, please provide us with full discography of yours.

- RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION started somewhere in may ’94 as a duo, just after the burial of the band PHLEGM, which we stopped due to an extreme lack of quality. Our intentions were to make the music we wanted: something refreshing and original. Because we didn’t find a drummer nor a keyboardplayer we used a computer to program the keyboard and drum parts. The line-up in that time was Martijn (guitar) and me, Bart (vocals). After the first demo we were enforced with Christophe (guitars) and Frédéric (bass). This was the line-up we recorded the 2 CDs with. Recently, after a short try-out with another drummer, we found Wouter (drums) and Koen (keyboards). The last 2 also play in SAGARIS. This makes us a sixpiece now.

Most of us are still students and are all between 19-25 years. We all have a lot of different interests considering lifestyle, music, studies. But most of us are into computers and metal.

Our complete discography:

1995
"Dark Pagan Wartunes Stray Above The Land Of Huarochiri" (55’) demo

1996
"Under The Spell Of The Mist" (55’) promo
Limited Split with Cosmic Interfluvium Of Silence (15’) demo
"Requiem / In Remembrance Of Your Gods..." (71’) CD

1997
"Onan" (limited livetape from the onan fest) (25’) demo
"Promo" (25’) promo

1999
"A Sun Revolution" (65’) CD

2000
"Promo" (15’) promo CD-R

Why do you still keep on recording at the SAD Studio? Let me admit that both CDs you have released so far possess incredibly weak production... And that horrible drummachine! Arh... You see, your music (disengaging from the sound quality) seems to be undoubtedly attractive and idea-rich to me, however those, let's say "studio drawbacks", spoil the whole thing!

- You’ll be pleased by the following information: the day’s of the drumming machine are over. The machine died and now we have a real drummer. The SAD studios were very interesting for us. We could do it on 12 tracks those days and it was in the garden of our guitar-player. Which made we could record for a low budget. If you go to a 32 track studio and you record a full-lenght CD it costs you at least 3000$, money we never had. In the SAD studios we had all the time (we normally recorded for more than 2 weeks). At the end we still think the sound-quality of our first CDs is still ok, considering that none of theme were mastered.

Last week we recorded 2 days in Hype studio’s for a promo (2 songs). We’re really pleased with the quality. If we have the money we surely will record there more.

Lyrically both, "Requiem..." and "A Sun Revolution", seem to barely touch the subject of occultism... What is your view on this phenomena? Have you ever practiced it yourself? What would you tell those who consider it to be the supreme power able to invert one-s life and those who claim it to be nothing but senseless tales intended for various teens?

- The lyrics on "Requiem..." mostly dealt with Aztec / Inca stuff in special and religions in general. If I see these lyrics now I really think they’re quite worthless. They were quite uninspired and at least not interesting. I don’t think it has ever dealt with occultism as I’m 100% atheistic. I do not believe in suppreme powers or transcendency and I neither believe in good / bad or other poor dualistic principles. But if you want to see occultism in it, that’s ok for me ...

On the second CD, lyrics are more about personal themes, things I feel and see... Maybe they’re better or they’re worse, I don’t care that much, I’m much more pleased with them.

What's the sense in using Flemish as the main language for the lyrics of yours? Patriotism? Any heathen alike messages? Bad English? Anything else?

- In fact it’s not Flemmish but Dutch. The people in the northern part of Belgium speak Dutch, however most of them speak mostly some dialect of it.

I started writing some lyrics in Dutch and I found out they were a lot better than the ones I wrote in English, simply because it’s my
mothertongue and indeed my English isn’t that superior. It has absolutely nothing to do with patriotism or nationalism because I absolutely don’t have any nationalistic feelings.

How's the scene in Belgium compared to the rest of Europe? Would you say that yours is better; moreover, figuratively speaking, do you have or did you have something others don't?

- The Belgian scene is ok. There are a lot of shows and zines and other people supporting the scene. It’s for sure a lot better than 5 years ago. Also Belgian bands are taken serious nowadays. For me, the best belgian bands for the moment are: IN-QUEST, MINDSTAB, LIAR, DEATH'S BRIDE, AGATHOCLES...

There are also enough shows and some places (Frontline) are really doing a good business like promoting the bands well. We’ll see in a couple of years if it was just a trend or if the attention and scene will survive.

How about discussing the label you work(ed) with for a while? What is that Resplendence Records? You see, I've never heard anything about them... Furthermore, you're now signed to Shiver Records, however overall situation doesn't seem to change, since they're extremely bad in promotion (at least, that's what it seems).

- Resplendence was the label of Frédéric (bass) and me. We released a couple of zines, compiltapes, split tapes and a lot of the RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION stuff. We stopped the label due to lack of time and lack of money.

Shiver Records is ok for us. I think the promotion Hans is doing is ok. In fact it does change a lot for us as we now don’t have to finance the pressing of the cd’s. We also don’t have to do the promotion and distrubition ourselves anymore which means we win a lot of time on that.

What's your most insane either dream or aim you'd like to achieve with the band? Aren't you disappointed with the fact RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION still is almost unknown worldwide?

- Maybe making the best album ever would be cool dream...

Anyway, we’re in it for the music, getting famous isn’t the main focus of the band. It would be cool if we could do some tours and get a lot more CDs sold. We’re still working on new songs and better music, so maybe one day...

If I'm not mistaken, you have managed to keep your band's lineup quite stable throughout years...

- Our line-up is quite stable. During those six years only one person left (our previous drummer, who was only 5 months in the band). The only thing we did is expanding the line-up. I think the main reason why we have a stable line-up is that we’re all friends and 100% behind the band.

There're plenty of people accusing black metal acts in using female voices, synths and stuff like that. Y'know, kinda "black metal should be raw". Therefore, your band can be considered a trendy one, don't you think so? What would you like to tell those, I mentioned above? I mean, what are YOUR principal arguments?

- I don’t have any principal arguments. But: We want to make the music we like. We started using keyboards 6 years ago, in a time not that many bands did it as nowadays. We don’t claim to be black metal, or doom. We do not like labels at all. And we never used female vocals. I really think people should start making the music they want and not making music to be part of a scene, a "lifestyle"...

Perhaps, it would sound too pathetically, however it was a friend of mine who wanted me to ask you this question: do you follow the way of the warrior? What do you think of a man's (I mean, "man as a male person") status in modern society, when majority follows the "leader as the sheep it's shepherd, while the notion of "warrior" disappears, becomes amorphous, turning the men into the same amorphous beings...?

- Why should I follow the way of the warrior? We’re in the year 2000, not 1302. Times has changed, for the better and the worse, and I don’t want to spend my days in nostalgy, dreaming about those times of hunderds of years ago which should come back (it seems like you've got this question wrong. "The way of the warrior" was meant as a philosophical notion... - ED).

I think most people who long for those warrior-days don’t know that much about history. If you see how people lived in the middle ages, well, I think we’re ways better of than them.

Do you know anything regarding Russia? What is your attitude to the country of mine as well as it's people? Any Russian bands you've heard lately?

- I don’t know much about Russia, but of what I see through the media, it doesn’t seem to be a very cool place to live right know. My attitude toward people is always the same.

This is the point we should stop, don't you think so? Hope, you do. Anyway, type in few final words or anything else you'd like...

- Thanks Kai for the interview, we really appreciate it. We really want to thank all the people who supported / hated us during all those years (hmm, at least one cliché in the interview).

If you want RHYMES OF DESTRUCTION merchandise, we still have the following available:

"Requiem / In Remembrance Of Your Gods" (Cd #1) 12 us$/350 Bfr/18 DM
"A Sun Revolution" (Cd #2) 550 Bfr / 28 DM / 15 Us$
Longsleeves (front/back/sleeve print) 650 Bf / 35 DM / 18 us$

All prices post and packaging included.

Contact us:

Bart Marescaux
Mgr. De Haernelaan 18
B-8500 Kortrijk
Belgium

Email: marescaux.vincke@pandora.be

URL: http://www.dma.be/p/lugburz/rhymes/