Interview:


At first please tell us where the band name comes from. Please present us the band members. Are you guys friends for a long time, or music just united you? Have you had any experiences in previous bands before?
The name Daemonos is a mixture of the Greek and Latin word for Demon, granted to us by the elder Daemons from the Daemonium Empire. The band consists of 4 members at the moment:
Mike Vogels – Vocals
Robin Ritzen – Guitars
Tom Bronneberg – Guitars
Rik Ritzen – Drums
The band was formed by the Ritzen brothers as they both had the feeling of doing something with a more heavier music. Being their first band they found some members who were later replaced by the line up the band consists of at this moment. Daemonos at first had a guitarist/vocalist but when he couldn’t handle both guitars and the vocals they thought of adding a seperate vocalist which they found in Mike after having contact with his former band Pictura Poesis. Later on the band recorded the first EP at TomBsTone Studios owned by Tom, who later joined the band as guitarist. So you can say the line up now is united by music but also started by some sort of friendship which only grew closer.
For the Ritzen brothers, Daemonos is their first band, as stated before Mike has been vocalist in Pictura Poesis before and Tom may be known for his work in many other bands such as Retribution and Scornage.

You've just released your second EP, Asger the Collector, this year. in my opinion its a clear improvement from your debut EP from 2015 in all areas, it's better produced, way more technical, more brutal, and all in all more solid, but how do you feel about it?
After “Infernum in Terra” we felt like we had to reinvent ourselves. We had a clearer vision of the way we wanted to go, and therefor it was a little bit easier to write new tracks. We talked for a bit about what we were going to do, full length or EP. We decided to go with an EP to see how it both worked for both us and the fans. The songs pushed us far to get what we wanted but eventually we got there. We recorded this EP at TomBsTone Studios again and will be doing this in the future, just because it is way easier to do it ourselves for a lower price, and have tons of time to do whatever we want with it. We think both of those reasons made this EP better than the previous one, but probably also that everyone finally dared to speak his mind towards Tom.

How important is production for a band like yours? Who helped you produce this new EP? Do you feel it's a good thing to get input from outside the band once in a while, or everything should stay within the band until it's delivered to the audience?
Well this is kind of a mixed feeling, we find it really important as we don’t want to be a overproduced band and sound exactly as other bands out there. We want a good production but also the raw feeling from the older times, the realness – not just all computers if you get me. As stated before, we do everything ourselves, mainly Tom does everything but lets keep it that we do everything. While recording and mixing we mostly keep it within the band yet we all have someone we go to and be like “Hey listen tot his, what do you think?”, as sometimes someone else can hear things we don’t hear anymore. So we would like to keep it within the band but also feel it is indeed a good thing to get input from outside.

Asger the Collector seems to be a concept material, correct? What is it about, and is the cover artwork linked to it somehow? Do you prefer to tell a story, or to transmit a message through your lyrics?
Correct, the first EP was written before Mike joined the band, with him the lyrics changed completely. Asger the Collector is fully written by his hand and is indeed a concept EP. You can see Asger as a monsterhunter. He hunts creatures for money and collects their heads as trophies. In a town called Graveborn, the locals spotted a creature which Asger hears of and quickly travels to that town. Long story short; the high priest of the local church denies but later needs his help. Asger seeks the creature and well, the ending of the story is what you hear in the outro on the EP. We decided that all our upcoming CDs will involve some sort of Demonic aspect. In this EP the creature is this aspect. You can look at the lyrics from more perspectives, it has both the “story” side and the more “real” side. For Asger we do not have an exact message but it has aspects of a message, everyone can interpret it on their own way. So I guess we like to have both in it, maybe the line between will be thinner in the future than it is now but who knows. Regards the artwork; the person in it is Asger, looking over the path he has to travel to the town of Graveborn

Is it hard to promote your music yourselves in Holland? Are there many similar bands competing for attention over there? How do you see the current local underground scene?
It is extremely difficult, everyone is so spoiled these days – there are so many choices of where to go, almost every day there is a well known bigger band playing a gig somewhere, so why bother supporting/discover smaller upcoming bands right? There is also the fact that quality isn’t important anymore, it is all about the money these days – probably not just here in Holland though. There are a lot of great bands from here that don’t get the recognition they deserve – mostly because money is the major problem – let alone bands in our genre.

Have you started working on a full-length album already? Will there be any major changes on it?
In fact, we can now officially say we are indeed working on a full-length album. We are currently working our asses off on new material. The biggest change will be that the songs won’t be 7-8 minutes long this time. Expect more face-crushing material, the path of war will be opened once more! We don’t want to spoil to much, but do want to say that the concept will be in the same region as the EP is.

Just curious, what would be the ideal reaction from a listener after an audition of your new EP, what would you like him/her to feel?
The perfect feeling would be amazed, that they ask themselves “why haven’t I heard from this band before? Is there any chance I can catch them during a live performance? Do they even have merch? Can I build a shrine to adore these Daemonic musicians? May I pledge my soul to the Daemonium Empire?” We can even answer these questions; “No idea, yes somewhere sometime, yes check facebook/website, we hereby grant you permission, YES!”

December 2017


daemonos.bandcamp.com
www.facebook.com/DaemonosOfficial/
daemonos.com
www.youtube.com/channel/UC7PebI_dx4QRPWTxZxI9dng