What's Belgium like?
The cool thing about Belgium is that it's central. Germany, France, Holland are all pretty nearby.
The scene is pretty good. Nearly every touring band plays shows here, quite some active people involved, some great bands: Vogue, Sunpower, Shredder, Ravaged, Napalm Breath, The Furious, The Filth, Rise & Fall, and lots more. I've been to a shitload of amazing shows the past few years.
It's a small country with a lot of shitty weather (or at least seems like it), an overall bitter society, high taxes, and a government that has no idea what they're doing. We recently made the world news again because this dude killed a bunch of babies with a knife.
Oh yeah and we have the best fries and beer in the world.
How was your UK tour earlier this year?
A fucking blast from start to finish, our man Mez hooked us up again with the shows.
We went with Cracks In The Wall from the Netherlands. We all got along great and it was awesome to see them play hard every single night. Definitely one of my new favorite bands and great people in it.
First show was in Guildford, not that many people cause a lot of kids went to see Integrity who played the same night, but still a cool place, and Whole In The Head reminded me of Ripcord/Heresy.
Boston was up next. We've been to Boston in the past and the shows were always crazy and packed, but this time barely anyone showed up. We had a great afterparty anyway and they had great music in the jukebox. Marv who booked this show is just an awesome dude!
Ashford was the best show of the tour, lots of kids showed up. The Shitty Limits were great and Cheat To Win also. They both played an awesome set.
Do you prefer playing at home or abroad?
Playing abroad is awesome because you go to places you maybe never been before and you get to meet new people. Playing at home is great too because you have all your friends coming down, fucking shit up and partying.
You guys are really into skateboarding. Can you maybe tell me a bit about why you love it and how you got into it?
Actually I'm the only one who skates at the moment. I write all the lyrics and that's why we have so many skateboard lyrics.
I got into it when I was 13, we were on vacation in Oostende (a city by the Belgian coast) and I saw how much fun the skateboarders had. So my parents got me my first skateboard during that summer. A few months later back home, a skateboard shop in Lommel (a town next to my hometown Overpelt) opened up, me and my friend rode our bike there and checked it out. It was the first time I ever stepped inside a real skateshop. I still remember they had a "Thrasher sold here" sticker on the door.
The whole vibe inside was just amazing, all the kick ass artwork on the boards, cool shoes (Airwalk Disaster series, Vision), stickers, pants, shirts. Kids where hanging out and watching skate videos, having fun. The shop was run by 2 brothers. One was 18 and the other one 16, I remember the oldest was rocking "the flop" (the infamous 80's haircut common in the skateboard community)
I saved up some allowance and got my first "real" skateboard, a Santa Cruz team deck.
From then on I met more skaters in my area and started skating non-stop. My whole life revolved around it (instead of let's say school). It was some of the best times of my life.
Skateboarding was and still is fucking awesome. When I'm on my board riding fast all my worries and all that bullshit disappear. I just focus on the skateboarding itself.
It's freedom.
Do you skate a lot yourself?
I haven't skated in a while because it's been snowing and freezing for the past few weeks. The nearest indoor park is more then half an hour away by car and after working more then 8 hours a day it's usually too much of an effort to go out there and skate.
I cannot wait till spring/summer for better weather so I can just grab my board and go skate again whenever I feel like it.
What do you prefer: skating or making music?
That's like asking if I prefer my right or left testicle.
How come you're so obsessed with destruction?
Sometimes I just wanna see shit fall apart.
Tell me a bit about your split with ANS.
I got to know ANS when I saw them at the last Dead Stop show in the Lintfabriek in Belgium. Never heard them before and they totally blew me away that night. We were supposed to play with them on that tour, but that show got cancelled. A year later they came back on tour and Chris (ANS singer) and me were already in contact through myspace. So we played a show together and had an awesome time playing and hanging out. In 2008 we wanted to tour the US east coast so we got in touch with ANS and they hooked us up with the tour and we decided to put out a split 7" for it.
What are your future recording plans?
A split live LP with our dudes from Sunpower, out in march 2009. A rerelease of our self-titled LP. Holy Shit! from Belgium and Deep Six from the US are gonna team up for that one. Should be out in april 2009.
And right now we're writing new songs for a future LP. We wanna do something like 15 new songs. We have 3 new songs completely ready with lyrics and all so far. I hope somewhere near summer we can go back into the studio again.
Any last words to finish with.
SLAYER.
Thanks a lot to Stijn for taking partout. Check Reproach out.
