Transcript of an interview I recorded with DIRK VERBEUREN of CADAVER - 20201103. Full article here. MAL-
Chatting once again to Dirk Verbeuren, Dirk thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. DIRK- Thanks for having me, Mal, it's always a pleasure man. MAL- It's good to have you back on. Hey, now you've been a busy man. DIRK- I have. MAL- Last time I spoke to you it was about 'The Ride Majestic' album with SOILWORK. You're no longer with SOILWORK now tell us about how you firstly went to MEGADETH how that all happened and then we'll get on to your current thing. DIRK- Sounds good, yeah, so well, we were actually touring for 'The Ride Majestic' when I got a message from management that Dave Mustaine wanted to talk to me and so a few days later. I did speak to him on the phone and I found out that there were looking for somebody to help them out on a tour on drums and that they wanted me to be the guy so obviously that was pretty exciting and I finished that tour with SOILWORK, went home studied the MEGADETH set and you know about 10 days later I was rehearsing with the guys, and the next day we did with that our first gig which was in Columbus at the 'Rock on the Range' festival in front of 40,000 people, so that was quite the baptism by fire and I yeah, and then, you know a few weeks into the tour or whatever they've started joking with me like 'you're my drummer now and are you going to tell those guys that you know, you're playing with MEGADETH now' stuff and I was kind of laughing but he was very serious about it. So, you know, I spoke to the guys and they said, you know, of course you should do is this opportunity of a lifetime. It's amazing and they're all very supportive. So after thinking, talking with my wife about it and thinking everything through I went for it, you know, well wasn't much thinking to be honest. I mean, you know, I grew up listening to MEGADETH. I bought 'Peace Sells' when I was a teenager, saw the band live on The Clash of the Titans tour in Paris in October 1990 I believe it was so, you know, quite a long time ago, so it was yeah pretty special thing. MAL- It's something that you wouldn't really probably have to think about too much, an offer like that. DIRK- No exactly. I mean, you know, it's not like I was unhappy with SOILWORK but you know, I've been in the band for 12 years at that point and I did feel you know, I had had some discussions with some of the guys that you know, we were kind of stuck in a spot right, like we thought 'The Living Infinite' was gonna bring us, you know to a next level, but then we had a lot of business problems that were attached to that period in the band that kind of stopped us from touring the way we wanted to, and even though people really love the record it kind of became a dud because of that, you know, if we had been able to support it with more touring. I think you know, it might have elevated the band a little bit but yeah, basically, by the time we did 'The Ride Majestic' I was starting to feel a little bit like 'man, is this ever going to be able to grow more ?', you know, and I felt like maybe there was a little bit of a different level of motivation with me and the rest of the guys in the band and even though they're all good friends of mine and you know, there's no bad blood whatsoever. But you know, sometimes it just kind of find yourself pointing in slightly different directions I guess, and the MEGADETH thing just happened, I had no idea that they were even looking for somebody and I certainly wasn't, you know telling people that I was looking for something, so just kinda was I guess good timing in retrospect. MAL- Indeed and SOILWORK have continued on nicely so that everyone's happy. DIRK- Exactly. MAL- Right, so how did you get involved with this CADAVER thing with Anders? How did you meet and how did you become involved on this new album? DIRK- Well, we met a few years prior to what I was just talking about was actually early 2014. I got a call from Satyr, the band leader of SATYRICON asking if I could fill in for the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise because at the time there were some issues getting Frost in the country. And so I was already going to be performing on the cruise with SOILWORK, so I said yes and I once I was there, you know Anders being the bass player in the band for a long time we got to talking and I told him that I'm a huge CADAVER fan, one of those bands that I also grew up listening to and he said 'well, you know, I've actually, you know, the band hasn't been active but I've been writing demos here and there would you like to hear them?' and that's kind of how it started, you know, and we decided yeah, let's make a record, why not? MAL- So it was just a demos at that stage. Nothing was like recorded seriously until where you became involved? DIRK- Yeah. Absolutely. I think you know, he didn't even Anders didn't even have a concrete plan to revive the band or anything, he's a songwriter, he always has been and and I think whenever he has ideas, he just, you know tracks them and you know sees where it will take him and if anything pops up and yeah, I guess our chance meeting happened to be the thing that kind of got him motivated again. He said afterwards that my enthusiasm for CADAVER and for the idea of carrying on with a third, you know version of the band just kind of got him motivated and stoked again. And then I think in the ensuing years, you know SATYRICON kind of slowed down a little bit. We all know that Satyr had to deal with his brain tumor and Anders had some health issues of his own that he had to take care of so it just kind of ended up being one of those things where you know time opened up for us to to compose and create. It obviously took a while from 2014 until now but the album was actually recorded early last year early to mid last year, so it's been ready for a while. MAL- You're always in the right place at the right time, mate. DIRK- I guess so, I mean, you know, I think it's a matter of you know, being in the metal scene for such a long time as I have been you end up meeting people you end up, you know, I guess, you know meeting of the minds kind of thing where you you meet like-minded people that get good vibes from you, and that you get good vibes from and in the end, you know, I do this because I love music like I think a lot of people and if there's a chance to make some good music I am all in, you know, it's a simple as that, you know, my thought doesn't really go any further than let's make a killer record and see where it takes us, and in this case, you know with 'Edder And Bile' I think it turned out really good. MAL- Yeah, now apart from drums obviously, did Anders do all the other instrumentation on the album? DIRK- Yes, he's pretty much the one man band outside of drums. I did do some backing vocals. But you know, that was not a whole lot of those because I would probably blow my voice out in about five minutes if I tried too much so I don't really have the technique. But yeah, Anders is the guy you know, but he has been working recently with Eilert who was the bass player on the 'In Pains" album back in the early 90s, and so Eilert has more or less rejoined the band, I don't know how full time of a position that is, but I know Andrews has played a few gigs with him and he plays he plays upright bass, like double bass, you know, so that's a really cool element to have we're looking forward to working with him on the new material. MAL- Yeah. Did you have any involvement in writing of the songs or were they pretty much already Anders' songs ready to go? DIRK- Well the way it went is that a lot of those early demos that I mentioned we worked on those for a bit, and then we weren't quite sure about the direction and in early 2016 I happened to be in Norway for a gig and Anders and I got to actually jam in person at a studio and the song 'Feed The Pigs' came out of that and for us that song was kind of a direction to follow that kind of gave us a boost and an idea like this is what we've been looking for, you know. So a lot of those older demos actually we didn't end up working with them anymore. We can put them aside and kept writing and and so most of the material that you hear on the record with the exception of some parts of 'Morgue Ritual', which is a very old song from originally 1988. Everything else was pretty much written after 2016 and Anders wrote most of it on guitar, but there was a back and forth between the two of us. So he would send me ideas. I would send them back to him. Sometimes I would change the arrangements and change the you know, the order of the riffs or the way in which they were played and send them back with some demo drums Etc. So it was really was a pretty collaborative effort in all in all I would say and that kind of went on until the actual recording. MAL- Yeah, where did you get together to record or did you record it separately, which is quite common these days. DIRK- It is very common, but we really wanted to have that old-school death metal Vibe. And so we felt it was really important to be in the same room playing together, which is what we did. So, Anders actually came to L.A. here where I live and we went to the studio that I co-own with Adair Daufembach who produced the album, studio called Northwood Sound and we went in there and Anders played guitar and I played drums and that's how we laid down the bass tracks from the songs. Just jamming them together for the most part without any click track or anything like that, really just going for you know, the organic seal and whatever, however we felt the song should be played at that moment, you know, so that's why I said earlier, the songs kind of kept evolving until the last moment because sometimes as we were doing takes we felt like oh maybe this riff should be longer, maybe this part should be played more like this. And so it was really, you know, a cool process, which I think you can, you know to me I hear that feeling on the record when I listen back, you know, it's not like one of those super, you know tight and produced records. There's definitely some flaws there, but to me that's part of that style of music, so I love that personally. MAL- Yeah, look, I'm not a musician, but you can sort of tell when things are sort of patched in together rather than the human element of everybody in the same room looking at each other in the eye all this sort of thing. It seems to be a lot.. seems to gel a lot better. DIRK- Look, I agree with you, Mal, I think that you know, there's a time and a place for everything and I'm certainly not dissing you know, any other way of recording. I do a lot of recording drums separately from everybody else, usually the easiest way and and the most time efficient way and you know, that's a big part of why you do what you'redoing. How you do it. But in this case it was nice to be able to, like you said have the human element be prevalent, be in the same room, you know have eye contact like react to each other and just kind of feel the songs out because that's something you get to do when you're not bound to a click track and you're not bound to, 'oh this has to be the structure because you know, that's how the other guy who's somewhere else in another city has recorded it', we could really like literally feel things out and make the songs feel right in the moment and I again to me, you know, that kind of music like if you listen back to early thrash early death metal, you know early grindcore, even black metal, you know the way that stuff was done back in the day was usually very much uncontrolled if you know what I mean, like both from a playing standpoint and from a production standpoint because in the early to mid 80s there weren't many producers who really had a handle on this kind of music because it was such a new kind of music, there weren't really any standards for how do you capture all this noise and this aggression, you know, so as a result we get you get productions that you could look at as being very flawed and maybe not up to Snuff with some of the things that are done today, but at the same time it has a lot of character and I really maybe it's because I grew up at that time and listened to all that stuff and I have a really fond connection to all those records, and the way they sound but maybe that's why, but to me there's there's something there which sometimes gets lost a little bit with modern technology and plugins and all the stuff that's super practical to use and that really gets great results from a technical standpoint but sometimes tends to lose a little bit of the personality that comes from just people jamming together. MAL- With this band basically being inactive for such a long time, and then this surfacing on November 27th. What's the vibe been? DIRK- It's been good. You know, like I said we recorded it last year so it's been a slow build-up and initially 'Edder And Bile' was supposed to be released earlier this year, but with the pandemic everything kind of got messed up and we decided to release the 7-inch first which was actually going to be released after the album initially. We discussed that with the label we decided to flip things around really the 7-inch as a little teaser for what was to come and now the album like you said is coming on the 27th, and obviously the plan was to tour but we all know that's not possible right now. So it's just kind of one of those things where just like every band right now on the planet, every artist we have to play it by ear and and do it we can you know, we've released a couple of music videos already we're going to be doing some more and yeah, man, it's take it one day at a time right now. You know, there's really no other way, unfortunately. MAL- I've be made aware of BRAVE THE COLD. What are you doing there? How's that going? DIRK- Ah, BRAVE THE COLD. That was actually recorded even a longer time ago, but I met Mitch Harris at a show. He had come to watch SOILWORK some years ago, and and we kind of stayed in touch and met again at a different show and he mentioned to me that he had some songs and asked me if I would like to play drums on them. And I said, yeah sure so back in 2018 this is actually we met up and he came over here from Vegas and just stayed basically at my house for a week, and yeah, we tracked a whole bunch of stuff and some of that made it onto (MAL--Right place) to the starts of the album. Yeah again right place, right time. MAL- Yeah right place right time. DIRK- Like, you know, I've been a huge NAPALM DEATH fan my entire life, and so I also have a lot of things that I work out together with Shane Embury and worked with Mitch on this has been a real pleasure as well, and again, you know, I just love music and I feel super honored and fortunate that these chances happen where I get to play with some of the people that I grew up listening to, Anders is another one of them, you know, and obviously MEGADETH, Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson and Kiko are also people that all of them I grew up listening to, I actually went to see ANGRA alive in the 90s in France. So, you know, it's again, I kind of feel like a kid in the candy store sometimes. MAL- Yeah, that must be a buzz being on the same stage, gigging with MEGADETH do you ever like pinch yourself and say 'that's fucking MEGADETH out there and I'm here on the drums'. You ever get those moments still? DIRK- Oh, yeah all the time. I mean, I'm very aware that you know, you can't take anything for granted in life, and you don't know when things will end, you know, and this pandemic is again a good example of something that I think none of us could have imagined that touring wouldn't be possible for an extended period of time worldwide. This is something that you would never think of because it's never happened and you know, you hear about these pandemics in the past and I think we all kind of thought. 'Oh, yeah, but you know, we got modern medicine nowadays, you know, that's not gonna happen. This stuff is under control' and well as we can see it's not so we're all sidelined and again, when MEGADETH was on tour earlier this year in Europe, which was the first tour we did after Dave completed his cancer treatment and that was a really big kind of milestone for all of us. Not just for Dave because we were all very aware of that we could have never done that again at that moment. You know, when we went on stage for that first show which I believe was in Helsinki. There was really a feeling we talked about it afterwards but with David and Kiko too we're like 'man, like that was magical' because six months prior, you know, when Dave was going in and getting all his chemo and and all that and had to you know, basically stop doing anything else, you know, you always get this inkling that like, well this might be it, you know, I mean people don't make it through cancer. We were fortunate that Dave did and that he got better and was able to sing again and yeah, you know, definitely, definitely very grateful for any moment like that that happens and yeah, to answer your question, that's why I pinch myself all the time because you know, every time I'm on stage with the band I take a look and I'm like, 'I can't believe I'm here doing this'. It's so amazing. You know, I would have never even dared to dream about this as a kid listening to MEGADETH. MAL- Yeah. All right Dirk. Wow, what a great chat. Good to talk to you again. Good luck with the CADAVER album coming out, November 27th and good luck with all of the other stuff that you're doing and keep being in the right place at the right time. DIRK- I'll do my best. Thanks for having me, Mal, and cheers to all the Australian Metalheads. Love you guys. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |