The Monolith Deathcult Interview

1. Can you tell us a little bit about the band for those that have never heard of you before?
Oh Yeah! We are The Monolith Deathcult and we are hailing from Holland. We are haling from Holland and exist since 2003. We released 4 albums on different labels( because huhmm..all labels who worked with were doomed to bankruptcy.) In 2005 we decided to broaden our sound with in deathmetal notdone stuff like techno, electronics, synths and other influences which will infuriate the diehard oldschool deathmetalfan. We still played ultra brutal stuff but we used more dynamics. A 40 minute blastbeat isn’t extreme after a few minutes, your ears and brains do not notice the noise as something really extreme. This results in the White Crematorium in 2005. After that album we wrote our best album in my opinion called TRIVMVIRATE(2008). On that album all the different elements of our sound came together. Because of the complexity of the music we decided to use a pop producer from Holland(Guido Aalbers) to mix our next album. Guido worked previously with acts like Muse and Destiny’s Child. We want fresh ears and an other view on our music than a deathmetalproducer. The result was killer and we will use him again on our forthcoming album. In 2009 we discovered that The White Crematorium was sold out. We bought back the mechanical rights and realized that it isn’t TMDC style to do simply a repressing. We re-recorded the album, created new artwork and released the album in the USA through Epitomite Productions and in Europe through twilight-Vertrieb.de.

And here we are now.

2.  Where is the band based out of and what is the metal scene like there?
The band is based out of 4 and sometimes 5 people. We have a traditional setting. 2 guitarplayers, a bassplayer and a drummer. I play guitar and do some vocals together with the bassplayer who is the leadvocal.

Sjoerd Visch – Drums, percussion analog and triggering
Robin Kok – Fretted and fretless bass, vox and howling insanity
Martijn Moes – Unearthly intoxication and high-pitched sqealing
Michiel Dekker(thats me) – Doubtful poet, vox and out-of-tune solo leads
Offline member:
Carsten Altena – Stalin organ, sonic booms and mammoth orchestral stabs. In the past he played live the samples and synths but nowadays we use some laptops for the ochestra’s en industrial sampling. Carsten will appear on the albums as the fifth member

We have a good metalscene here in Holland with a lot of good bands like God Dethroned, Severe Torture, Asphyx, Hail of Bullets, Textures and Deadhead. We also have for such a small country a lot of clubs were metalbands play and we have some huge festivals. Holland is a good country for metal and especially Americans like it here(Ofcourse because of the legal drugs and the red Light Districts you can find in every big city.)

3. How would you describe your musical sound?
As an insult to all people who loved good music

3. What is the meaning behind the band's name?
There is no meaning behinf the name. When we started wo just called ourselves Monolith. After we discovered that there were too many bands using that name we added Deathcult to the name. I read that name in a article about Brittish rockers The Cult who called themselves in the early years The Southern Deathcult. We want a huge and massive name so it became The Monolith Deathcult shortened to TMDC. My bandmates accused me of self-idiolation when they discovered that TMDC also could be The Michiel Dekker Club

4. How would you describe the lyrical content of the music?
Short question, big awnser. 99% of the songs are about historical events. Because of my work as a teacher history. I am fully aware that certain historically accurate matters are quite sensitive in some countries and THAT is were I like to write songs about. We write a lot about the Third Reich, The Soviet union and the radical Islam
Our underlying message is: systematic ideological extermination was/is being carried out on both extremes of the political spectrum, it’s just that people fail to recognize the significance of the fact that 15-year old kids walking around with hammer-and-sickles on their shirts is the same as wearing a swastikashirt.

On The White Crematorium 2.0 is a song called The Cruel Hunters. The Cruel Hunters were the infamous SS-Muslim battalions Handzjar and Skanderberg and they want to exterminate the Jews in the Balkan and Caucasus and when the job is done they want to cleanse the whole world from the sons of Zion. This song was especially written for those who called us Nazi’s because we wrote songs about the cruelty of the Islam. Another cool title is the title of the album. ‘The White Crematorium’ is a sobriquet for Stalin’s labour-prison camps  called the Gulag Archipel. These deathcamps were situated in Kolyma, a place which looked like a barren moon landscape in the extreme cold north of Siberia. Political prisoners called ” enemies of the people of the Soviet union” were forced to dig for gold and minerals under terrible circumstances. The people of the Soviet Union feared Kolyma more than any other region of the Gulag Empire. "Kolyma znaczit smert" was the common phrase whispered at the time, and translates to "Kolyma means death.
As you already noticed, we don’t like the ordinary stuff about blood and gore.

5. What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and how would you describe your stage performance?
For me the best shows we did were in Prague, London and all the shows we did in 2008 with Gorefest on their reuniontour . The stagepeformance is intens but tight. People call us often arrogant because we do not talk to the audience about having a good time and keep metal alive bla bla bla. We let our music do the talking and plaster the crowd against the wall.

6. Do you have any plans to tour the U.S in the future?
We try to work something out, maybe next year. I all depends on if we are booked. I hope they will let us in, because we did once a show(available on You Tube) while dressed up like the Saddam clan.

7.  How has the feedback been to your new album from death metal fans worldwide?
I can’t say it enough, but it isn’t the NEW album. It is a new release. The original 2005 version was sold out and we had the change to redeem the mechanical rights so we decided take the 2005 recordings of The White Crematorium to the higher level of perfection we already stated with TRIVMVIRATE.  For our fans it might be a financial kick in the head but is was for us the perfect cover-up operation to rehabilitate all musical blasphemies and clerical howlers.
We add shiny new vocals without all the hideous grammar mistakes. Colossal Pro Tools editing to restore all goofs. Immense editing on all slips of abominable clerical errors and blasphemous sonic booms on 0.017Khz. We also added our 2002 promo, 2 videoclips and an intense teeth-on –the-dancefloor techno remix of Kindertodeslied.

I just read some reviews who stated that The White Crematorium 2.0 is the follow up of TRIVMVIRATE . That is not true. Yes, it is the next release but it is NOT the new album. We can do better that that. This release was created to fill the gap between TRIVMVIRATE and the new album. We hope that people who like TRIVMVIRATE also check out The White Crematorium 2.0 That album was the blueprint for what we doing now. Second reason was we wanted a USA release. It is a shame that our albums are hard to get there so we wanted The White Crematorium 2.0 released in the USA.

8. Do you have any side projects besides this band, if so who are they and what kind of music do they play?
Not really. I play bass in the Dutch doom band Beyond Belief and I do some producing & session work for Extreme Cold Winter(also dooooooommm) and Temple(Deathmetal in the vein of the first TMDC album The Apotheosis. The mainfocus is on TMDC. I have the freedom to add into the music what I want so I don’t need sideprojects. It is a waste of time and energy.

9. What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and what are you listening to nowadays?
The Monolioth Deathcult is a mixture of all music we find interesting. The blueprint is deathmetal because of the grunts. Bands who infleunced me as mainwriter are Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory, Rammstein, Type O Negative, Cradle of Filth, Nile, Slipknot, My Dying Bride and Laibach. There is much more. Is you can see the focus is on industrial. I believe in a blending of ultrabrutal death/speed/thrash/doom metal with furious industrial passages. Carsten who wrote all the orchestral parts and I are huge fans of soundtracks like Titus, Gladiator, Pirates of the Carrebean. People who check espesially TRIVMVIRATE will regonize the elelemens of all the above mentioned bands and artitsts.

Nowaday I do not listen to much music. Mostly in my car. Yesterdat it was Candlemass and Alice in Chains

10. What role does Occultism play in the music and how would you describe your views on this topic?
Occultism doesn’t play a special role in our music. We have a lot of religious elements in our lyrics. There are lyrics which can be described as occult but not in the satanic way. We have nothing to do we satanism. We prefer lyrics about people who want to be a god like Saddam or Stalin, about people who are talking to an evil entity while they think it is God who is talking to them.  We deal with Islam and Christianity, but also with Brahma and Amon-Ra. There is just one song which mentioned Lord Master Lucifer and that is The Malleus Maleficarum Manusscript, a song about witchcraft in the Dark Ages.

11. What are some of your interests outside of music?
I train twice a week Krav Maga(Israelian Close Combat fighting), I do serval times a week a workout, I read a lot of books(Stephen King, Frederick Forsyth, Tom Clancy etc) and I am a follower of the  Dutch politics. I am a total newsjunkie.

12. Any final words or thoughts?
I like to thank Von from Epitomite Production for giving us the chance tot release an album on USA soil. I am sure that the people of the USA like our music but as always our albums are hard to get there. People who like the White Crematorium 2.0 MUST check out TRIVMVIRATE. Check our website, facebook  and myspace for sounds and merchandise. We hope to see you soon in the USA.

http://www.myspace.com/themonolithdeathcult
http://nl-nl.facebook.com/monolithdeathcult
http://www.monolith-deathcult.com