Note: the interview was done in 2022
Why did Tom van Dijk quit the band last year? Did it mess up your plans of the recording “Slave Driver”?
We had a strong disagreement about his wish to change his vocal style. Tom wanted to sing quite diffirent than before. The rest of the band thought it would change our band sound too much. As a band we think we have a loyal following of people who like us because of our style and sound. So we had some strong discussions about that. Since he didn’t wanna do his cool old vocal style anymore and we didn’t want his new vocals, he decided to quit the band. It didn’t mess up the recordings, but the discussions took a few weeks. So while we should have been recording vocals, we were in fact arguing. It delayed the process by about 6 weeks, I think.
How come that Ralph de Boer rejoined Dead Head? Was it easier to ask someone who you had worked with in the past than to audition new members?
Of course. He was our first choice and immediately said “yes” when we approached him. Even though he is also the singer of the death metalband Bodyfarm. The other guys in Bodyfarm also said: yes, do it. How cool is that? Ralph did an astounding performance on our album “Depression Tank”. And he’s been growing a lot as a vocalist since. So he was the obvious choice. And he delivered even better vocals than we expected.
In one recent interview you said that the band finally learned how to write proper songs. I understand that was a joke but what is a proper song for you? What parts/elements should it have?
It was actually not a joke. What I was trying to say is that Dead Head was always very much a riff-oriented band. We always focused on writing the coolest and most unusual riffs. And never gave much thought to the actual function of those riffs in a song. So some of our songs on older albums are a bit weird or obnoxious. In more recent years, we started to think more about the arrangements. This actually meant leaving out some riffs, repeating others a few times more. It’s just a process that we became a little better in and care a bit more about. And I think it shows in the flow of “Slave Driver” and our previous CD “Swine Plague”.
Dead Head is a strictly thrash metal band. Doesn’t it limit your songwriting? Perhaps you come up with a very cool riff which sounds like melodic death metal or black metal so you can’t use it…
Well, this is funny. Because in 90 percent of the reviews of the new album we are described as death/thrash. Which was never a style we communicated ourselves. But people seem to hear a lot of death metal influences in our songs. So now that you are stating the opposite, I think you’re right that we’re regarding ourselves as a thrash band. But we cannot help and deny that there’s some death metal influences in our songs. Both guitar players in Dead Head listen to death and black metal a lot. Absu, Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Ingested, Blood Incantation have been in constant rotation in my house for years. As far as thrash metal goes, there’s only a few bands that interest me. Sacrifice, Possessed, Skeletal Remains, Bütcher and Mr Bungle’s last album come to mind.
Well, I was just trying to break the cycle that Dead Head only makes one album every five years. For “Slave Driver”, we had about 12 finished songs and 8 more that were almost finished. My idea was to record all 20 songs. And the first release 10 of those, For the other ones we would have saved the basic recordings and finished them up later for a next album. It was a bit like Guns N Roses doing “Use Your Illusion” 1 and 2. However, if you’re honest to yourself as a musician… there’s a reason why those 8 songs were not finished. Of course, we were still missing that one closing part or genius middle section. So our drummer Hans said: “I’m not gonna do that”. He just wanted to record the best and most finished songs. Which was the best choice of course.
Don’t you think that there are some traps and pitfalls in this approach as two albums recorded during one session would sound the same, or you could instinctively choose better songs for the first album etc.?
Yes, that would have been a dilemma. We would have needed to save a few good songs for that second album that would have come out one year later. Would they have sounded the same? Well, probably stylewise, but still different types of songs.
In one interview the band mentioned a new song called “Age of Hype”. Did you drop it off “Slave Driver” or did you just rename it?
No. It was not dropped off the last album. It’s song that we actually recorded last month, for release in 2023. It will be on the bonusdisc of the reissue of our album “Depression Tank”. This bonus CD will also be released as a seperate vinyl EP. Again through the great label Hammerheart.
We thought it fit the album title very well. It’s like a mean looking character who could be a real “Slave Driver”. We picked the cover mostly because it looked great and fit the album title. No deeper concepts or thoughts. Sorry.
I know that Ronnie Wandervey writes most of the lyrics, but could you give brief overview of themes you touch on “Slave Driver”?
Well, actually Ronnie used to write most of the lyrics. He’s also the guy in the band who reads more books than the others combined. And he has a lot of time to pen down lyrics. But recently Ralph has been writing lyrics for our newest songs. And on “Slave Driver” it was really a combined effort, where Ralph took Ronnie’s lyrics, changed a lot and took it to a whole another level. There are no real themes in social life or actual developments in society that lead to choose a topic to write about. It happens mostly in an organic and spontaneous way. As a band we never had the aspiration to write about social abuses or political issues. On S”lave Driver” our singer Ralph is surely touching some real world situations. “Grim Side Valley” is about the thoughts and activities on the dark side of being a human. The songtitle “Parabellum” was inspired by a Luger handgun. The lyrics describe how you sometimes have to make war to establish peace. “Fear Scraper” is actually about the spirits that dwell around us. They sometimes draw you to thoughts and behavior, in a way that fear starts to control you. “Southfork” was inspired by a tv show from the 70’s that you might remember. When it’s all about wealth and power, family bonds will get infested, and jealousy, treason and hate are just around the corner. “Grooves Of Envy” is about being stuck in the past and dealing with hateful feelings. “Horrors of Hades” is about the shady world of human trafficking. Hades in his role as god of the criminal world. When Ralph says “Welcome to the real world”, the lyrics switch to a more comprehensable second part.
The album was recorded once again with Erwin Hermsen. What are the best points of working with him?
Well, it’s about patience and control basicly. We’re a loud and unreliable bunch of musicians. If we are having fun, we play faster and more intense. For a technician it’s pretty hard to capture all the stuff that is happening in our music. Nobody is better at capturing us live and controling our sounds than Erwin. His patience is another important thing. We can be somewhat indecisive sometimes. And he has the patience to wait and see everything unfold. As opposed to throwing us out of the studio.
People constantly ask you about big pauses between the albums. I guess it’s up to the way you manage the band with real democracy when no one can tell others what to do. Don’t you feel at times that you’ve had enough of constant discussions?
I hate the long breaks between the albums, but I can’t really help it. The democracy within the band and the discussions are one reason why it takes us long to make an album. But it’s also due to work obligations, family life and the other bands that we play in. As for the discussions, that just happens when all bandmembers have their own idea about songs, riffs, lyrics, album cover and just about every other band decision. We all want to do it as good as possible. But our ideas don’t always lineup. It’s the dynamics of the band and also partially influences how we sound. So, I’m afraid it will stay the same. Only one album every few years.
Yes. The creative part is what drives us. You might call it a hobby, but it’s a habit for sure. Just jamming with riffs, combining stuff. Coming up with weird or original parts sometimes. We’ve always been doing that over the years. Even at times when we didn’t have a singer sometimes. We recorded more demo ideas than we will ever be able to put on albums. I mean, our other guitar player Ronnie sometimes gives me these USB-sticks with like 120 riffs each. And one stick might be called “Summer 2021”. And then I didn’t even thoroughly check his “Spring 2021” USB-stick. Most of his ideas are cool and usuable. And then I still have the stuff that our drummer Hans and I come up with…
Don’t you think that many Metal bands are too safe these days? They keep on using the same anti-religious and anti-political cliches while they don’t dare to stand for their opinions in interviews because it can harm the sales in certain countries?
Yes, metal has become very safe. It became commercially exploited, regulated, managed to death, polished, toned down. I hate all that. It sucks and it’s not how the genre started out. Many new metalbands are in essence popbands with a metal image. But what can you do? A lot has to do with money. So… as for sales getting hurt… of course we’re living in a world these days that is butthurt pretty quickly. So if you are depending on album sales, chart succes and just your spotless image, you better not say something controversial in an interview or lyric. Because it might hurt your band. Even though Ozzy often said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity…. I think that changed. He meant: publicity is always positive, because if people talk about you… that’s good”. But these days a band risks getting cancelled and that might even be because of a stupid rumor. Then again, there have always been bands that don’t care at all and always spoke out. As for politics… if you’re into punk and hardcore punk, you’ll still finds band that are very critical towards politicians and the system.
The name Dead Head reminds me of German panzer division (Totenkopf). Have you ever been accused in supporting Nazism or something like that?
No, of course not. Why would anybody think that? I mean… it’s not that we have lyrics in that direction, do we? Or state stupid nazi things in interviews. We are far from that. The bandname came from a terrible English horror movie from the late eighties. And we didn’t even realize the Grateful Dead link until later either. These days “Dead Head” is also a title of a famous Devin Townsend song. So that comes up a lot.
When you started out, the Netherlands was flooded with death metal bands. Wasn’t there a temptation to join this bandwagon and play that type of music too?
Good question. Back then… no. I mean, we always did great shows with mostly death metal bands. And we usually stood out a bit, because we were just as aggressive but still sounding different. These days.. yes… perhaps if we were a death metal band it would be easier to book shows. The death metal scene is very vivid and many festivals only book death metal. I just witness that. But even though we all listen to death metal a lot, we still come up with thrash sounding stuff ourselves. These days I’m not particular proud to be from The Netherlands. Because even though we have some great death metal bands in The Netherlands, our country is mostly known because of those terrible gothic, female fronted metal.
By the way, were you friends/rivals with Osiris who played a more sophisticated version of thrash metal?
I was in the original line up of Osiris in 1985/1986, when it was still an Iron Maiden cover band. And I brought in the drummer that eventually played on their debut album. I had played with him in his parent’s attic for several years. He was the most talented drummer in our hometown and I really planned to play some Death Angel-type music with him. But somehow it went differently. They went for a technical approach and we went for the loud and raging approach. The later band Osiris are all friends of us. I was even in school with the guitar player. And the bass player lived around the corner of me when I was a kid. No rivals. Just mutual respect and inspiration between the bands in later years.
If we talk about nostalgia… I liked the tape trading days because it was about constantly finding new, exciting bands and you had to do something for it. Like sending out tapes, buying stamps, writing letters to people on the other side of the planet. We were part of a seperate culture really. I mean, other kids in school liked music as well, but they just listened to the radio. They had no clue I was trading dirty sounding, badly recorded thrash with some kid in the U.S. or Chili. These days you can find more new bands than you would like, but it’s also harder to find the real cool stuff. So, if you’re talking nostalgia… THAT’s the stuff I miss. If it comes to recording techniques, everything is just way better than in the 90’s. You can do a lot at home, do it really well. And share it easily with other band members and the studio guys. So I don’t ever wanna go back in time to record on tape and only have a four track Tascam cassette studio. Even though we recorded some cool sounding stuff on those kind of machines.
I guess, like many young musicians, once you had ambitions to become rich and famous. Do you remember the point when you decided, “To hell with that, I just want to play what I like for the sake of fun”?
I still wanna be famous and rich. But mostly because it would enable me to dedicate more time to the band and to writing music. I still remember us sitting by the phone all the time (in a symbolic way) in the 90’s. Waiting for some manager to call us and invite us to tour with Morbid Angel, Bolt Thrower, Kreator, Exodus. Well, the phone did ring sometimes and we did some nice shows. But there were also more days when we had no shows and we did have bills coming in. So you really come to conclusions really quickly by the time you don’t live with your parents anymore. Because playing in an underground thrash band often doesn’t pay bills and groceries. So that was one realization. And then I hated it when certain band members temporarily left Dead Head while we were still building up the band. Tom left a few times, whenever he was mad at us. Sometimes for good reasons. And our drummer just went back to school to get some college degree. So that was another thing that made me reconsider if I wanted to just be a thrash guitar player in life or perhaps should explore some other areas.
There is a common practice in Metal underground when a band from one country invites a band from another country to play a few shows and then they do it vice versa. I know you did this with Invocator. So could you remember those days? How did you get in touch and how did they get to the Netherlands from Denmark?
That used to be a neat trick. But I was never able to arrange many shows in return. So I felt guilty and we should have done that a little more. I think we met Invocator when they played a show with us and Asphyx. We had a good click with them and of course it was a killer band. They arranged some shows for us in Denmark. And even later on we played there again with other bands. I loved Denmark. Still have a soft spot for the country.
What other bands did you invite to the Netherlands? Were there some bands who would break the agreement after playing in the Netherlands?
Like I said, not too many. And I’m afraid we were the band that fucked up the exchange opportunities.
In 1990 you played with Carcass. Any memories about the gig beside “They were great guys”, hehe? We played 8 shows with them, at a time when they were pretty happening. This was just after “Symphonies Of Sickness” and everybody wanted to see them. So we played some cool shows in front of large crowds. And we spent a lot of time with them during the afternoons and soundchecks. It was a small touring team: Jeff Walker, Bill Steer, Ken Owen, one girlfriend, their sound guy and roadie Mark Griffiths who would later play in Cathedral. I’m not sure what they thought of us. I’m afraid we must have been too loud and present at times. They were usually a bit more reserved and just observing. But we had some cool conversations and interactions. The last gig we went on stage during their show and spilled ketchup and assorted other sauces on ourselves. Probably pretending it was blood or something silly like that. They thought it was funny. It’s cool. I met Jeff like 15 years later and he instantly recognized me. And I did a few interviews with Bill when he did his band Firebird. He still remember that little tour and we talked a bit about it. So it’s fun and at least they didn’t hate us.
In 1995 you tried to record an album in Pantera style and released some outtakes as “The Shark Tapes” in 2019. First of all, why did you decide to follow the demand of your label back then? And secondly, how was it to throw the whole thing in the garbage halfway through? Didn’t it cause some rift within the band?
No. It was a band effort. You have to remember those were really different times. Sepultura and Pantera were big. So literally every label wanted to sign a similar band and cash in. Therefore, we wrote a few more accessible songs, which were actually more inspired by Death and “Heartwork”-era Carcass and just wanted to check if any label would sign us. We had already written half of our violent “Kill Division” album in those days, but one label guy said: nobody wants to hear that fast, screetching music anymore. Kinda funny that the entire black metal movement came after that, with several bands selling tens of throusands of albums. This label guy had some poor judgement. Eventually… our mixture of Death and Carcass was still not Pantera enough, so we thought: fuck it. We then recorded the “Kill Division” album and signed to the small, but dedicated label Cold Blood Industries.
Could you tell me about Olaf van Malm who played a guest solo on “Depression Tank” album? How did you get to know him? What was the cause of his death later that year?
He was our friend and the guitar player in the first line-up of Dead Head around 1988. At that time, he was only like 16 years old. He was totally into Sacrifice and Sodom, but he was also very talented and soon playing more in the style of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. So he went on to do hard rock music with great guitar work. And we moved on playing our thrash. Then, around 2009, when we were recording “Depression Tank”, he was also jamming with our drummer. So one day they (secretly) recorded a guitar solo for our album. It was by far the best solo on “Depression Tank”. I am glad it’s on that album, because Olaf died pretty soon after. He was suffering from some heart disease that he never knew about. We did play his solo from tape plus show his picture, when we held our CD presentation.
In 2013 you opened for Slayer. Did you like this experience? Weren’t you disappointed that you couldn’t hang out with them? And what type of a cake did you present to Tom Araya? Was it a “magic” cake, hehe?
This was actually exactly 9 years ago today, just as I am typing this answer. It was the 6th of June. Tom Araya’s birthday. No, we didn’t bring any magic cake. Just a well baked and designed birthday cake. The closest we got to Slayer that day was meeting Tom’s brother John. For whatever reason, there were some tensions in the Slayer camp. Business related I sensed. It was one of the first shows on that tour. Plus… they were still dealing with Hanneman’s passing. So the atmophere was not very relaxed. Well, too bad. I do have to state: they gave us full access to the stage and we could use all the lighting in the venue! My bottles of beer were even on Kerry’s Marshall speakers. Nobody did give us any trouble. Slayer didn’t seem afraid for any support act. For me it was kinda weird to not see meet them, because in the years before I had done multiple interviews with them for Aardschok, which is like the biggest metal magazine in The Netherlands. In 2008 I spent like half an afternoon talking to Kerry when I attended their show in Atlanta. We talked a lot about guitars and amps and music. He basicly was bored and seemed to like the conversation, starting new topics and telling a lot himself. So for me, it would have been fun to catch up with him. But you know… It’s how it goes sometimes.
What are your last words of wisdom to round up the interview?
Well, this was the longest interview I ever did. So I’m sure I will bore all your readers to death.
But thanks for the questions and the exposure. I just hope people will take the time to check out our thrash metal assault. We’ll continue to do our best to create some vicious and loud music for many years to come. Hailz!
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