Context

 

Whenever I’ve been in the Netherlands previously I’ve been struck by how hospitable and kind the Dutch are; they’ll show you around, speak to you in your native tongue, share their beer, their drugs, their party… this time, it all began before I’d even got on the plane, when I received an email from Context’s founder and guitarist Koen asking if the Hierophant team would like to have some beers before his band’s performance at the Metalfest on Saturday. The Noxes? Beers? Of course! We met up with Koen, and also with Context vocalist Bram, to see how the event was going for them, and what they have in store for the rest of the year.

 

Hierophant Nox: So, how do you come to be in Roermond this afternoon?

Koen: Well, I have known Marcel for a long time, from my previous band, and we have stayed in contact. Sometimes when I have questions about arranging shows, I contact him. When I heard about this festival, I asked him if there was a place and he said yeah, and they needed some backline.

Bram: We are in the position of being able to deliver an entire backline… you saw all the bands playing on our speaker cabinets yesterday!

Koen: We will always lend our equipment to other bands, you get a lot more gigs that way.

 

Hierophant Nox: Are you local yourselves??

Koen: I live 40 minutes drive away near Eindhoven, so yes, pretty much local.

Bram: I live about 20 kilometers from here, I am the closest one.

 

Hierophant Nox: So do you think you would have attended anyway, even if you weren’t playing?

Bram: Oh yes, totally, I would pay the ticketprice to see these other bands, that’s the awesome part of this show!

 

Hierophant Nox: You were around last night as well to see the mad antics of Cutthroat! Do you think the festival is going well?

Koen: Yeah, definitely- last night was great. There’s a great audience, and a large audience. There were a hundred and fifty people in last night, and there will definitely be more tonight.

Bram: It may have started a little slowly, but as the evening went on it just grew.

Koen: It’s great that there are vistors from all over, even Spain and countries like that, Marcel was telling me. So you’ve got to see that this is successful.

 

Hierophant Nox: Have you been to other events arranged by Hub and Heuy?

Koen: I went to the release party for this festival, and they also did a Metalfest in Weert with Dismember, back in 2007.

Bram: Yeah

Koen: Were you there?

Bram: Yeah.

Koen: You were? I was sober!

Bram: It was just before I was in the band.

Koen: In 2007?

Bram: Oh…no… I wasn’t there!! Concerts… too many.

 

Hierophant Nox: I’m glad you’ve decided between yourselves now! Is playing live an important aspect for Context?

Koen: Yeah, we like to have a good time and have fun in it, and the live part is always fun.

Bram: All of us have jobs and everything so sadly we can’t play every night, although I’d love to. We’ve got to do our stuff and pay the rent but all the free time we’ve got we try to spend in the band.

Koen: For example, last night I was here with the backline. This morning, I drove all of it north, kicked him out of bed, drove another fifty kilometers to rehearse, then came ALL THE WAY BACK.

Bram: Yeah, usually I have to drive two hours to the venue anyway, suddenly there’s a show near to me and I think ‘great, I won’t have to travel’… and I STILL have to drive! But it is all worth it.

 

Hierophant Nox: Shall we talk about music rather than just discussing how much we’re enjoying the party?

Koen: Ok. It IS a good party, though.

Bram: Originally we started as a 80s thrash metal band, but as soon as the band was complete with the current members, everyone started to put in their own favourite styles in their instruments. So you can hear a subtle difference in that our bass player is into death metal, and our other guitar is into every type of metal, as long as it’s good, and I’m into black metal… so we try to put our own preferences in.

Koen: Yeah, you could say that we’re a thrash metal band, but we’re just a metal band, if we think it sounds good then we’re going to use it.

Bram: Yeah, recently we have heard some strange things, like I heard we had influences from pagan metal… Woah!! We’ve never heard that, but it’s cool that people hear different things in our music.

 

Hierophant Nox: In the UK thrash is a bit of a touchy subject, because we love it, but we’ve seen an onslaught of young bands singing about bongs and beer…

Koen: Which they can’t buy in Britain!

 

Hierophant Nox: Indeed. Is it trendy to be into thrash over here too?

Bram: No, thrash metal is one of the black sheep. Black metal is on the rise, with the accessible bands for the 14 year olds who listen to Dimmu Borgir and think ‘woah this is louder than the radio’! But thrash metal is on a downward slope.

Koen: Thrash was very big two or three years ago, it seems to go in stages. Two years ago we had Gama Bomb, Municipal Waste getting signed, all the bands that Earache brought in. It’s good that those guys play, but this was huge in Holland. After that we had the pagan stuff, Korpiklaani etc… in every country it goes up and down.

 

Hierophant Nox: I’m worried that if we’re still having the baby-thrash thing then we’re two years behind you! Although our black metal scene is awfully strong right now too. And death metal remains a constant.

Bram: Of course, It’s the universal binder of metal.

Koen: But in Britain, that’s understandable you have Carcass and Napalm Death…

Thus ensues a discussion about how cool it was for Carcass to bring Ken Owen onstage at recent appearances, culminating in me telling the Dutchmen that Jeff Walker isn’t very tall. Why? Not sure. But now they know…

Hierophant Nox: So, you have an album out, I believe you are promoting it yourselves?

Koen: We have the DIY motto, getting signed is just very hard right now and it seems like if you’re playing in a band and you’re making your first release, you have to be the best band in the world, your production has to be really clear, you can’t make any mistakes…

Bram: They take it too seriously. They also think you can only be brutal, but we just try to have fun.

Koen: It’s way too serious. Of course we hope to get signed, every band does, but DIY is cool enough. We have also done some shows in other countries, so we can handle it by ourselves. The other benefit is that we don’t have to compromise anything, the only compromise is between the five of us. Our ideology, our artwork and our t-shirts, if we think it is cool then we can release it.

Bram: Yeah, they can’t say to us ‘these days female vocals are awesome!’ If you don’t want to do it then…

Koen: I don’t do it for money. If I did, I would play backing guitar in some popular band and make loads of money.

Bram: My hope is that some day, I can get a sandwich.

Koen: Yes! The first time I can get a meal from my royalties I will be the happiest man alive! But I get the feeling that if I wait for that day I will die from starvation.

 

Hierophant Nox: Having come from this background, if you signed it would have to be to a label who would give you freedom.

Bram: No, it depends on conditions.

Koen: Yes, some things I will never compromise, some ideas about the music I will stand my ground on, but other management stuff and business stuff, if a label wants to do it then please! Do it!

Bram: And a booking agency to sort out those things, that would be excellent.

Koen: The most ideal situation would be to do what we did with "Human Devolution", we would record it entirely, then give it to a label and say ‘buy it from us and put it out there’.

Bram: We also have so many live shows because there are little things on the album that we think could be better, so we play them a lot better live and hope that this will be the version that people remember!

 

Hierophant Nox: In spite of that, have you had good reactions to the album?

Bram: Fucking awesome!

Koen: We had reviews that were all very positive. The reactions from audience have been very good, so we have no reasons to complain.

Bram: They compare us with bands they I wouldn’t even dare.

Koen: Yeah, we sound like Dismember and Kreator? Thank you, you just made our day! So.. why do I have 400 CDs in my cupboard!

 

Hierophant Nox: You need a sticker that says ‘They sound like Dismember’ to stick on the front.

Koen: Yeah. Then I would have 400 CDs in my cupboard… and 400 stickers.

Hierophant Nox: I take your point. So, are you working on new stuff?

Koen: Yeah!

Bram: Yeah we have five songs finished, in the basic lines, and three more are in progress and we are working through them.

Koen: The problem with the old album is that some songs were already written in 2005. It’s still good, but they’re old. It takes a long time because we have jobs. Between the recordings we are still working on new stuff.

Bram: When we heard the master copy of our album, we had already written three more songs. It was weird!

 

Hierophant Nox: So how is this creation taking shape? How do you create songs?

Bram: Koen had the idea of the band in the first place, and started looking for people. He had the tour planned and had no band to play it with, so we came together and came to this formation that we now have. Koen made the basic riffs and we added our basic share. But now, everyone can come with his own idea.

Koen: I am playing at home and I think ‘that’s a cool riff’. Then the drummer says it’s shit and I have to do it different….

Bram: And we say why…

Koen: … And he says, so I can do THIS! (air drumming). Then we can make a rough sketch of the song, which riffs are good, which can we use.

Bram: One of the positive parts is that we don’t use notes, or tablature, we think ‘oh that sounds cool’! We rehearse it through. It doesn’t have to look good on the paper, it’s all about feeling. It’s harder to create a simple song that kicks ass. A complex song already kicks ass, but to do the simple, catchy song… that’s hard.

 

Hierpohant Nox: Are you all self-taught?

Bram: I am completely self-taught.

Koen: I had three or four years classical guitar lessons that have nothing to do with what I do now! I went into the army for eight years, so I started over and taught myself again, because I couldn’t play while I was there. Our other guitarist has a musical education. We have four wankers and one musician, basically! We’ll be writing something and thinking ‘do this note and this note together’ and he will say ‘But from the music theory point of view…’ And we’re like… ‘IT SOUNDS COOL!’ So we annoy him, probably.

 

Hierophant Nox: And where do your lyrics come from?

Bram: (laughing) That was the fun part when I joined the band; I said hey, I like the music I would like to be your singer, what about lyrics? They were like… I’m a guitar player, I write the songs, you write the lyrics! And the name is Context so now I have to write good lyrics where people can find a deeper context…otherwise people will say the music is really good but the lyrics…. They suck!

 

Hierophant Nox: It’s been mentioned that your lyrics have a political slant?

Bram: People say that, but that’s mostly about the fact I write reflective lyrics, like "Tales of a Dying Race" says we are only busy with creating more and wanting more, only the greed binds us, not looking at the differences that are beautiful, destroying things that are ‘off the chart’. Observations about humanity destroying rather than creating the beautiful things we could. It’s more philosophical than political. It depends on how you read it.

Koen: For me, if I read it then it means reflecting people a mirror. It shows people it’s two minutes to midnight, and we’re fucking it up. For everyone else reading the lyrics we’re different. The political thing is probably due to the fact we had some internet sites and logos printed in our cover.

Bram: Yeah, we don’t have any endorsements from instrument companies or whatever, so we thought if we don’t have an endorsement, we can support rather than have. That’s when we thought to put in links to the cancer fund, the WWF, things like that…. If you apply it to your own life, then do it in any way you like. If only one person comes to me and says that a lyric made them reflect on something in their life, I would die happy, and it already happened 10 times, and on the most different things that I myself couldn’t imagine. Like the universal language of music, it’s beautiful.

 

Hierophant Nox: What advise would you give to new bands? Do they face problems because there are too many bands around?

Koen: No, competition is good; if your music is good, there is nothing to fear. Competition creates good music. The most important thing is don’t think that you are the best invention, or the best new band. Almost everything is already done one time.

Bram: Every note has been played

Koen: Yeah, so don’t give it a special name to make it sound exclusive.

Bram: Get your own equipment together, this will give you serious opportunities.

Koen: And just have fun!

 

Hierophant Nox: How about being a band in the Netherlands- is that easy?

Koen: There’s the problem that we have so many shows. We have too many venues. On the one side it’s very cool that every day you can watch a band play. Where I live there are three bars within 150 meters. But also there are too many places, the audiences are shattered. If there is a new venue and they have a shit band three times, you won’t go to the fourth gig.

Bram: And there are 10 gigs on one Saturday, when we could all go to the one awesome show. When one big-ass festival is playing, all the other nine events will have no people because everyone else will be at that one certain spot.

 

Hierophant Nox: What are Context’s ambitions and plans?

Bram: Play more creative live gigs, play in other countries and meet more terrific bands.

Koen: We have Skyforger coming over and we will play shows with them. We’re going to get the Swiss band Darkmoon back to Holland and we may go back with them. We want to arrange shows in foreign countries for weekends. That’s the ideal.

Bram: More experiences like this, this is fucking awesome!

Koen: People actually want to talk to us! Look at you!

 

Hierophant Nox: Well, we have a horrible feeling it’s nearly time for you to be onstage, so do you have any final words?

Bram: Thank you for the opportunity.

Koen: Thank you for the interview!!