Death metal outfit Necrotesque is making serious headway. With Et Mortui Resurgent recently released its second album, following two earlier EPs. Time to call the entire band – Arjan (guitar), Dave (bass), Harald (drums), and Lodewijk (vocals) – to talk about the new record, playing live, musical surprises, and what it’s really like being in a band: ‘We’re really just a group of friends making noise.’
Hey, how are you today?
Lodewijk: Hey Clemens! Great! We’ve just come out of the summer period, when we visited plenty of festivals ourselves and, of course, went on holiday with our families and partners. We’ve already had our first rehearsal after the summer break, and we’re completely ready to attack the world again with our trusty chainsaw racket!
Congratulations on the release of Et Mortui Resurgent. It came out on May 6 this year. How has the album been received?
Dave: Thanks, Clemens! The reactions varied – from fantastic to ‘meh’ and everything in between. Just as well, because art should provoke. Whether it stirs up negative or positive emotions, we’re happy with it.
Arjan: Yeah, that’s always fun: seeing how all the different reviewers view the album. We go from ‘very little variety’ to ‘every song really is different and you’re never bored for a second.’
What themes or stories are central to the new album?
Lodewijk: The themes on this album actually differ from song to song, but of course death and destruction – occasionally with a wink – are central again. For example, when Arjan first sent me Entrails On The Rails, it immediately sounded like a thundering train coming straight at me. I simply couldn’t picture anything else. Based on that, I wrote lyrics for four fictional scenarios involving people who lose their lives because of a train. Very blunt, very direct. Like our music. That’s almost always how my lyric-writing process starts: I sit down, close my eyes, let the music guide me, and imagine what fits the song. That’s how I wrote the lyrics for six other songs on the album too.
Dave had also supplied some material, giving me complete freedom to place it over whichever finished songs I chose, work out the vocal lines, and adjust the lyrics where necessary so they fit the music. Personally, I think the most impressive example is Patricide. That song was inspired by a personal experience of Dave’s: his relationship with his father and leaving organized religion. I think it’s a very strong song anyway, but even more so when you know the story behind it. So far, Arjan has also written the lyrics to one song on every album, and this time he took on that job again with the title track Et Mortui Resurgent. The song tells an ongoing story about undead creatures, also known as ‘The Necrotic Grotesque.’
Lodewijk: I think that depends on who you ask with this album. As mentioned, Patricide has a special meaning for Dave, for example. We also have a humorous, lighter song: Norwood 6(66). People who already know us know we’re all bald, so I thought it would be funny to write about that for once. The song is literally about going bald and why going bald is actually pretty ‘metal,’ haha. The title comes from the Norwood scale, a medical standard used to indicate the different stages of baldness. Norwood six is one of the more advanced stages.
Although this song is mainly meant to be funny, there’s a little more behind the line ‘Kale koppen niet te stoppen’ (‘Bald heads can’t be stopped!’) that you hear in it. Arjan came up with the idea of including that line too. It’s a nod to your reviewer/wordsmith Remco Faasen, who regularly posted it under our social-media posts. But by now it has also become a bit of a band motto for me. To me, it describes the brotherhood that has grown between us over the past five years. In those five years we’ve experienced, achieved, organized, and travelled quite a lot. Like every band, there are ups and occasional downs, and we’re no different. We each come with our own user manual, but we’re getting better and better at understanding one another’s. We’re really just a group of friends making noise. And there’s never actually been any real drama. So: Bald heads can’t be stopped!
Dave: This album is faster, more intense, catchier, and this time we have a track featuring a woman on backing vocals: Sara from Cathubodua. Some songs on the previous album were more ‘listening songs’ and not really tracks to play live, but in our view every song on Et Mortui Resurgent is suitable for the setlist.
Harald: This time, at least, I had to prepare much more to get everything really tight. Once again, it’s about finding—and pushing—the limit of what we can play as a band.
How does a typical Necrotesque song come together? Has the writing process changed over the years? And to what extent did you take your fans’ expectations into account while writing?
Dave: Arjan writes the riffs, while Lodewijk and I mainly write the lyrics. Harald and Arjan devise drum parts for the riffs, and eventually Lodewijk lays the lyrics over the songs as vocal lines. This has been our method since the debut EP. Fans of our music like old-school death metal without solos or lots of lead work, and with groove. The way we create songs organically meets those wishes.
Harald: What I like is that the writing process has been the same since day one. Very organic and close to who we are. Arjan and I meet in the rehearsal room, simply start playing, and keep going until something works and sounds good. Sometimes you nail it immediately; other times you first come up with twenty variations on riffs and rhythms. In the end it has to sound ‘good’ and not become too difficult, so I think you can hear that naturalness in the songs.
So Sara van der Heyden provides the guest vocals on the new album’s title track. Personally, I think that was a brilliant move. How did you end up working with her? Was she already familiar with your style of music? And can we expect more things like that in the future? By the way, is there anything you still absolutely want to try musically?
Dave: Sara did a fantastic job on the vocals, and we’re happy with and proud of the result. Thanks for the compliment! Sara is the singer of Cathubodua, a Belgian symphonic-metal band in which our drummer Harald also plays. We love her beautiful voice, so we asked her to contribute guest vocals to the title track. Whether we’ll have more guests on future albums depends on who makes themselves available, haha. If Ola Lindgren happens to call, for example, we’ll definitely think about it. Speaking for myself, I’d still like to try a song with fretless bass sometime, in the style of Steve DiGiorgio.
Arjan: As Lodewijk said, this is the only song I wrote the lyrics for, and while I was writing, that section felt like a dialogue between good and evil. I’m a fan of operatic vocals anyway, and when I asked Sara whether she’d like to sing a part, her literal response was, ‘Of course I’d love to!’ I sent her the BPM and the four lines I needed, and I think about a week later I received a WeTransfer link with, if memory serves, eight variations of every line. So it was a really nice pick-and-mix for us to choose from, haha.
With this album, you’re once again releasing music in a highly competitive genre. What do you think truly sets Necrotesque apart?
Dave: Basically nothing, in the sense that we make straightforward, groovy death metal. Plenty of bands do that. But the atmosphere in our band and the connection with the people who enjoy our music are very special. We’re always up for it, and wherever we play – at home or abroad, for people our own age or a young crowd – it’s a party. Never static, always entertaining.
Harald: It’s always catchy and not too difficult. Apart from that, what we do really isn’t anything new – we just enjoy playing.
Necrotesque keeps moving higher up the bill and its status is steadily growing. Are you happy with your current place in the scene?
Dave: We’re incredibly happy and grateful that people recognize our music and want to see us live. We’re ambitious, but we also realize that we’ve played on great stages and with fantastic bands. A few of them are Asphyx, 1914, LIK, and Malevolent Creation.
Arjan: And Carcass—my personal highlight. Childhood heroes!
Once a band has released an album, choosing a setlist is easy. Does that get harder as you release more albums? Who decides which songs Necrotesque plays live?
Lodewijk: It doesn’t really get harder. Usually Arjan proposes a setlist and asks for feedback and whether everyone agrees. We often approve it straight away, but sometimes someone prefers a slightly different order or wants to swap a song. Then whoever wants it a little different makes a new proposal, and we usually settle it very quickly. We’re all pretty much on the same page in that respect, and by now we know which songs work well live.
Are there songs you think work better onstage than on record, or vice versa?
Lodewijk: Personally, I think we shine brightest live anyway – especially with those lights bouncing off our bald heads, haha. We feel completely in our element onstage, and by now we’re really well attuned to one another. Everything comes together there: the image, the lights, the smoke, the pummelling guitars, and of course the crowd’s energy. We also try to interact with the audience quite a lot. Talking a bit of shit and cracking jokes is obviously part of it, but we also regularly jump into the crowd to headbang together. Of course, there are songs we absolutely love ourselves that nevertheless seem to work less well live. A good example is Permafrost from the first EP. At some point we noticed the crowd always seemed to lose a little steam during that song, so eventually we took it out of the setlist.
Arjan: Exactly. Permafrost is great fun to play, almost trance-like, but live it isn’t energetic enough to listen to. Geriatric Cranium Crusher, on the other hand, always works like a charm. As a band, you simply feel the irresistible urge—even without much hair—to headbang like a maniac.
Why should someone who hasn’t heard the new album listen to Necrotesque right now?
Dave: Because it’s very cheerful music and it gives people energy! The lyrical subjects are often gruesome and grotesque, but by the end of the record you feel like a brand-new person charged up on dopamine.
Live, you always go all out with a good light show and smoke. How important is spectacle to Necrotesque, and where do you draw the line between a good show and pure entertainment?
Arjan: Well, spectacle may not be the right word, but we do try to entertain. In this genre, you often see a performance quickly turn into ‘four or five guys in a row,’ and we want to make it visually interesting. So in addition to the standard backdrop, we have two permanent ‘ego risers’ and two optional risers beside or in front of the drum kit, fitted with vertical smoke machines and lights for an occasional extra visual kick. We have a ‘dress code’ to project some uniformity onstage, and we actively try to interact with the audience. It goes both ways: sometimes the crowd joins in nicely, and sometimes you have to work a little harder, haha.
Which song from the new album do you think is strongest in a live performance?
Dave: I think Patricide and Born From A Necrowomb are very strong live because of the blast beats and tempo changes. Et Mortui Resurgent is also very strong thanks to the catchy melody, Sara’s vocals, and the groove swaying underneath.
Lodewijk: Oof, that’s a good one! Et Mortui Resurgent immediately comes to mind because we brought Sara along to sing her vocal parts live at our release show at Little Devil. That was really cool and a surprise for our audience, who aren’t used to that kind of thing from us. But I also think of Born From A Necrowomb. A somewhat ‘simpler’ song—Arjan’s words—but absolutely crushing too. And that often seems to be a winning formula live!
Are there any particular shows or concerts from the past that have always stayed with you?
Lodewijk: There are definitely a few that really stand out to me. Obviously the gig at P60, which was organized by Zware Metalen, by the way. That was so fucking awesome. Just shooting the shit backstage with the guys from Asphyx was obviously memorable for us, but it was also one of our first truly big shows. Everything was incredibly well organized, and the crowd responded with huge enthusiasm right away—even though we were the opening band. We’ve also had the chance to play in the Czech Republic several times by now. It’s fucking awesome every single time. The audience there is unbelievably enthusiastic; it’s insane. Every time we play there, it’s one massive party. We also sell quite a lot of merch, and afterwards fans come up to chat, take a photo, or ask for an autograph. Those are the kinds of moments that stay with you.
Arjan: Did I mention Carcass already? Okay… good! But yes, the shows are fun, while the reactions afterwards and the interaction with bands and people are at least as enjoyable, if not more so. In a world that’s becoming increasingly shitty and increasingly individualistic, that constant positive feeling in the metal world is a real breath of fresh air. I’ve just spent almost a week at Alcatraz with friends again, and literally saw nothing that looked like a scuffle, argument, or anything of the sort.
Are there particular venues, festivals, or bands you’d like to play with in the future?
Dave: We definitely still have several venues on our wish list. Personally, I’d love to play Nobel in Leiden because it’s a beautiful venue and Leiden’s metal scene is so good. If that could be combined with Fulci or Frozen Soul, I’d have an amazing day.
Arjan: The new Baroeg, Alcatraz, Dynamo Metalfest, Tolminator—you name it. Anywhere that will have us. But small venues and pubs too. We simply enjoy performing, and every venue has its own charm.
What does Necrotesque have planned for the coming months? Can we expect a tour or new live shows around the album?
Dave: We’re going to play our asses off! Kashfest in Terneuzen with Stillbirth and Imprisoned in Flesh, The Cave in Amsterdam with Anime Torment and Devine Defilement, with BleedSkin in Deinze, and then a whole load of concerts in places including Groningen, France, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic that haven’t been announced yet.
Finally, what would you like to say to the fans who are going to listen to the new album or come see you live?
Arjan: We hope you enjoy the album, and if you come see us live, come say hello. We’ll have a beer together.
Lodewijk: Thank you so much for your support; let us know what you think of the new album. And if you’re still wondering whether to come see us live again: do it! We’ll turn it into one hell of a heavy party!
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