1.HELLO AND CONGRATULATIONS FOR YOUR VERY BEAUTIFUL MUSIC. ALTHOUGH I CAN'T HAVE A FULL OPINION SINCE I HAVE ONLY LISTENED TO ONE OF YOUR SONGS...ANYWAY PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELVES TO THE READERS BY STATING SOME OF YOUR MOST IMPROTANT MOMENTS AS A BAND.

• Hi there! My name is Koen Romeijn, and I’m the vocalist/Guitarist of DETONATION. We are a melodic death / thrash band from Holland, and we have been active since 1997. At first we started out as a trio, under the name “Infernal Dream”, but we changed this after we found our 4th member. The band consists furthermore of Mike Ferguson on guitar, Thomas Kalksma on drums and Otto Schimmelpenninck on bass-guitar. Since we got quite a long history of events, I suggest you visit our homepage www.detonation.nl for complete background information.By the way, you only listened to one song?? Go get the album then! ;-)

• We received offers from Atlantida in the past, and this time we thought “What the hell, let’s contribute a song this time”. Every promotion is good, especially for a band with our status, so we thought it could do no harm. I’m not sure how many people will actually listen to the compilation; I never buy compilation albums myself, unless there are established bands to be heard. But I guess there are a lot of underground metal fans, who are more into these kinds of releases.

• We had been searching for a suitable label for quite some time, and since nothing substantial had come out, we decided on doing the whole thing ourselves. If things had not worked out the way they did, than that would have been too bad...we just wanted to record this album, for ourselves in 1st place. Fortunately we had the possibility to release it on a small Dutch label if no other label signed us... Looking back, it was a good decision to finish the entire album at first before offering it to record labels, all a label had to do was releasing it, everything was already finished.

• Osmose is of course an established name within the scene, so we kind of  trusted them on doing everything the right way, and so far, Osmose is really doing a hell of a job, the CD is for sale in many stores around the world, and available through many distributors, so we are not complaining at all! They also arrange plenty of reviews and interviews for us, and we are given sales-statistics every few months.

• All of our lyrics deal with personal struggles and subjects, mainly inner psychological things. We take inspiration from our every day life, and for us this is the way to deal with our worse problems. So there are no made up stories to be found in them, all personal reflections of our own lives.

• Well, “Lost Euphoria” is not a demo, it’s our EP officially released through  Skullcrusher records from Holland, although on a very small scale. In our old work you can clearly hear more black metal influences, and the songs lack in songwriting, when comparing them to the ones on “An Epic Defiance”. One thing that has always been very present in our music is the melodies, and it is clear where our influences come from. All 4 of us are pretty much into “Swedish metal”, which is something you can clearly hear in our music. But if I have to name a few albums I would say; Dissection/The Somberlain, At the gates/SOS, Death/Symbolic, Iron Maiden/7th... etc.

• We’ve played about 80 live shows this far, including shows in the Czech Republic and the UK. Playing live is something we enjoy highly, and what we do best. We try to bring the audience a more intense experience if comparing them to our studio recordings, so we add an extra dose of speed and aggression. We were honored to play with bands such as The Haunted, Within Temptation, Centurian, Orphanage, and Ancient Rites, but the most fun gigs have always been the ones in small packed clubs!

• I would say we make quality extreme metal with a high dose of melodies.The brutality and atmosphere are probably the most appealing elements in our music I guess...

• The cover artwork of “An Epic Defiance” is all about the concept of  time, and when looking carefully, one can discover several aspects of this subject on the cover. The head represents a pendulum from a clock, and on the left side there is a film/diagram, on the left there is some sort of scale from an old sun-clock. In general the concept reflects the overall thought of the albums’ title, and deals with our defiance against our environment and us at this time. But yeah, I think good artwork is very important for an album. It is supposed to match the atmosphere of the music itself, and help people to determine what kind of style the band is playing.

• I guess it would be “An Epic Defiance”, the title track. We’re actually thinking about making a video clip for one of the songs from AED, but no ideas have been worked out at this stage...

• Honest. With Detonation, you see/hear what you get. We’re just young musicians trying to express ourselves through our music. I’m not that much of a reader, so I cannot think of an author right now...

• I would like to go back to medieval times; I’m very interested in how the people lived back then, and participate on a battlefield!

• I’m not religious, sorry. I do believe that we are created by an unearthly life form, as an experiment of some sort...but I guess things got a little out of hand, haha!

• Kill myself ;-)

• On a pile of shit, cause flies can get away with that!

• Don’t know...something positive I guess.

• Thanks for the interview! Make sure to check your local record store for “An Epic Defiance”, and see some of you on tour perhaps later on. Cheers!! Koen.