Ex-PESTILENCE Frontman: CHUCK SCHULDINER 'Wasn't A Sympathet

Deathrasher magazine recently conducted an interview with former PESTILENCE/ASPHYX/BOLT THROWER and current DEATH BY DAWN frontman Martin van Drunen. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Deathrasher: Old metalheads prefer to stay with their classic bands and are not interested in listen to the new hordes. Are you one of them? What other styles besides "metal" do you listen to? What have you been listening to lately? What do you seek in music?

Martin van Drunen: Not really... I was out of metal for a while because I got bored with it. I think it was the time when black metal started to become a trend. For a guy like me who grew up with VENOM it was all a big pile of crap. Norwegian evil kids propagating nazishit. Call it fascist metal but not black. Damn. Sometimes I read about those wankers and I’m astonished the press even publishes this rubbish. Whatever happened with the attitude that metalheads should be like brothers and sisters worldwide, no matter if they are black, yellow, red or white. Ignore those fuckers, beat the fuckin shit out of 'em as soon as you get the chance and close this embarrassing metal chapter. Only VENOM can claim to have been black metal, but that was pure entertainment.

"Anyways, I was ready for a lot of new influences like gabber, dub, underground hip-hop and blues, even latin stuff like salsa, cuban or bossanova. There's too much good music in the world. Never forgot the old gods though. I'm a metalhead in the first place, with punk roots, but these new discoveries somehow gave everything a fresh boost for me. Yesterday I got stoned and drunk whilst listening to BLACK LABEL SOCIETY. New MOTÖRHEAD is a killer one too. I'm also completely into DEATH ANGEL's 'The Art of Dying'. NECRO (death rap, you should check that as OBITUARY's featuring on his album) and VIBRONICS is a superb dub band from the U.K. I like also SOULFLY ('Dark Ages') at the moment. Max is putting a lot of cool influences in it. And things like AMPARANOIA, ZEBDA or PAULINE EN LA PLAYA. And last but no least HOLY TERROR: 'Mind Wars'. Godly stuff. All these things I played over the last 48 hours.

"Music to me is the ultimate way to express myself. It feeds me. I breathe and eat it. They may take everything away from me, but if they take my music I'd slowly die.
Besides I'm very lucky to become a musician myself. In DEATH BY DAWN we do whatever we want musically but we are all aware that there is something rotten in the world. So I try to sing about things that bother us all."

Deathrasher: Which was the reason for your departure of COMECON. Was it because you were signed in BOLT THROWER or SUBMISSION? Tell us about your work in these two bands…

Martin van Drunen: COMECON was as said a studio session job. I never was a member. Only did them a favor. SUBMISSION recorded one demo with me. Randy called me up and asked me if I was interested. So we jammed a bit and there we had this weird mix of heavy metal with my vox. But then BOLT THROWER asked me to help them out and it was impossible to combine the two together. I taped all BOLT THROWER songs and practiced five days a week for the coming Euro tour. One week before the tour I flew to England. And we practiced the set for about a week. I stayed with Gavin and Jo-Ann and later with Baz. They treated me like a family member and they did everything to make my stay as comfortable as possible. And so I did two tours with 'em. Which was a great experience.

Deathrasher: Do you like DEATH? What is your opinion about Chuck Schuldiner both as person as much as musician?

Martin van Drunen: "I like their first and a bit of 'Leprosy'. The rest weren't that good I think. 'Scream Bloody Gore' is a death metal classic every fan should have. Just like the demos. Killer material. Chuck, however, wasn't a sympathetic man. I got to know him on the U.S. tour and I never liked the guy. Very unpredictable. He canceled shows for no reason. Treated bands, fans and roadies often like shit. In the end his roadies Louie and Walt (where the hell are you now guys??) were sleeping in our van 'coz they couldn't stand his company. That says it all. Therefore his death meant not much to me. He wrote some killer songs in the beginning and he had a good voice too, but later on he lost it all.

"Everybody's always talking about Chuck. But nobody remembers Fred from French MASSACRA. Now for that man I would do a tribute. A nice man and friend. A 100% metalhead. Never forgot he puked all over my toilet, haha. Bonjour, Fred, RIP. This glass is to you..."

Deathrasher: Martin, would you had liked to record some album with BOLT THROWER?

Martin van Drunen: Yes and no. Yes, because I'm still curious what it would have sound like. No because I like to do my own things like writing lyrics and creating the lines. In BT I was only like a mercenary. I did what they told me to do. But I need freedom as a performer. They would never have given me that."

Read the entire interview at www.deaththrasher.com.

Well, pretty interesting one ,but i think WE ALL disagree with :

-Max Calavera World's poser-sell out arse FUCK THAT Nü Crap !
-Cuban and Latinamerican shit bosanova A bunch of crap

Didn't know that "Evil Duuuuuuuuude" Schuldiner was a pain in the ass for many people

schuldiner is a pile of overrated shit

I always thought and felt most of DEATH's releases are more than excellent, so I disagree with Martin here.
Since so few peoples currently speak and listen to DEATH (Sad but true... And many younger metalheads don't know Chuck's music), I don't think DEATH is overrated lololol

ahhhh....all hail martin for he remembers Fred from MASSACRA !!!!!

I'm amazed that more people don't know SLAUGHTER!!!

worshipsatanzine wrote:

I'm amazed that more people don't know SLAUGHTER!!!

I do... I have a tape somewhere... But to be honnest, I 100 times more listen to my DEATH discography! :hailz:

gabalgabow wrote:

I do... I have a tape somewhere... But to be honnest, I 100 times more listen to my DEATH discography! :hailz:

DEATH is one of the first dm bands I got into back around 93....I really like "scream bloody gore"....the latter became too melodic and not extreme enough for me (in present time) but it's still good shit!

Up to "Individual thought patterns", I dig dig dig and dig many graves with it

Symbolic was Ok, but not much my style nor intense enough... The last one (Sounds of perseverance) is good, more positive and heavy metallish... but not really what I would listen a lot...

worshipsatanzine wrote:

I'm amazed that more people don't know SLAUGHTER!!!

I know he was in Slaughter for some weeks , but he always was more interested in Death than Slaughter.
Slaughter guys didn't like the way was going on with Chuck

macabrepest wrote:

"Everybody's always talking about Chuck. But nobody remembers Fred from French MASSACRA. Now for that man I would do a tribute. A nice man and friend. A 100% metalhead. Never forgot he puked all over my toilet, haha. Bonjour, Fred, RIP. This glass is to you..."

Thats pretty much how I feel. Death were an important band in the formation of Death metal in the early years, but not the only one.

The fact is DEATH wasn't only important in the beginnings of the style, but also later one as they followed their own path and kept on evolving and doing what they felt inside, always the best way possible... It was and has always been obvious for peoples who were listening to metal at the time... Now I can understand it could be a bit frustrating those who do not like DEATH's music much, while they read about it so many times (Even though things really calmed down).

I think DEATH might have remained in the memories of most as first Death metal band, because almost all along their carreer they kept on evolving in a good way (Not often the case... Uh!) and surprised the listeners often... If the band had died after "Leprozy" for exemple, I'm not sure if it would have branded the memories that much...
To sum it up, the whole carreer a band had also influences the opinion of peoples...

I don't really care to know who was the very very very first Death metal band (Because Death metal came as somekind of evolution from Thrash and other stuffs, as well as many kinds of music did from something else... So there isn't something to be sooo proud of or to praise as fuck during 20 years...), but I think POSSESSED and few others could fit as well...

gabalgabow wrote:

The fact is DEATH wasn't only important in the beginnings of the style, but also later one as they followed their own path and kept on evolving and doing what they felt inside, always the best way possible... It was and has always been obvious for peoples who were listening to metal at the time... Now I can understand it could be a bit frustrating those who do not like DEATH's music much, while they read about it so many times (Even though things really calmed down).

I think DEATH might have remained in the memories of most as first Death metal band, because almost all along their carreer they kept on evolving in a good way (Not often the case... Uh!) and surprised the listeners often... If the band had died after "Leprozy" for exemple, I'm not sure if it would have branded the memories that much...
To sum it up, the whole carreer a band had also influences the opinion of peoples...

I don't really care to know who was the very very very first Death metal band (Because Death metal came as somekind of evolution from Thrash and other stuffs, as well as many kinds of music did from something else... So there isn't something to be sooo proud of or to praise as fuck during 20 years...), but I think POSSESSED and few others could fit as well...

I'll respect him for doing what he wanted to do, and for trying to 'perfect' this sound, but the problem is this isn't what I like to listen to.

(not a big problem for me, as there are plenty of other putrid bands around, just some people are stuck in a 'chuck cult' mentality, only listening to what Death would do (or what magazines tell them to buy), and not able to accept any criticisms of their hero. So now Chucks dead, they don't know what to do.)

I don't know, in France there doesn't seem to be some Chuck cult or something so intense... It's only peoples still listening to the music, and having regrets, I guess... But I don't read anymore the magazines so... How could I know what's metallically jetsetting or not?

Something I dislike is the fact DEATH influenced many bands to play their "death metal" more mellowdic... And little by little it turned to real GAYNESS!
It's quite strange sometimes, coz I don't have problems with DEATH's melodic parts (Eventhough it turned out ot be very positive on the last album) while many of the mellowdic "death" bands bore me to the core! It might be because the "feelings" that comes out are gay, or it sounds to happy to kick the bottom...

gabalgabow wrote:

It's quite strange sometimes, coz I don't have problems with DEATH's melodic parts (Eventhough it turned out ot be very positive on the last album) while many of the mellowdic "death" bands bore me to the core! It might be because the "feelings" that comes out are gay, or it sounds to happy to kick the bottom...

Probably because they just copy the style of music that Chuck played without having any of their own ideas to create unique atmospheres.

I don't mind the later works, it's just frustrating to know it could have been so much better!

"I don't mind the later works, it's just frustrating to know it could have been so much better!"

Do you mean "Symoblic" or "The sounds of perseverance"?

TSOP is really good in my opinion, not really what I need, but it was really good in the kind of "modern heavy metal" with various death metal patterns if followed...

I have Symbolic, which had some decent moments (if I remember right, 1000 eyes and Crystal mountain weren't so bad, but not listened to it in years!).

I haven't heard Individual thought patterns or The sound of Perseverance properly (only in a shitty bar), but there are too many other albums that I would rather hear, than spend money on something that would be OK at best.

Symbolic is one of the DEATH album I like the less... It lacks of atmosphere and great riffs... I was disappointed when it was released... Really. I like it better now, but it's not something essential, that's clear...

Individual thought patterns is really great... I you like it technical (It was called techno death at the time), yet with great leads and some heavy metal influences (Andy la Rocque was there), you could be interested. I'd advice you to download it one day...