T.S.K.

Hey !
I'm the Serpent King, singer / guitar player for God Dethroned.
Born in Holland in '71. Started playing guitar when I was 15. At 16 I tried to audition for Pestilence. Didn't work out. I only got Patrick Mameli's mother on the phone who basically only told me that Patrick Uterwijk already got the spot. I wouldn't have been good enough anyway. Started my first band at 17. It was called Dysentery. We played in the vein of Death, Pestilence, Sodom, etc. Not a very good band though. Highlight was getting played on Vara's Vuurwerk as the "demo van de week". This was a nationwide heavy metal radio program with quite a lot of followers. Dysentery lasted for about a year. Then founded God Dethroned. The beginning was tough as always. Many line-up changes even before we managed to record our first demo tape. In the meantime I auditioned fro Asphyx who were about to record their The Rack album. Singer/Bassplayer Theo Loomans wanted to have me in the band, but drummer Bob Bagchus wasn't that easy. I guess the fact that I played a Megadeth guitar riff wasn't such a good idea after all. I didn't get the job and Theo was also dismissed. Anyway, I went back to the Godz. Basically God Dethroned mark I was me and drummer Ard de Weerd. In '91 we recorded the Christhunt demo. It was received very well all over Europe. We sounded like Entombed, Dismember and early Darkthrone. We tried to get a record deal, but that wasn't too easy. I remember I phoned Roadrunner records in Holland to find out what they thought about it, but a very nice gentleman at the other sife of the phone line told me; "I'm sorry, it's not quite good enough"... Anywayz, Shark Records from Germany wasn't that difficult, so we had a deal. in '92 we went back to Franky's Recording Kitchen to record again the Christhunt. This time for a CD release and with more songs of course. As good as the demo turned out, so poorly the CD turned out. Of course, I'm probably the least objective person when it comes to God Dethroned recordings, but I just don't like it. The fact that we didn't have a very good band also didn't help of course. To make sure everything was ruined, Shark Records also decided not to use the album cover with the rat I dissected myself. But instead came up with some weird looking album cover without even our bandname on it. Succes guaranteed !!! Right... Early '94 I called it quits. Put the band on ice, because there's just so much you can take. Joined a band called Ministry of Terror. Recorded a self titled demo in '94 and got a record deal with the Dutch label Foundation 2000. Recorded the Fall of Life CD which got released in early '95. A European tour with Impaled Nazarene followed and believe it or not, I got confronted with a lot of people who recognised me as the singer/guitar player of God Dethroned and people didn't understand why I quit that band. If you hear it long enough you start believing that kind of stuff. To make a long story short, at the last day of that tour in Madrid I already had the someone on the phone who would a few months later be the bass player of the Godz. So it was early '96 and I founded what I use to call the Classic God Dethroned line-up. Jens van der Valk, Roel Sanders, Bert 'Beef' Hoving and myself reformed God Dethroned. Out of money, but full of ideas. What to do? A guy named Berthus Westerhuis came up with the solution. Being the owner of the Franky's Recording studio he offered us the opportunity to record an album without paying for it. If things would turn out well we would settle the score. By the end of the year we were in his studio recording The Grand Grimoire. Early '97 the album was finished and I send out 4 demo tapes to labels I would like to be on, and 1 to a label of which I expected to get signed on. So it was Metal Blade, Nuclear Blast, Music for Nations and Century Media from the wishlist and Displeased Records from the to be expected list. I was right. The same day as they received the tape they were on the phone. Displeased was eager to get us. But as the contract evaluation took a while, also Metal Blade showed up. The rest you guys know... End of '97 saw the release of The Grand Grimoire followed by a European tour with Six Feet Under and a few months later a spot on the No Mercy Festivals. We were back on track. Then one of the band's highlights was created. And recorded... in '99 Bloody Blasphemy was released and a magnificent year followed. We toured with Immortal in April that year. Followed by Dynamo Open Air and Wacken Open Air in the summer. The by the end of the year we toured with Morbid Angel through Europe as a part of the X-mass festivals. Then in February 2000 we joined Cannibal Corpse for the Death Across America tour. It was a huge succes for us. In April that year we played Japan with Ritual Carnage. It couldn't get any better. No it couldn't. Roel decided to leave the band for personal reasons. He played his last show with us on the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium in June of 2000. It was great and it was the best way of saying goodbye to a fellow bandmate. A period of downfall followed. It took us very long to find a replacement for Roel. We also didn't want to stand still, so we wrote Ravenous and asked Tony Laureano to play drums on the album. We all knew him from touring with Angel Corpse and him being the drumtech for Cannibal Corpse. Tony did an amazing job on the album which of course made it even more difficult to find a replacement. Nevertheless, Janne from The Crown managed to control the drums for our participation on the No Mercy festivals of 2001. Then finally in the summer of that year a guy named Arien van Weesenbeek contacted us. We held auditions and he proved to be the right man for the job. Our firts tour with him was a European headliner tour for Ravenous. We also went to the US to play the New Jersey Metalfest where we headlined with no one less that Status Quo. In 2002 we recorded Into the Lungs of Hell. For the first time we recorded outside Franky's Recording Kitchen. We went to Berno Studio in Malmo, Sweden. Henrik Larsson produced the album and in my opinion we had our best production so far. Unfortunately after 8 years the energy had dried out. The remains of our classic line-up decided to shake hands and say goodbye to each other. All that was left was a European tour with Exodus. Thinking it would be the end, me and Arien made what was supposed to be our last album. The Lair of the White Worm. When we realised how much positive energy we got back from writing this album, we decided to find 2 new guys and see where we would take the band. Henk 'Henke' Zinger and Isaac Delahaye joined the Godz right before we went into the studio. Again Berno Studio was the place to be. This time the results were even better. A fresh new band, hungry for blood and eager to go for it. We got the album of the month position in the German Rock Hard magazine which gave us a lot of attention. We toured almost constantly for 2 years. Played all the festivals we could get, and the result was that finally God Dethroned received the respect we were looking for for all these years. One of the highlights was definately the tour tour with Bolt Thrower. Never before was sharing a bus with another band that much fun. The tour consisted out of 2 runs with in between 5 days of living in the rehearsal room finishing our new album. We managed to do that and straight from the tourbus into the studio. This time we decided to go to an unknown guy with an unknown studio. Because we knew he would outdo himself and give us the best. The Toxic Touch has just been released and we already finished a 40 day trek through Europe with Vader and Severe Torture. Album of the month in Rock Hard Germany again. Album of the monthe in Metallian magazine France and on the front cover of Aardschok magazine in Holland... Cheers !