About Me
I'm Christopher, guitarplayer in a Belgian band called Herfst. Visit our webcave here .
I started playing guitar in '96 but, as I was eager to be in a band, ended up as the bassplayer of a black-metal band called Aegrimonia. We recorded a well received demo and did some nice gigs, sharing the bill with acts as Avulsed, Ancient Rites, Rebaelliun, Natron.. Later, as the band wanted to go more extreme, I decided to quit and joined forces with Belgian melodic death metal legend Excess of Cruelty. As the style evolved towards a more mature sound and after a short split the bandname changed to Re:Creation. A mini-cd was recorded and lots of gigs were played, even touring Hungary for a couple of days. But to all nice things comes an end, in 2003 Re:Creation was dead and buried. Through the years I had always been messing around with the guitar, and now I felt the time was ripe to get rid off the bass-gear and focus on the six-string. That's how I got my first band on guitar, I joined forces with dark/death metalband Gracefallen - featuring Ancient Rites, Aegrimonia and former Axamenta members. Things didn't work out and they continued without me, but the tone was set. My six-string became a seven-string, and I decided to start up Aegrimonia again, the band got split up a while before. Later I got the possibility to join Herfst which is now my main band. Aegrimonia is still active but on very low profile. Nevertheless, keep an eye open for it. New Herfst songs are being written, and stages & ears polluted with our sounds.
All other things you ever wanted to know about me: be nice, and who knows..
About Herfst:
H e r f s t - nekromantic metal | °1999
In a damp weekend right before the summer break of 1999 Bram and Peter decided to finally realise their lifelong ambition: to form a band playing the music they loved: melodic death metal!
Unlike many bands it wasn't our ambition to become the fastest, most brutal or aggressive band around, but to form a fusion, a blend if you will of the elements that drew us towards this genre of music: a dark, aggressive artform with subtle undertones of melancholia and downheartedness.
In 2003 we finally found a worthy line-up, with Ruben as drummer, Vincent on the bass and Arne handling the vocal chords.
We had our live baptising in a weekend in May '03, where we were playing as the fifth band on Rock Affligem, a huge pop festival, quite a stressful moment in our career but we managed to surprise and entertain the audience who weren't expecting a death metalband on stage. The response was overwhelming, ending up in our second gig there the year after with even more success.
With this line-up we recorded our debut demo 'The Fall' in September 2003. We managed to be noticed between the plethora of metalbands in the Belgian scene due to the song quality, neatly executed artwork and a lot of very well received live shows. Even if we recorded the majority of the 5 songs in two bedrooms in one afternoon we used good equipment and our soundman Gert Vreys was able to make a decent whole out of it.
All reviews have been raving, praising the dynamic nature of the music, the variety in approaches and the elaborate guitarwork.
Meanwhile Vincent wasn't able to keep up with the level of musicianship we needed. By winter 2003 Marre joined our ranks as bass player and managed to surprise us with his sheer lever of motivation, so from then on we were a strong, confident musical unit ready to storm stages.
In 2004 we entered the Belgian Metal Underground concours and we won the superfinals, outruling the 30 other bands. One of the prizes we received for this was a second appearance on Kleudde festival.
In the meantime we wrote 6 new tracks which we recorded in Spring 2005 at Lachepelle studios (Waimes) and baptised 'Life's Enddesign'. Thanks to an excellent job by Gert Vreys and Jacob Hansen!
After the cd-release Yves joined Herfst to replace founding member Peter on guitars. Lots of great gigs followed to promote 'Life's Enddesign'.
At the end of the Summer of 2006 both Marre & Yves decided to leave Herfst for various reasons. Soon they were replaced by Frederick on the (left-handed) bass & Christophe on 7strings. Their live baptism on Blikfest was another memorable gig.
On top of this Herfst achieved the second place at the annual Aardschok Metal Bash... and so crossing the Belgian borders for the very first time (yet surly not the last...)
Only half a year later we were very happy to play on Slovenia’s n° one metalfest ‘Metalcamp’, which was of course a brilliant experience.
Our style has matured, the traditional Herfst combination of aggression and melancholy has been updated, fused with new more modern influences. Overall the new material is more dark and adventurous, and a tad more aggressive.
( official band biography )
