Snapklone Society

The roots of Snapklone go back to Ghent in the nineties where a bunch of students used to jam together. Vidi, Luke and Wim Bakkaus were some of the guys frequenting these jam-sessions. Vidi just had left Interzone, an electro punk EBM combo which released one demo tape and joined a new band called Rumble Creep.Luke and Wim made a rehearsal tape as Faecal Outburst but soon changed the name to Headtrip. Their musical style was basically based on hardcore, but with a gothic/industrial approach.Rumble Creep made it to a self-titled demo tape and a CD called 'Is This Security?'. Their popularity was rising quickly and many live shows were played. They made it to the final of Humo's Rock Rally, the most important rock contest in Belgium. The key factors of their success were good songs, tight guitars, a pulsing bass and splendid vocals, with influences from Rollins, Tool, Prong and Pearl Jam.Following the success of their first album and their live shows, Rumble Creep hit the studio again to record the second album that should confirm their new status. Tensions rose as they were finishing the recording and, finally, Rumble Creep split up and never released the promising second album. Vidi joined Leech, an alternative punk influenced guitar band, released two CDemo’s and performed almost weekly at one or another rock contest somewhere in the country.Headtrip's ‘An Erotic Funeral Afternoon’- CDemo (1998-1999) got excellent reviews in several magazines (like Aardschok) and even made it to Studio Brussel, Belgian national radio (Puls-demo of the week). The songs were quite industrial, but song-orientated and combining elements from metal, EBM, techno and industrial. Wim left the band because he started his own independent IT-business and Vidi joined.Vidi started building his own home studio and started experimenting with dance music, trip hop and industrial. Some tracks were released on mp3.com as his solo project Bloodmoon, which got great positive feedback. Luke kept working on the 'Here We Are Tonight for You'-CDemo. Vidi helped with some additional programming and mixed the recorded tracks in his home studio. As the sound was definitely more (electro) thrash metal, the title track was mid-tempo industrial and 'She' was more electro (clash), 80's early new beat. The CDemo got some good reviews, but this approach was not always appreciated by some media who, maybe by lacking a larger musical reference framework, completely rejected this release. Most positive attention however came from Brasil.Vidi proposed to chose for a more unified sound and leave the more electro orientated stuff for future projects. The name was changed to Snapklone Society as there were already too many Headtrips around. Snapklone Society rerecorded some old songs (some of them aren’t even recognizable as the arrangements changed drastically) and started writing new stuff for the album “Weapons of Mass Salvation” that’s being recorded for the moment.As Luke states “We’ve been in this noise, postcore, hydra, industrial drone thing for a long time now, and these influences will probably result in a future, harder sound. ‘Weapons of Mass Salvation’ however reflects a nostalgic trip back in time with an actual and original approach. Those who experienced the different musical (r)evolutions in alternative hardcore, metal and wave music during the eighties will definitely be amused by this piece of blood, sweat and tears!”The songs have an almost pop oriented structure, filled in with tight metal riffing, melodic leads, heavy electro rhythms, industrial influenced keys and samples and aggressive vocals. A seemingly clash of the opposites, becoming a solid, captivating unit as the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together.[February 2007]