During the last hour of the 22nd of March in the year of 1986, Kevin Ron Pasman was born and that is me. I was born in the town of Voorburg, in the suburbs of The Hague, the Dutch residence city, where I have spent the first ten years of my life. In an early stage of my life, I found out that I didn't like sports, like the rest of the boys of my age, but I was more interested in artistical stuff. In the first place, I found that in drawing, but when I was six years old, I started making up songs in my head and remembering them. In fact, most of those songs, I can still remember to this day.
This was basically my first step towards what I like doing the most nowadays; composing music and writing lyrics and poetry. I learnt myself to read notes (for any musician who can't who reads this...you should really try to do at least a little! It's a huge pro!) and tried out several instruments.
That never became very serious until I moved to a village called Heerhugowaard in the North of Holland when I was ten years old. My dad had to move, because his work moved to Alkmaar (a town some of you might know from the cheese market?), which is about 8 kilometers away from where I live nowadays. After trying out several musical instruments, none of which with big success, I found out what my real passion is besides writing music and that's singing! I'm not the greatest singer in the world and I don't even pretend to be, but singers who aren't technically perfect, but express their emotions perfectly, are the great singers in my humble opinion. What do I mean with that? Well, I'm referring to people like Bobby 'Blitz' Ellsworth (OverKill), Tom S Englund (Evergrey) and David De Feis (Virgin Steele). Three completely different singers with a lot of emotion in their voices.
Back to my own musical background...on elementary school in Heerhugowaard, I started out this band with two class mates. We called it Gator Alley and we had one rehearsal before falling apart. It wasn't the perfect way to start, but hey...the beginning was there and so was the spirit! From then on (I was ten at the time) I have never let go the wish of becoming a musician. After trying out several bands, I ended up in a band called EVYL in October 2001. Their music was a little more direct and punky than I actually wanted to do, but hey...the guys were nice and they had a spirit I could relate to.
On the 2nd of February in 2002, we recorded a semi-professional demo called 'In Ruin'. Limited quantities are still available, those who are interested can always contact me! 'In Ruin' is about the only demo I ever recorded of which I can still listen to a couple of songs. Especially the title track is a song I like to listen to. The entire band did a hell of a job on that one! As well as on the first track we ever did together, called 'Who Am I?'.
The collaboration with EVYL lasted about a year. Through that year, I got a little sick of the punky sound and our rehearsals seemed to be formed by arguing and my ego struggling against that of several other band members (we all were wrong!), so the best thing seemed to part ways. We can still get along pretty well. We did one goodbye show in my home town on September 13th, 2002 (actually the best show we ever did!) and called it quits after that. One thing I do have to get off of my heart is thanking the guys. So Mike, Pim and Dennys...thanks for the great year and good luck in your (hopefully musical) future! I wouldn't be surprised if Mike, the guitarist, is going to be huge in a couple of years, that guy's really talented!
Since then, the long search for a new band has started. Over two and a half years it took me to find one, but the most important thing is, that Rob Langendijk contacted me through an ad on the internet in February 2005. We found two guitarists in the persons of Alex Mulder and Dennis Mes pretty quickly, so with Rob playing bass and myself singing, all we needed was a drummer. That prove to be much more difficult than it sounds, but luckily, with Laurens Kreeft on drums, we could enter the rehearsal room for the first time in September 2005 and Anubis was born! Ready to be a part of the Thrash Revival!
With Anubis, we recorded a demo called 'These Ancient Halls' in February 2006, less than half a year after we first played together. The recordings are the best ones I have made up until that point. I am quite proud of my own vocals on that demo. The demo got us some shows and we had quite a lot of fun doing those shows. We even ended up in the finals of Haarlem's biggest band competition, the Rob Acda Award. That made me realize that there are maybe some people that are interested in my music around the world.
Anubis, however, didn't last forever either. Our rhythm guitarist Alex Mulder (who wasn't only the guitarist in Anubis, but is still one of my very best friends) quit the band and though we found a very adequate temporary replacement (my good friend Dennis 'Dennistopia' Onsia from Dystopia) and one of my musical dreams came true (playing live in the main hall of De Kade in Zaandam...in front of an enthusiastic crowd!), it all went downhill from there. We had trouble finding a permanent replacement for Alex and somehow, the balance in personalities in the band was completely gone and my motivation left me almost completely. In June 2008, just a week before heading to Berlin - one of the nicest places I have ever had the pleasure of visiting - with school, I announced my departure from the band to the rest of the guys and immediately felt relieved. Still, I feel sort of bad to have left Rob hanging in this situation.
The biggest problem though, was that I did want to carry on playing Speed/Thrash Metal with good friends. That problem was solved in December 2008 when Alex and I once again teamed up with Rob to start a new Thrash Metal band with local drum hero René Vlaar. The name of the band later became Chaos Asylum and we are working on our material as we speak. What to expect? Fast, intense and sometimes inventive Thrash/Speed Metal. We call it Polderthrash, for what it's worth!
Rob left to pursue other musical interests, being a Fusion guy at heart, and our good friend Dennis Onsia (ex-Dystopia) joined in on bass. A second guitar player was soon found in the person of Rick Jongman. We hope to bring you our brand of Holland's finest (maybe...) Thrash Metal live someday soon. I'll keep you informed if you want me to!
Over the years I have written several songs on the side. I haven't used those either because the musicians in the bands I was in couldn't play them (I myself even have problems with the vocals every now and then) or because it just didn't fit with the band I was playing with at the time. My dream is to record the best of those songs either with really good unknown musicians or with musicians I really admire. The problem with the latter is that I'm too shy to make contact with most of them, but these songs are children of my very soul, which just need to be recorded and heard! There finally seems to be a little progress in this matter lately.
Some of you might think, after reading this story: "Doesn't that guy have anything else in his life than music?" Of course I have! But I must admit that music and love are the two most important things in my life. Both haven't quite turned out the way I want them to, but hey...I guess I have an ocean of time in front of me. And since the future starts now, I hope I can sail that ocean and at the end look back and be proud of what I have done.
