Am 23. Februar 2009 erscheint System Overload, das Debütalbum von HDK, der Band um AFTER FOREVER-Bandkopf Sander Gommans. Gommans legte im Januar 2008 aufgrund eines Burn-Outs AFTER FOREVER bis auf weiteres auf Eis. Seit unserer ersten Veröffentlichung, erklärt Gommans, fühlte ich den Drang, extremeren Stoff zu schreiben. AFTER FOREVER ist bereits eine der aggressivsten Bands im Female-Fronted-Genre, aber ich wolte das extreme Zeug, das ich im Kopf hatte, nicht für die Band nutzen, weil es überhaupt nicht passen würde.
Hier das komplette Statement von Sander Gommans:
After Forever has always been a band that is diverse enough for me to write music for. The stuff I´ve written for After Forever contains a lot of metal and non-metal styles, the great thing about this band being that people expect every album to be different, so it´s always interesting to write a new album.
However, since our first release, I felt the need to write more extreme stuff. After Forever is already one of the most aggressive bands in the female-fronted genre, but I didn´t want to use the extreme stuff I had in mind for the band, since that would not fit at all. Writing for After Forever has often been a result of positive energy, and I needed to do something with the negative energy I was beginning to feel after some problems we encountered with the releases of Invisible Circles and Remagine. As this frustration was growing and growing, I just decided to transform it into songs, and they turned out to sound much more aggressive and experimental than the stuff I had done before.
Since the songs sounded more extreme than I thought and contained a lot of the heavier metal styles, I thought it might have to become a very over the top project, in a cynical way. Hate Death Kill was a name that suited that cynical idea, but I started to realise the music actually represented a very important part of myself and my life, so it became much more serious. I changed the name to HDK, asking Amanda Somerville to write the lyrics for the project, based on the subjects I already had for each song. They are all very personal and describe what happens with somebody who is under too much pressure. The funny thing is that, when I got my burn-out (which caused me to take a break of a year of everything I was doing), reading the lyrics made me aware of where it went wrong. The collaboration with Amanda worked out really well, together we also wrote the vocal lines and after that I started searching for guest musicians.
I didn´t want it to be only an album with grunts, or clean male vocal, or screams, or female vocals. I wanted to have a combination of all of those, since they all represent emotions in their own way. I think that´s the unique part of the project, you have to think out of the box when you listen to it, it doesn´t fit in any style but I think it gives a combination of all kinds of metal styles in an extreme way. Working together with all those great musicians was a fantastic experience, without them I could never have made this intense album. This album shows a different side of me, and I´m thankful to be able to release it together with Season of Mist.
If you are into different kinds of (extreme) metal and you are searching for a combination of those in one album, you might want to check out this album. 🙂
Thanks for your support!!!