You just played the amazing underground festival Graveland. What was that like?
It was amazing! We never played on an open-air stage and also the Pyro was a first one. We practiced a bit differently now and the whole show felt really good for us all. It was great to play at one of our favorite festivals and with a lot of awesome bands.
Is it very different to play at a festival like this, compared to playing in an indoor venue?
Yes, the stage sound was great for us and the audience was a bit further away. But I can’t say it didn’t feel personal. We had a lot of friends in the audience. The show felt relatively normal compared to other shows but the organization around the festival was new for us. An example: our merchandise was sold for us. Also, the get-ins were new. But everything was organized really smooth.
Even though the weather was bad, metalheads will go hard no matter what. Did you enjoy your time at the festival? Were you there for the whole festival?
We certainly did! When we played the weather was still nice. We already had tickets for the festival so nothing really changed except for the fact that we get to go on the stage ourselves. We all set up our tents at the camp-site and were there the whole weekend. Of course, the death metal bands were all awesome. Big shout out to Mortiferum, Teratoma, Claustrum, Carcass and Centinex for playing a killer set. But there also were a couple of sick black metal bands (especially Lieuwe delves deep into that subgenre) and Overruled was great too.
You’ve been steadily working towards releasing your first full-length ‘Plagues of Sulfur Bound’. What has that process been like? It has been in the works for a while.
Yeah, the process of recording took around 1,5 years. I think we are just perfectionists who wanted to deliver an album as good as we possibly could. We re-recorded and re-amped some things because we knew we could play it better and just paid a lot of attention to details.
You are releasing it on cassette as well, just like your previous EP. I see a couple of other bands also release stuff on cassette. Why so retro? What’s up with that?
Haha, I think it’s just the idea of owning a physical copy and browsing through the booklet, reading the lyrics, and having a sick item. The devil is in the details. Fans of extreme music still like to collect physical media and we think that’s awesome. Support the bands you care about. All three of us do it too!
You were able to partner up with Raw Skull Recordz. How did that happen?
Jasper knew Rai from Raw Skull Records for a while. I believe the first contact with him was 2013. Rai saw a lot of potential in Deadspeak early on. So when we began working on this album it was already pretty much agreed on that we released it on this awesome label.
What can we expect from your upcoming album?
Well, if you’ve seen our live show for the past two years or so you basically know what to expect. Raw guitars, thunderous low end and tight drums. We have a couple of clean guitar parts and atmospheric interludes. But there’s also of course a lot of straight-up death metal to be found on the record.
The production for Tidal Disruption is a lot different (more polished) than Dissolve the Dreams. Was there a change in the recording process/mixing/mastering?
The first demo was a product of limited funds and limited time. We recorded the whole demo in one (long) day. We never really felt it was 100% representative of our live shows but we got a lot of great responses. Which of course was awesome! With the new album Stijn van Gestel took a lot (a LOT) of time to get a great mix and Greg Wilkinson made it come a bit more alive with his master. The process between the demo and the full length couldn’t be more different.
Your first EP is only available on bandcamp. Why is it that underground (death and black) bands mainly reside there instead of streaming services like Spotify?
It actually just went back onto Spotify! It was down for a week or two because we had to transfer accounts. We don’t mind making our music available. People who want to buy it will buy it anyway. That’s the awesome thing about this kind of music.
Last year you had a tour with Master. Are there any similar tours or gigs in the future? What will 2024 bring for Deadspeak?
That tour was sick! We’ll just be promoting the new album and trying to fix even more shows. Also looking forward to the gig with Civerous and Crematory Stench and we are working on one or two release shows for when the full length comes out.
Thank you so much for your time!
It was our pleasure. Thanks for having us and you’ll be hearing more of us. We certainly aren’t done yet!
Want to see more of Deadspeak? Check them out on Facebook, or check out their recording. And of course, stay tuned for the album!
