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Dead Head - Biography


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1989-

Biography

Dead Head never cared too much about riding trends. It surely wasn't a very wise marketing decision to pass around their '100% pure thrash'-flyers in the late 80ies, when every young kid in town was eagerly absorbing all the death metal it could get. Still, thanks to their honest, instinctive music and by playing with loads of national and international death metal acts the agressive Dutch thrashers lived through the nineties with pride and for a while, suprisingly even garnered a real death metal reputation. The bandmembers never really cared. From the formation of the band in March of 1989, as long as they could play and have a lot of fun, every musical term was fine with them. So from the albums 'The Feast Begins At Dawn' (1991) and 'Dream Deceiver' (1993) through 'Kill Division' (1999) and the rare/unreleased compilation 'Come To Salem' (2000), the band maintained the same pure approach and 'quality above quantity'- mentality.

Over the years Dead Head has been both critized and critically acclaimed. From 'one of the few to still carry the much missed thrash metal flag' to 'hardly imaginable that this kind of noise is actually still produced'. People uttering those arrogant words in 1991 never could expect to which heights the whole black metal movement would eventually grow. They never suspected that numerous bands would emerge with even 'more stupid and way more abstract' lyrics than Dead Head, not to mention a whole second generation of technical splatter/grind death metalbands taking the lyrical concept of metal to an even more absurd level. Neither could they expect that a lot of those black metal bands would eventually take a more thrashy approach, and would also invocate a whole new generation of old school thrash bands. This way, making Dead Head sound more trendy again than the bandmembers ever envisioned.

Dead Head's original drummer Hans Spijker returned to the throne in 1995, yet since the release of 'Kill Division' another original bandmember has left the band. Being music lovers themselves, Dead Head still remember exactly what it was like when some of their favorite bands lost their singer. A lot of these bands would never be the same, other ones however would move on and some would even sound a lot cooler. Of course some people will like the old singer better. The common Dead Head reply for this pretty predictable and meaningless viewpoint has quickly become: Well, too bad, because the old one is way long gone.

The remaining original members feel that Michiel Dekker has everything his predecessor had and then some. 'Michiel is from a younger generation. He still has his black metal drive, but his knowledge of old school thrash, traditional and death metal and his relaxed personality made him the perfect candidate. He's the only guy we ever really considered anyway.' In fact the bandmembers really don't think about the situation too much. Michiel has been in the band for over two years, did 25 succesful shows as the new singer/bassist and co-wrote the entire new album, to be recorded in February 2002. Trend or not, the four Dead Head-members love all kinds of metal. They breathe it, eat it and after a long days work sometimes even shit it. They still don't give a fuck about trends, yet they find it refreshing that their favorite metal-recipe, namely pure, aggressive and well thought over thrash, has finally regained some respect. It took a lot of time to write a sequel to 'Kill Division'. Tons of bands have released a lot of albums, while forming way later than 1989. Dead Head never felt the urge to convert into a musical assembly line. The band still likes to stick to its own pace.

For a while, the four bandmembers considered 'there's too many Great CD's out there already', then changing their viewpoint to 'there's too many Shitty CD's on the market already' and feeling obliged to -at least- show the world what in their opinion is so desperately missing in these nu metal days. Whether the upcoming Dead Head CD will be one of those great albums or just another shitty album, is for the press and -most important- the bands fans to decide. Either way, the four current bandmember will continu to write and release music in the exact same vein. Or like the bandmembers recently put it: If you're not depending on it financially, you feel no obligation whatsoever to satisfy the manipulated mass and don't desperately want to shave you head and be on MTV, it's pretty simple to just play the music that comes from your heart. Expect a new Dead Head CD in the spring of 2002. So far eight songs have been written and completed. Yes, it's gonna be metal. Yes, it's going to be real fast. And hell yeah, Dead Head still play leadguitar and are very proud of it. Their slogan remains the same: Fuck commercialism, fuck fashion, fuck you!