interview with Hordearii
Have any of you played in other bands? I used to play in a band called Mirdyn back in 2008. Somewhere in 2009 Hordearii (called Tribal Spirits back then) asked me to be their new guitarist. The rest of the band actually started in or with this band.
How is it that you started playing music? I always wanted to be a musician. I actually always wanted to play drums, but there wasn’t any room for a kit. A good friend of the family borrowed me his guitar, then one thing lead to another..
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Martijn Grooten - Rhythm guitar + Vocals - 28 years old
Jory Hogeveen - Lead Guitar - 28 years old
Daan Klemann - Drums - 27 years old
Wesley de Peuter - Bass - 31 years old
Have you had other previous members? The band has known a few other members. Our first EP was recorded with Bart Rouw on drums. We used to have Alwin van den Nagel on vocals, Niels Kroon used to be our bass player and Hylke de Jong was our previous rhythm guitarist.
Did you make music even when you were young? I actually had a small Casio keyboard that I used. I really loved fishing, but I didn’t have o lot of money, so I used to play some tunes outside of the local supermarket and play songs that I knew how to play (or at least I thought I knew). People would give me some change, so I could buy some stuff to keep the hobby alive!
Where are you from? We are all born in the Netherlands, most of us come from the center of The Netherlands. Currently we live in Amersfoort, Nijmegen, Dronten and Utrecht.
What year did the band form? The band was born in 2004 in Harderwijk as Tribal Spirits. We changed our name to Hordearii in the current formation in July 2017.
What's your style of genre? We don’t really like labeling our music, but Death/Thrash metal would subscribe our music best.
What inspires you? Lyric-wise I really am inspired by politics, war and history. We have a strong message about certain events, especially the bad ones.
Music-wise we all have different inspirations. There are several other bands that we love, because of their riffs, typical ways of opening a song or just a certain feeling a band gives you while listening to their music.
How often and where do you rehearse? We try to rehearse every Thursday night at dB’s in Utrecht, but Jory and Daan also play in other bands that sometimes have shows on those days, so sometimes it can be a pretty hard puzzle to solve.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? I’m quite a busy person to be honest. I have a full-time job as a allround fitness instructor, and next to the band I’m studying for my bachelor of nursing.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? We aren’t actively searching for one. We believe that when a agency is looking for you, they will find you and this would benefit from a mutual enthousiasm. Agency’s can be helpful to expand the network of the band; they have more connections with other venues and know their way around a little better than we do. So in short, we would definitely be interested in working with a booking agency.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?
This would be a similar answer as for a booking agency. As for distribution, we notice that almost everywhere people ask if we are on Spotify, Deezer or whatsoever. Most of our distribution goes online and we design our own CD’s (with the upcoming one we actually had a GREAT designer).
It would definitely be great if a label is interested and would help us with both online and offline promotion and distribution of our music!
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? In general Jory writes the guitar riffs and I write the lyrics. But the songs are written together. We take a good look at everything and make sure we all like it. So sometimes in the lyrics there will be some changes, because someone else took a look at them and suggested that changing some words could make it better, the same thing happens with the riffs, drums etc.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Most of the time we just start writing several riffs and turn that into a song. The music gives a feeling, that almost every time works with a lyric that already has been written. That’s when we start puzzling everything into something complete.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? Nah, just about everywhere where we can plug in our guitar or can write lyrics.
Have you done any covers live? Well.. we actually did a cover of Austrian Death Machine once. There was a show in a bar where we played before, they asked us if we could do at least one cover. Since we don’t really like doing that, I dressed up as Arnold Schwarzenegger and we trashed the bar!
What language do you sing in? English mostly, in our song ‘Hordearii’ there are a few Latin words.
What ages are most of your concert attendants? It really differs, metalheads in general!
What was your latest gig? Headbangers Bash in Fluor (Amersfoort)
Have you had to cancel a gig? Rarely, and we really don’t like to but it’s always possible that something happens like extreme illness or an accident. You can’t control everything unfortunately.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?
We always try to take as much merch with us, as many people know metalheads wear a lot of band merchandise. I personally always love to see someone wearing one of our shirts or just having a sticker on his phone case. I see it as a big compliment that someone likes our music that much, that someone decides to wear “my” band!
Since we recently changed the name of our band we still have a lot of merchandise with the old name (Tribal Spirits). So since we are planning on releasing our first album as Hordearii, we are waiting for the last designs of the artist before we start making new merch. So for now, no merch unfortunately but soon we will have new shirts, lighters, buttons, etc. etc.
What do you think of my work? Like I said, it really gives you a lot of credit for doing this. I really loved it that you came to me with the question to do this interview. It really makes me proud if people want to know more about me or my band, because they like it, or are just interested.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? I think there is a stigma on the whole metal scene. When I tell people at work what I do on stage, they have to process and you can see that their image of me directly changes. But what they don’t really understand is that it’s not just screaming into a microphone and making a shitload of noise. It actually is quite hard to combine with your day job and it also doesn’t mean that I worship satan or anything. I just love making metal.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today?
Personally I get my inspiration from modern bands like Aborted, Decapitated and other bands that really have their own sound going on.
Metal in general doesn’t like change and is pretty conservative. Bands like Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden still sell-out several stadiums over several days. But I think that being more open for new things really can change your perspective on the whole scene. There is so much more than the big bands that play for over 30 years!
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Make music that YOU love, not what your audience, label or manager loves. The music you make should be an expression of yourself, thats how you stay fresh, creative and original.
Do you have any new material? We plan on releasing our first album as Hordearii this year, stay tuned!
What are your web sites?
http://ww.facebook.com/hordearii.band
https://www.instagram.com/hordearii.band/
How can people reach you? The best way is just directly through Facebook or our website.
What are your plans for the future? Whatever crosses our paths. First things first, we want to get our new album online a.s.a.p. and play it live as much as we can!
