IZEGRIM (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for taking the time. What’s currently keeping IZEGRIM busy?
Jeroen : Hi Sergio !
Well, all the stress with the release is slowly coming to an end. We are all getting used to our normal lives again (not doing a million interviews a day, haha). No, seriously; we are still very busy promoting the new album in any possible way. We’ve done a lot of gigs, had a minitour with Entombed and did all kinds of promotion in between (radio, e-zines, printed media).
– To start, could you please introduce the band to all those who don’t know about you yet?
Jeroen : Izegrim started way back in 1996. I won’t bother your readers with all the line-up changes and demo’s we’ve released, nothing that interesting to mention and bore you readers with, haha.
Since the beginning we’ve had a grunting female on vocals. For us it’s pretty normal, new listeners could consider us a copy of Arch Enemy. We’re simply not, we started with female grunts way before Angela came to Arch Enemy. Furthermore, our music is not that polished and tends to lean more towards the thrashy side of the metal-spectrum.
‘Code of consequences’, our latest release, is a logical continuation of the songs on the EP. The new material however is more mature because we’ve put a lot of effort in the actual song-writing and composing, instead of just putting awesome riffs behind each other. Now the songs contain more structure, catchy hooks and awesome riffing.
– And why «Izegrim»? What does it mean?
Jeroen: Izegrim comes from an old Dutch epos called “Of Reynaert the Fox”. In this epos (where there are just animals) there’s a wolf called Izegrim (or Isegrim). I won’t get into the details of this wolf’s share in this epos, because this interview would get too long, haha. If anyone is interested in this epos, Google is your friend.
Our former drummer came up with this idea.
Furthermore, in old Dutch, Izegrim also stands for malicious and grumpy. That fits the overall feeling and attitude the metalscene is about.
– Your latest album came out a few months ago; how has been its feedback so far? Have your expectations been fulfilled?
Jeroen: So far all the reviews have been great. On an average, we get 80 or above. I must say that Listenable Records also did a great job in promoting the album. We’ve been on several samplers of the big written press, almost every e-zine did a review. We’ve done millions of interviews, so yes…. Our expectations have been fulfilled.
– And what does the name «Code of Consequences» represent?
Jeroen: This is not a real concept album, where the lyrics tell a story from A to Z. There is a main subject within the lyrics; the older we get, the more actions we have taken, the more consequences you have to bear. It’s about reaching your (personal) goals by any means. This could relate to selfish behaviour, killing your beloved ones or even creating your own secret organisation to fulfil your needs. Lyrics are important, but there’s not an underlying philosophy to Izegrim. We’re not the kind of band that wants to deliver a certain message. We stay away from war-related topics (heard them too often) and politics.
In terms of style I would describe it as a mix of death and thrash. Expect some fierce, thrashy riffage, alternated with slower/heavy passages, melodic leads, a lot of double bass drums and ferocious vocals.
– Have been different line-up changes in the band with this new album; what happened? Are you pleased with the new members?
Jeroen : Both Joep and Kristien lost interest in metal in general. We had a European tour with Flotsam & Jetsam in 2008. Joep and Kristien found out that this was not the way they wanted to spend their (limited) spare time. So, we decided that it was better for them to leave, as we (Bart, Marloes and I) wanted to take Izegrim to the next level.
With Ivo on drums (replacement of Joep) we now have a different approach where it comes to writing our guitar-riffs. Where the old albums like 
‘Tribute to Totalitarianism’ exposed a lot of stoner and groove, we now have the chance to write more staccato, riff-based guitarplaying. Ivo had a great influence on the overall feel and fibe of the songs. He’s basically a more technical and skilled drummer, so we have more ways to deal with rhythm and we’ve adjusted our guitarplaying a bit to his drumstyle.
Needless to say that the 4 of us our really pleased with the results of our hard work from the past few years with this new line-up. It was a 100% team-effort !
– Kristen left and Marloes joined you, were you looking for another girl for the band or did just happen? I mean, do you always want to have a female singer for IZEGRIM?
Jeroen : Well, that’s not correct. Marloes ALREADY was in the band when Kristien left. Marloes did the backing-vocals and the bass already for 4
years, before Kristien decided to leave. So, all in all, it really was logical to first have some try-outs with Marloes, before getting a new singer. She worked her ass of for the try-outs and everything worked out great. That was the moment we decided we did not need a new singer. Marloes is a
very capable replacement of Kristien.
In the end it’s well worth it and we’re all very happy with this solution. It’s also very convenient to have ‘just’ 4 bandmembers. Less opinions to argue about, more beer and more space on stage, haha !
– This is your first record with Listenable Records, what prompted that move?
Jeroen: Our former recordcompany Rusty Cage Records got broke.
The studio was already booked and scheduled, so we went to the studio (without having a recordcompany at that moment).
We sended our recordings from ‘ Code of Consequences’ to Listenable and they gave us some really positive feedback. The structure of the songs and catchyness of the riffs was something that attracted them. I knew Listenable Records from their earlier releases, way before we started recording ‘Code of Consequences’.
– And are you happy with them? Being a more known label, does it give you a better promotion?
Jeroen : They’ve always had (and have) awesome bands on their roster. For us it’s an honor to be amongst bands like Hate and Gojira. I’m constantly doing interviews, so I can confirm that the promotion is great. It’s cool to see all the exposure we are getting nowadays in comparison to previously released albums.
The advantage of a bigger label is that they have more resources (time and money) than the average underground label. Rusty Cage did a great job for us, the only setback was the limited amount of resources they had. One of the main reason a lot of labels are quitting nowadays.
Listenable Records has an established name in the metal-industry and we are certain that this alliance will be a fruitfull one.
– The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jörg Uken. This, next to the new label, has given you the definitive push to set up into the Metal scene?
Jeroen : Definately !!
I already knew some products Jörg had been working on in the past. Especially the recordings he did with God Dethroned and Dew-Scented are brilliant. He also recorded Dutch grinders Inhume, with whom we played a couple of gigs. They all were very enthousiastic about Jörg and his way of recording. I can only agree to all the bands that have recorded at Soundlodge: its perfect !! The way Jörg worked with us was excellent. He’s so laid back and relaxed, but also a very skilled recording-technician.
One major difference with the other albums, is that we’ve put a lot of time and effort in the pre-production. Our drummer build his own studio where we can practice 24/7. We bought some equipment to make proper recordings during rehearsals. We took those recordings home, and
made adjustments to the arrangements till the point we were absolutely confident that the song just couldn’t be better. At a certain point in the writing-process we had weeks where we would come together every evening to work on the songs, a pretty intense period.
When we entered the studio for 2 weeks to record the drums and guitars we exactly knew what to play. Saved us a lot of precious time.
Vocals and bass we recorded at my own studio. After several weeks, we went back to the Soundlodge with all the recordings, and Jörg mixed and mastered the whole album.
The final result ? The most versatile, riff-packed and aggressive sounding album we’ve ever recorded, it’s as simple as that ! We could not be more satisfied with the result.
– Holland is a prolific country for Metal, Death specially; what bands could you suggest?
Jeroen : Hail of Bullets, Pestilence, The Monolith Deathcult, Asphyx, Erebus… just to name a few, haha !
– Finally, what are your near-future plans?
Jeroen : We are on a constant mission of playing as many gigs as possible. Ou management (TMR-Music-Promotions) is currently negotiating a possible European tour, so we hope we can give more details about that in the near future. Furthermore we’re going to record a video of one of the songs, so keep an eye on our Youtube-channel.
– That’s all, thank you once more. Feel free to add some final words before we wrap this interview.
Sergio, thanks for your interest in Izegrim, really appreciated ! Hope we have some good news in the near future, so we are able make some appointments with your readers in Spain to have some beers over there, !!
Cheers, horns up and you better buy our album or we will send Marloes to hunt you down !!
Jeroen
