Trillium

HDK – Singing Songs From Hell With SANDER GOMMANS And AMANDA SOMERVILLE

This story was originally published on this site back in April 2014, heralding the arrival of HDK’s new album Serenades Of The Netherworld. Or rather, the first taste of the record in the form of two singles to get people talking, which they did. Here’s the updated version of the story to coincide with the full album’s September 1st release.

By Carl Begai

It’s been five years since former After Forever guitarist Sander Gommans broke his self-imposed hiatus from the music business with HDK, a slavering beast of a project that flew in the face of his former band’s symphonic goth metal sound. The debut album, System Overload, was a full-on metal assault that presented both Gommans and vocalist/co-conspirator Amanda Somerville (Trillium, Avantasia) entering unexplored territory, showing off a very different and altogether volatile side of their musical personalities. A second HDK album was always in the cards; it was just a question of when the pair would get around to writing and recording it in amongst other projects that were on the go, which included the launch of Gommans’ studio/music school The Rock Station, working on albums from Trillium and Kiske / Somerville, and tours with Trillium, Avantasia and Rock Meets Classic. Serenades Of The Netherworld has finally surfaced – creeping into the light slowly but surely – as a bigger and more melodic take on System Overload. It’s certainly more dynamic and less bent on bludgeoning the listener into submission, but not at the expense of healthy sonic violence.

Amanda: “That wasn’t because of me. That was definitely Sander’s fault (laughs).”

Sander: “The thing is, with the first album I wanted to do something really different from After Forever. I’d wanted to do it for years and years, and that’s what came out. Since then I’ve had time to work with other artists and re-think some stuff. I wanted to write a new HDK album that was similar to the previous one but it came out much more symphonic and way more melodic. I didn’t have to distance myself from After Forever anymore, and I was ready to write stuff that was more melodic anyway like I did for Trillium and Kiske / Somerville. And I worked with keyboard players this time, so that gave the music a different feel as well. The new HDK is still heavy but it’s different from the first album..”

Amanda: “On the first album Sander was saying ‘There aren’t going to be any keyboards on the album because After Forever is full of frickin’ keyboards…’ (laughs). I think that has a lot to do with how the new HDK album turned out.” Continue reading HDK – Singing Songs From Hell With SANDER GOMMANS And AMANDA SOMERVILLE

SANDER GOMMANS And TRILLIUM – …By The Power Of The Flower

By Carl Begai

During a recent interview for the as-yet-untitled follow-up to his HDK album from 2009, System Overload, former After Forever guitarist Sander Gommans discussed his involvement on the new metal solo album from singer/songwriter and Avantasia / HDK vocalist Amanda Somerville. Gommans enjoys being his own boss, but he freely admits the creative process for the Trillium debut, Alloy, made him realize that even the master of the universe has to take the back seat once in a while.

“In the beginning it was hard for me because normally you wrote something for somebody and let it go, but since Amanda and I are partners, I didn’t let it go that easily. I wanted to make the best out of it, and I wanted Amanda to make the best choices. I helped her out with some of the administrative stuff and I wrote a few songs, but it was really Amanda’s project and I had to get used to her big involvement. Not so much in the writing of my songs, but in the vocal arrangements and lyrics. She had a really good idea of how the album should sound and what she wanted, and I kept telling her ‘It’s not metal enough… it needs to be more metal.’ And she would tell me, ‘This is my project, I want to have it exactly the way I want to have it…’ (laughs).”

“She made the choices in the creative aspects of the album, and now that it’s out, it’s about surprising to me how cool it is. It offers so much more than the average metal band, and it has so much more to it that you can really see what a talented person Amanda is when it comes to having her own vision. In my arrogance, I found out that I should stop being arrogant and shut up sometimes (laughs).” Continue reading SANDER GOMMANS And TRILLIUM – …By The Power Of The Flower

TRILLIUM – Act Your Rage

By Carl Begai

Back in July, vocalist Amanda Somerville spilled the beans on her first official metal solo project, Trillium (interview available here). With the release of the debut album, Alloy, only weeks away she shot a video for the song ‘Coward’, and we got together the following morning over tea to delve a little deeper into the new album.

It’s safe to say Somerville efforts will surprise a lot of fans – in a good way – and earn her some new ones along the way as Trillium plays out. And while it’s a no-nonsense metal album, anyone that’s followed Somerville’s decade-long non-metal career will wonder if some of the songs were consciously tweaked from a singer / songwriter / acoustic state to the tough-as-nails tracks we’re hearing now. Take away the distortion and the tracks in question would easily fit on her 2009 solo album, Windows.

“It was very conscious, actually,” Somerville reveals. “Songs like ‘Path Of Least Resistance’, ‘Purge’ and ‘Mistaken’ were pretty dark, and I’d planned to put them on my next solo album, which was going to be darker and heavier than anything I’d done before anyway. I had all this material that was building up, and since I’m a piano player and not a guitar player, it was clear to me I’d have to work with someone who played guitar as their main instrument like Sascha (Paeth / producer) or Sander (Gommans / HDK) so they could metal it up. That was the idea from the start, and the way things progressed led to those songs being on this album.”

“The songs that I wrote with Sander – and he’s a prolific songwriter, cranking them out like crazy – we already them had in mind for this project. Sander was totally into it, and every time he sits down with his guitar a song comes out of it. The way we typically work, he writes the instrumental parts and then I come in and suggest whatever changes I think should be made. Then I take the song and write a vocal line and lyrics to it. Sander likes a good challenge as well, though, and when he heard the piano / vocal demo I had for ‘Machine Gun’ he asked if he could work on it. He came up with the big main riff, which really supplements the running theme through the whole song.” Continue reading TRILLIUM – Act Your Rage

TRILLIUM – …By Any Other Name

By Carl Begai

There was a time when Amanda Somerville’s name was merely another footnote in the metal biz. Her career as a solo artist had legs as of 2000, but in the world of greasy long-haired distortion and debauchery Somerville was a behind-the-scenes helper, credit given where it was due on a guest artist roster or in a thank you list. In 2003 she took the daring plunge into a realm that was still something of a mystery to her, creating the Aina – Days Of Rising Doom metal opera with her Gate Studios colleagues, finally putting a voice and face to her name. Since then, Somerville has become a popular member of the metal world, garnering a fanbase that follows and her work even if it may not always float their respective hull-of-steel boats. Now, after years of offering her voice and knowledge to acts like Epica, Avantasia, HDK and Kiske/Somerville, “the blonde chick” has stepped into a spotlight of her own making.

And it’s very, very metal.

“I’ve been throwing around the idea of doing this over the last few years,” she reveals. “It really kind of tipped the scales doing HDK. There’s a saying in German, ‘I licked blood,’ which is disgusting but appropriate I guess, since there’s a song about vampires on the album (laughs). I’ve always done my own thing. People know me mainly from collaborations I’ve done with and for other bands, but I started out as a solo artist and I stayed one throughout. Having done all of this stuff in the metal scene for more than a decade now, it’s only natural that it rubbed off on me. I like it, and the songs that I’ve written in the last several years have been very dark and gotten heavier. Basically, I was just going to make my next solo album more metal, but then I decided I’d prefer to keep the waters a little cleaner in terms of doing a metal project. It’s a little weird if I say I’m going to do a metal album and then throw in a jazz ballad (laughs). I don’t want to compromise, and I’ve got so much material now that I might as well do a total metal album and keep my solo stuff completely separate. That way I can do what I want and not have to apologize to anybody.”

Sounds suspiciously like a typical day at the office for former Strapping Young Lad mad scientist Devin Townsend, another prolific singer / songwriter / musician prone to switching musical gears and doing so effortlessly. Somerville is in good company.

“Yeah, like that. It’s me, Devin and Garth Brooks doing his Chris Gaines thing (laughs). It’s us funky musicians and our split personalities.” Continue reading TRILLIUM – …By Any Other Name