Dutch blackened death metal God Dethroned had a blast at Quantic Club on September 26th, at Metal Gates Festival Warm Up Party! The perfect moment to invite the mastermind Henri Sattler to a comprehensive discussion about music, the band’s latest album, and so many more!
DinIntunerec: Hello, thank you for getting on board with this interview. First and foremost congratulations for the release of your recent album! Can you tell us a bit about it? In terms of thematic orientation, sound and its creation…
Henri Sattler: Well, I think somewhere… last year, somewhere in September, I came up with a song called Hubris Anorexia. Then everybody came up with ideas, and, I think, somewhere by the end of January we had finished all of the compositions. Even the recordings, so… you can imagine the whole plot.
The album is very diverse, again, like always. We never want to repeat ourselves, so if we do a new album, it should be different from all the albums we did before. Also, on the album itself, there should be a lot of diversity, but also, people should never listen to a God Dethroned album and think like, oh, this is something they’ve done before. In our case, this never happens. It never happens, so that makes it a challenge. But I think we did very well. We are very proud of the album, and the reactions from the fans were really good, so that’s very nice.
DinIntunerec: At some point, God Dethroned deviated from their original thematic universe. You strayed from the original anti-Christianity oriented theme and delved on World War I. Then, starting with Illuminati, you came back to your roots, if I can say so. Can you explain these thematic changes?
Henri Sattler: Yeah, you know, at a certain point, if you do the same theme over and over again, it becomes difficult. There’s no inspiration anymore. So, I wanted to do something about World War I, because there was nobody who did that. We were the first ones, basically, to do a concept album, at least, about World War I. Then, we did a second concept album, and then we did a third one. So, we had three concept albums, and then there was nothing to say about it anymore, in my opinion.
Then, I wanted to go back to albums where every song had a different topic. So I would have more freedom regarding what to write about. Also, I wanted to go back to the dark side, but not typically anti-Christian, but more like occult themes, Freemasonry, Illuminati, Egyptian mythology, and things like that. So, that’s what we started doing on Illuminati. I think the new album, The Judas Paradox, is a little bit like a prolongation of this method.
However, the title track is also historically based. Because it’s a story from the Bible, basically. The other songs are different, but I think they go very well with Freemasonry, Egyptian mythology, and also a little bit of conspiracy theory. So, it’s nice to do that kind of stuff.
DinIntunerec: You started to speak about The Judas Paradox. Can you explain a little bit the concept of this album for our readers? I mean, the Anti-Christianity theme is not straightforward as with your early albums…
Henri Sattler: No, this is based on the story in the Bible. Everybody knows the story about Judas as the betrayer of Jesus Christ, but in the Bible there is a second story about Judas. This story is written by a different disciple. In this story it is written that Jesus could look into the future. So, Jesus knew that he would be killed to be able to return as king of the world. He knew that Judas would be the chosen one to do this. That makes Judas innocent. So, the song is written from the standpoint of Judas, where he speaks about being one of the twelve disciples, seeing Jesus as his brother.
Then the whole part about the betrayal comes, and in the end, when the clean singing starts, which is done by Dave, our lead guitar player, he speaks as Jesus towards Judas, explaining why he is the chosen one to do this. So, this is a totally different view on who Judas Iscariot was as a person. Also, again, this time many people hate me for it. They think that it’s blasphemy that I say things like that.
DinIntunerec: Well, actually it shouldn’t be that outrageous! There is a lot of philosophy based on this kind of paradoxical Biblical stuff. If we take the myth of God, for instance… God is supposed to be all-knowing. If He is all-knowing, how come He didn’t predict that man will sin in the Garden of Eden? Or if God knew, it results that man was predestined to sin, so why is man declared guilty and punished for something he was predestined to do? See, it’s exactly the same paradox as in Judas’s case.
Henri Sattler: Well, the whole Bible is a paradox. Exactly. It’s written by human beings, so it’s a story. And like in the New Testament, it’s written by people who didn’t know Jesus at all, because most of the books are written decades after His death. So, it’s a story from a story from a story. People were interpreting things like, oh, maybe this happened, oh, I’ll write it down. So, that’s also the paradox inside the Bible itself.
DinIntunerec: Recent years have also brought about a change in the overall sound of the band, along with the thematic one. What exactly determined this change, and what does it mean for the future of God Dethroned?
Henri Sattler: Yeah, well, we tried… We tried to work with different producers. The last ten years, we tried to work with different people, sometimes very successfully, sometimes not so much. For example, the Illuminati album was mixed by a guy who destroyed the whole mix. He completely destroyed it. We spent the whole budget and then we had to remix the whole album. So, that was quite a challenge. That album is still okay, but it didn’t turn out the way I had it in my mind.
So, during the past couple of years, I learned about mixing, and during COVID, I had so much time on my hands that I spent a lot of it trying to become good at mixing. Eventually, I mixed the latest album myself and I think now, finally, the band sounds the way it should sound.
Jeroen Pomper: From my perspective, the band is Henry‘s child, his thing. When he is mixing it, he can follow his perspective, like it has to sound dark, but also light, for instance. So, he can take all the time he wants to create the perfect sound… And basically, it’s a great accomplishment what he did on the album. Really amazing.
DinIntunerec: The single The Judas Paradox is a paradox itself… It’s the most atmospheric song on the album, a heavily melody driven one, despite its dark, even gruesome topic. How do you explain that?
Henri Sattler: Yeah, this was actually… Because Dave wrote a couple of songs for us; the music, I mean, and this was one of the songs that he had in mind. We heard the song and we thought like, oh, this is great. Then I came up with the whole concept about Judas and we felt that it belongs to a more atmospheric song. Not to have a brutal song, but a more melodic, atmospheric song. We knew, of course, that it was completely different from the rest. But, I think that’s the appeal of God Dethroned, that we do things that people do not expect.
DinIntunerec: Well, you have somehow already answered the next question. I mean, what did you do differently as far as engineering for The Judas Paradox?
Henri Sattler: Yeah, basically I did it myself.
DinIntunerec: The music videos have a very strong narrative quality and it is obvious they have been meticulously crafted. Do you consider them extremely important in conveying the music concepts?
Henri Sattler: No. I think the music speaks for itself. We don’t need any video material, but it is a necessary thing to promote a new album nowadays. You have to have some kind of image, a concept that people can look at. For me, as a musician, I care only about music. I don’t give a shit about videos. Yet, I must say the guy who did the videos is very good. He’s a very nice guy. He lives close to us. We know him for many years. He’s really good. So am I happy with him? Yes. I’m very happy.
But as a musician, I don’t need him. The music video for The Judas Paradox is a piece of art on itself. It’s like a Da Vinci put on a screen. We created that kind of art as well with our music, with our ideas. When we made the movie, the director had ideas, but we had some ideas as well. So it’s not music, of course, but it’s depending on the sound and how we act in the video. It’s very dark and even humorous.
DinIntunerec: Out of all your albums, three stand out both musically and from the thematic perspective. Passiondale, Under the Sign of the Iron Cross and The World Ablaze are more aggressive and the overall sound is more abrasive. What inspired those concepts? Is the sonic aggressiveness related to the war topic or is it just a natural evolution to a more aggressive sound?
Henri Sattler: No, I think you can hear my state of mind in the music. Especially Under the Sign of the Iron Cross, the second concept album about World War I… It’s an extremely extreme album. It’s like over the top. But, that’s how I felt as a person at the time. So, perhaps it belongs to the music or to the thematic of the music. On the other hand, it just reflects my brain, my state of mind.
I was in a very fucked up, aggressive mood when I wrote the album. And that’s what you can hear. We were still signed to Metal Blade at the time and the guy, my contact person at Metal Blade, said to me, “Well, I listened to the album… you had something to get off your chest”. And I said yes, because it was true. So it’s more a personal thing than a musical thing.
DinIntunerec: How does the creating process go in your case? Does everyone chip in when you create new music?
Henri Sattler: I want to, yes. I want it to be a band project as much as possible. And usually the guys do that. Jeroen always gives me a lot of ideas and I can just use them the way I want to use them. He knows what’s good for the band and what’s not. But it’s the same for the other guys. I ask them, please come up with ideas and then we make something together. Or I make something out of it, or they make something out of it. I prefer God Dethroned to be a band project more than a solo project. Everybody knows God Dethroned is my band, but for me, everybody is equally important when it comes down to writing the music.
DinIntunerec: Each band has defining moments, or turning points… What are the key events that shaped God Dethroned into what it is today?
Henri Sattler: Signing to Metal Blade in 1997 was a key moment. The breakthrough album Bloody Blasphemy was also significant. We toured with the biggest bands (Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Immortal, Marduk), and the years 1999 and 2000 marked the highlight of our career. It was the time when everybody learned about God Dethroned; nobody could say they hadn’t heard of us.
DinIntunerec: What were the main obstacles that you had to overcome during more than three decades of activity?
Henri Sattler: The main obstacles have been lineup changes. It’s tough to keep everyone together because the band life isn’t easy. Sometimes there’s money, sometimes there isn’t, so people need to balance the band with jobs and families. You know, when people are in a band for four, five, six, 10, 12 years, it’s hard to keep everybody together. Because it’s not an easy life, it’s a hard life.
Sometimes there’s money, sometimes there’s not a lot of money, so people have to combine the band with a job, with a family. So it’s normal that people come and go, unless there’s a lot of money involved, then everybody will stay, but you know how it works. When somebody leaves, you need somebody new. You have to test the person: is it a nice person, is it a good musician? I think those are the difficult moments in the career of a band.
DinIntunerec: Was there a moment when you were tempted to quit?
Henri Sattler: Oh, yes. Every week, I have that moment. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed. The pressure of making the perfect album and doing everything just right can make you question why you’re doing this.
DinIntunerec: What is the main driving force behind God Dethroned? What are the main principles that drive this project forward?
Henri Sattler: I guess it’s because I’m crazy! I don’t know.
Jeroen Pomper: Maybe many people would say beer, but we are drinking alcohol-free beer. Maybe that’s a drive—playing for people, playing in all places of Europe and the world. Amazing. I think for me, it’s now the third time at the Quantic Club, and I have great memories from the first two shows. So tonight, I will make a new memory. It’s playing live that makes it special.
DinIntunerec: Was your music perceived differently in the ’90s? What do you think about the new generation? Do you think they pay attention to the lyrics and understand your message?
Henri Sattler: I don’t know. There is a big difference between the time when we started. When we started, there was no internet. We were doing tape trading between bands, and then we got a record deal. Nowadays, I do interviews, and it’s all video; people listen to playlists on Spotify. Some fans listen to the whole album, but many hear one or two songs and that’s it. I sometimes wonder why we don’t just do singles instead of complete albums, but the record company is still old school and wants albums.
The world has changed. But even when we see the youth, they are not just searching for one or two songs; they look for the whole concert and enjoy it. Young people are still attracted to our kind of music, but they find a wide variety on platforms like Spotify. So, I can imagine they skip songs. Still, even young people like our music, which is a good thing.
DinIntunerec: What was the best or worst, an unforgettable incident, a memory that happened while on tour?
Henri Sattler: There are quite a lot of memories. It’s usually the people that you meet. Sometimes you meet very special people, and you stay friends forever. I still talk to people that I met on my first tour in the U.S. in 2000. Some of them I’ve never seen again, but we’re still in touch. There’s one girl from the U.S. who talks to me almost daily, even though the last time I saw her was 15 years ago. That makes it special.
Jeroen Pomper: I have a crazy story. In 2016, we played in Quebec during winter. It was freezing cold, and we were playing a show in a gym. I wanted to go outside to smoke, but the door was blocked by a meter pile of snow. Outside was a guy wearing big gloves and a bear head, digging in the snow. I asked him if he was burying someone, and he turned around with his face covered in snow. He said he liked our show and that he was in a band too. Years later, I met him again on the Metal Cruise. Just a crazy guy in the snow in Canada… And sometimes we still connect on Facebook.
DinIntunerec: How do you see the underground metal scene nowadays? Apart from quantity, as it seems there are a lot of new bands emerging everywhere, do you think there is quality too?
Henri Sattler: Oh yes, there is definitely a lot of quality bands. There is so much that it’s impossible to discover every band. In the Netherlands, we have a lot of great bands that started in the underground scene, like Bodyfarm. Metal is still alive.
DinIntunerec: What is the most important life lesson that you have learnt so far?
Henri Sattler: To take good care of my health. Sometimes people forget to take care of themselves, and at a certain point, your body tells you something is wrong. This year, I made a big change—no more smoking, no more drinking, and I lost 10 kilos. I was in bad shape, but now I cut everything away that’s not good for me.
DinIntunerec: Thank you for your time, any final words for our readers?
Henri Sattler: I would like to thank everybody for staying with us for all these years and for the continuous support of God Dethroned. I invite everyone to check out The Judas Paradox because I think it’s a great album.
