"Tridentifer doesn't have to be out of the line, I don't want to reinvent death metal!"
Tridentifer from Kaiserslautern, or K-Town as some Americans say, play interesting old school death metal, which on the one hand owes its inspiration to the Swedish grandmasters of the subject like Entombed, Grave and Dismember, on the other hand has found its own little niche through the use of gloomy-scary synthesizer parts and doomy passages. The band has been around for almost ten years now and has released a few albums in that time. Guitarist Marco, who by the way used to be a member of the relatively well known Dark, answered all my questions.
Hello Gerald, Hello Systematic Desensitization Zine! First of all thank you for the interest in our band! Then I'll start with the prehistory:
After my former band Redgrin (of which I was also a founding member and had spent many years) had been very slow, I decided to quit and go my own way.
Tridentifer was founded shortly before, on December 23, 2011 and was supposed to be a side project for my musical ideas, which I was always thwarted before.
The plan was to release some songs here and there with a guest vocalist, which should reflect my own interpretation of death metal with atmospheric synthesizer background - without having to compromise!
Synthetic backgrounds are also not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, but synths were and are still very important for me, even if it is technically not always so easy to implement live without having a keyboardist in the band.
The HM-2 Sweden sound, for example, was a must! I also wanted to bring in certain clichés that make up death metal.
I first contacted Heiko, who was already being discussed as a drummer with Redgrin, but it didn't come to that...from then on we also knew each other. He was immediately enthusiastic, because he hadn't done anything in the harder metal direction up to that point.
Oli and I knew each other for a long time from the metal scene in Lautern - through concerts, pubs, we live in a 'village' - but it was through the band that we really had regular contact.
Tobias, who joined the band later, had also immortalized himself with some songs on the debut album 'Path of the damned souls' - a really good guitarist, it's a pity that he left the band quite quickly! In contrast to us he was also a lot younger, maybe that was the reason...in any case I wish him all the best for his musical and private future!
The recordings at that time were actually (also because of several line-up changes, which I don't mention all by name now) all - except for some solos - recorded only by the three of us - Heiko, Oli and me. Neither on the demo nor on the debut album the bass players of that time had recorded anything. If we would have had to re-record that, it would have only cost time!
At the beginning of 2016 it came to the split, which, however, had no musical background! Heiko and Oli then went a new way and the other guys also founded new bands or joined somewhere else. I then continued Tridentifer as a side-project again and there was another album titled 'Left to rot' at the end of 2016 with guest vocalist Eric aka 'Akheron' of Nekkromaniac from Pirmasens.
Because of his very black metal-suited voice I decided not to go with the Swedish HM-2 sound here, but I regretted that later. We will continue to use this Swedish sound - as originally planned - on future releases!
Since I had also started another band called Black Eden, Tridentifer actually continued like that for the last few years. In 2019 Patrick was featured as another guest vocalist on the album 'Under the sign of the trident'. He did an excellent job, it was not always so easy to arrange because of the distance. I'm from Kaiserslautern and he's from the Stuttgart edge! We knew each other from concerts, he had a band with his guys called Crimson Death, unfortunately the band has disbanded.
Now we have already 2021 and there came some requests every now and then over the years if we would play live again. Together with Julian, the last and now permanent singer who can be heard on the short and crisp album 'Nachtmahr', we decided to revive Tridentifer and bring them on stage again!
No, actually not at all. Since I've been taking care of the whole thing myself since the beginning until today, it was definitely no problem. It was - as already mentioned - actually a side-project in the beginning, that it would become a complete band, was more of a coincidence. It didn't matter if the band consisted of just me or several guys, I always tinkered with songs somehow and regarding to the position of the vocalist, someone was always found quickly.
I could do whatever I wanted and therefore didn't have to make any compromises. I was also much faster in producing songs and albums. From the beginning, I had certain ideas about how Tridentifer should sound, as well as in terms of visuals such as logo, artwork and online presentation.
It should serve exactly the clichés that attracted me so much to metal and that still fascinate me today. Tridentifer doesn't have to be out of line, I don't want to reinvent death metal, I just want to make my/our own kind of it as a contribution and have fun!
It's not a compulsion for me to go to rehearsals or sit down at home and write a new song. With the right people behind it, it goes fast and it's a pleasure every time when the singer presents his vocals to me and it just carries you away immediately!
What was the reason for using German lyrics on the new album 'Nachtmahr'? Had that always been a wish?
It came about more by chance - singer Julian had been given themes by me and I had also named the songs that way in German, 'Fährmann' and 'Nachtmahr'. Julian had then simply experimented and sang the lyrics in German!
I thought it was great and so we decided to follow up and make an EP, which will probably contain more German than English lyrics!
Not only the artwork has already been commissioned, there are even three new songs titled 'Gespinst', 'Die weiße Frau' and 'Medusa' - let yourself be surprised!
I like the fact that you have already found your own little niche: on the one hand traditional, rather Swedish influenced death metal, which also goes well to the front, on the other hand then again and again these ominous-doomy parts, which achieve a great effect especially when they come along with the very suitable keyboard inserts. Whereby the journey in this direction only really began with the debut album, the first demo 'Zombified' is still a bit more raw and simple. Also you are partly nevertheless very melodious on the way. How would you classify your music, how did it develop and who had the biggest part in it? You are welcome to say something about each release and give a short summary.
On the demo 'Zombified' Oli contributed the song 'Bloodwine', which contained a lot of blastbeats because it was actually from his project Dawn of Anger. I then created a slower drum version of it in cooperation with Heiko, which went more in the direction of oldschool death metal.
Heiko himself plays some guitar as well as drums and had written the song 'Ripping cancer'. The other two songs 'Of days to come' and 'Zombified' were written by me, Heiko wrote the lyrics.
Since Heiko had done the final mix for the demo in the studio of his cover band, the synthesizer was already driven very much into the background...
For the album 'Path of the damned souls' the mixing was done by me and of course there was more emphasis on hearing the synth a bit more. Some songs were already written at the time of the demo, so I personally wouldn't say more melodic, but yes, some simple guitar melodies do pull us out of sounding too monotonous...
It´s not clear yet if we will bring the synth live in the new line-up. There are of course possibilities to either let the tape do it or to bring another musician into the band. We'll have to test that in rehearsals first, to see if we really want to do it live. Playing without click would be more flexible, everyone likes to drink something if possible and if the drummer has to play 100% in time and any deviation would have fatal consequences for the song flow, this would be very unpleasant! The fun should be in the foreground here, then we rather take a keyboard player who supports us live, he may also drink a beer or two with pleasure!
For the future, however, I have decided that I will put more emphasis on making songs that also work without the synthesizer and go much more in the oldschool direction of the 90s - there will still be some German lyrics here and there.
After the planned EP it will hopefully go on normally with live gigs, then depending on the success in terms of drummer search we will rather put more emphasis on playing in front of an audience instead of constantly writing songs!
That would have been too nice, but unfortunately the promoter of 'Garage Saarbrücken', who had booked us, didn't know that Cradle of Filth had their own support band in tow. He canceled us again shortly before! That was really annoying for us, but so what!? He couldn't change it and the information came through too late.
But we were allowed to play as support band for Fleshgod Apocalypse! In general we couldn't complain about gigs during our time as a full band. Somehow something new always came up quickly and I think without the sudden split it could have been more.
So far we have only been on the road in Germany, but we can't complain about the radius and I hope we can expand it at some point!
Have you ever been confused - in any context - with the Swedish Trident (among others-ex Dissection/Soulreaper), since the music is not so dissimilar?
This has not happened yet, but would be forgiven. The name is not much different. However, it was no intention on my part to be named similarly and I only found out later that there is a band called Trident! But maybe one or the other will fall over our band profile by coincidence while searching the internet...
The former drummer Heiko had set the foundation stone for it and designed a very black metal-like lettering. I then redesigned the whole thing a bit more legible and more death metal-like. I adopted the somewhat triangular basic shape with the cross and the flames on the first and last letters.
The covers for the demo 'Zombified' and the debut album 'Path of the damned souls' were painted by an American named Arthur Hamer, also known as Death Hammer Graphix. I think he is no longer active today though!?
On 'Under the sign of the trident' Raul Fuentes from Spain came into action. Under the pseudonym 'Mörtuus' he paints mainly black and white covers, but also in color. For 'Nachtmahr' I had asked him directly again.
Dan Seagrave is for me the god among all these artists!
I think I've listened to and often bought a lot of records just because of these artworks...
How does it look like for you in the local scene? Are there certain bands that you can recommend, especially perhaps still very unknown? What can you do in Kaiserslautern in terms of the scene when there isn't a pandemic; what clubs and bars are there? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of well-known bands from your home town are of course the Spermbirds...What else is happening in the surrounding area?
Yes, the Spermbirds - great songs that I have heard often enough!
There are quite a few good bands here in and around Kaiserslautern!
There's Warfield or Burstin' Out, I think the latter band broke up some time ago, but recently they were working on a reunion...?
My old band Redgrin and Souldevourer (two old members of Tridentifer), to name some more bands of the death metal scene 'K-Towns'. Or Lord Vigo from Landstuhl, who celebrate rather doomy Metal without death growls but with clear vocals, in my opinion they sound absolutely awesome!
And if you like classic heavy metal, you will surely know Hammer King from the Lauterer scene (among others musicians from Ivory Night and Warchild)!
Apart from that, we live in a small town here, where it's difficult to find musicians in the harder metal scene who don't belong to a band yet! You know each other for the most part, but if you are a musician, you usually already have your fingers in it somewhere...
Scene-technically we have here and there rather smaller clubs/bars, but I would say in the matter of death metal one can find enough possibilities from Saarbrücken over Kaiserslautern up to Mainz nevertheless very well. In Kaiserslautern itself there is the JUZ, the Irish House, the Cotton Club or for bigger events the Kammgarn, where I was even allowed to play once in the original formation of Dark. And last but not least there is the Wladi Rockstock...I go there rather seldom, but once a month there is Metal-Night, which is really fun and many people from the metal scene like to be there!
At that time I wanted to make more extreme music than the guys who were in Dark. It became more and more melodic, more and more synthesizers... At that time it was not so important for me. I wanted more fast songs and blast beats without big frippery.
Later on I regretted that I left the band, because there was a lot of discipline and heart and soul from the musicians, which I could rarely experience in this form until today!
Some years ago, before my other formation Black Eden was created, I had also started to make music again with Michael (who was the singer on the first two Dark albums). But because of slight differences we made two bands out of it. Black Eden and Endtime Prophets, which both still exist. In this founding phase/time there was also the question if we shouldn't reactivate Dark, but the actual head of Dark - Matze - unfortunately couldn't be convinced... It would have been nice, again and again there are people who still know the band!
Your music has enough quality to be released on a regular label, how does it look like now? The first two albums were released by Voodoo Chamber Records, a small label that doesn't exist anymore. Or did you not even try to get a deal after that, like some other bands, who are getting more and more convinced that in today's networked world - at least in the underground dimensions - you don't need a label anymore?
Through a joint concert with the band Systematic Eradication from Saarland we got into conversation with one of the guys from Voodoo Chamber Records, at least that's roughly how I remember it. (Cheers, haha!) However, no real deal/contract was ever signed. We agreed by phone and email that we would print the logo on our CD and that the guys would put us on their homepage - but that's all that ever happened.
Regardless of this - we had no bad experience - I find labels redundant on a small scale! You can sell your music yourself via Bandcamp and other sites and if people buy a CD or a shirt at all, you can package and ship it yourself. Why let others earn money from it, if they can't really offer you anything!
A good label should pay you at best your production in the studio, help you at least to become better known and get good gigs, then it makes sense in my opinion that the label earns money from you! It must, among other things, get his investment out again and then also has the right to earn on it! But most labels do not have this 'power' - the influence and the money - it's just a hobby of metal fans!
So why give away rights and lose money, in the end you don't even know exactly how many CD's/LP's have really been sold and if the bill was correct?
Furthermore, I don't want to oblige Tridentifer to decide when you have to release how many songs, how much time may lie in between or how often you have to perform live or with whom you record something else. Furthermore you don't have a real insight about the income, for example from streaming services, which the label then collects.
Making music is also work, a lot of heart and soul, and at this point in time it's pure hobby that hasn't come close to balancing out financially - I'm not tying Tridentifer to a small wannabe label! Should it start up again and become a success, then you have to weigh up whether it makes sense. If both parties have something from it....why not!?
I'll start first with the old well-known bands that were very important for me personally and still are, and that led to Tridentifer in particular. So albums that I still like to listen until today and have shaped me a lot in terms of my own music:
Entombed - Left hand path, the HM-2 Death Metal album par excellence, for me the number one album in terms of songs and sound. The voice is perfect, it's a pity that Lars has passed away in the meantime, very unfortunate!
Number two on my list is Carnage - Dark Recollections, also the album cover already says exactly what you get to hear on 'Left hand path' in the form of Dan Seagrave's imagination put to paper! I think the album never gets boring, even though I usually like songs that have a great recognition value and that certain parts repeat themselves in the song - so with `Dark Recollections' I absolutely don't mind that you somehow never really know what's coming next if you don't listen through it all the time....
And my number three is 'Soulside journey' by Darkthrone ! I think the guys used the Boss HM-2 there as well, it sounds kind of like that and is on par and similar to the Carnage album in my opinion. I also like the later black metal albums of the band, but it would be great if the guys would release something similar to this release (I would also very much appreciate this - note from the author)!
On all three of these albums, very little synthesizer sounds were used, but those were exactly the parts that made me want to put something like that on my own productions on a much larger scale.
Other metal albums that I still like to listen to today and that have influenced me include Morbid Angel with 'Altars of Madness' - absolutely brilliant!
Dave's voice on this album is exactly what makes a good death metal voice for me: rough, gritty but still easy to understand. I honestly don't like dull bawling around where I don't understand a single word!
Then Paradise Lost with their debut `Lost Paradise', the song `Rotting Misery' for example is awesome!
And of course bands like Death, Bathory, Asphyx, Cathedral, Deicide, it would go too far to name them all now...
From the newer bands, which also focus on the HM-2 sound, there is of course a lot of good stuff like Lik, Entrails, Gatecreeper, Desolate Shrine or Vallenfyre!
I also like the fact that you still have a real homepage. When the internet came up, this was still widespread, today many bands only have Facebook and Bandcamp. From a design point of view, a real homepage gives a lot more, I think...
I'm oldschool there, probably less people visit, but with bands that interest me personally, I look at their page from time to time. You simply have more freedom to present yourself!
I still regret that MySpace no longer exists in its original form - that was Facebook, only better! You had the music player for your own music directly for the visitor to play, the background was freely designable - font, font color, the arrangement of the topic areas. It's a pity that these possibilities don't exist on Facebook!
Bandcamp is of course integrated in our homepage and also our sales portal for CD's and merch, with PayPal as payment method - perfect!
What does the future hold for Tridentifer? The last words belong to you, here you can get rid of everything unsaid so far!
Well, first we have to find a drummer!
Then our goal is to put together a live program from all the releases, rehearse and perform again.
In the meantime, we will release our new songs on an EP and of course we're still working with our other band Black Eden.
Personally, I hope that things will get back to normal soon and that concerts, meeting friends and just making music with a few people in the rehearsal room will be possible again.
That's it from my side, thank you for your attention and your interest - stay heavy!!!