With Lucifericon releasing a new EP called “Sabatraxas” to celebrate the band’s 15th anniversary, I fired off some questions to band member (bass/vocals) Rob Reijnders, and here is what he said:
Where were you born, and what sort of kid were you growing up?
ROB: Born in the hospital in Eindhoven City. Raised in the town of Bladel, where I am still living today. Sounds boring, but life is amazingly good in that area, and we are close to the cities of Tilburg and Eindhoven in case you need to be there. My folks had a car garage and car sales business, including a petrol station, so they were always working. I was a normal kid, I guess, until I discovered heavy metal in the mid-80s.
Were you into music at an early age, or did that come later on in your life? What were some of the early bands you heard?
ROB: My father found an AC/DC tape (For those about…) inside a car he traded in his garage business. I’m not sure what year that was (1981-chris), but I’m from ’76, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t 10 years old yet. So that must have been in ’84 or ’85, approximately.
A friend from down the street had a father who played guitar and had a small room in his house that was kind of a studio. His father was into Zappa, Satriani, and some more guitar-oriented stuff. He also had Iron Maiden stuff lying around. My friend taped me Live After Death, which totally blew me away and is still my fave live album to this day. On that tape, though, after the 2nd or 3rd song by Maiden, the album was interrupted by a Slayer song from the Hell Awaits album. I think it was Kill Again, but I don’t recall that 100% sure. I was also blown away by that barrage of noise, which I started to appreciate a bit later.
Now, how did you come to discover heavy metal and then onto underground metal? As far as underground metal goes, was there a style you took to right away, or did it take a few spins to get into?
ROB: I kinda explained that above here already. But when I was 11, I started playing soccer/football at the local club, and there I made new friends who were also into the music that I liked.
They were into Megadeth, Testament, and Slayer, and I liked all that. So we started sharing and taping music for each other and hanging out together. These guys became my best friends, and we still see each other to this day. One of those guys ended up playing drums on the first Lucifericon recording, “The Occult Waters”. When I went to secondary school, I met other guys who were a year older than me.
These guys already knew bands like Pestilence, Carcass, etc. I was super interested, so I started asking if they wanted to tape albums on cassette for me. This was in ’89. That year, I discovered death metal, and it completely blew me away. I was totally into that stuff, and the world would never be the same for me. The first time I heard Slayer, I couldn’t make up what this noise was. So that didn’t appeal to me right away. But it didn’t take long until it hit me, and I was totally into fast and extreme stuff. When I got involved with the extreme stuff, I knew that this was for me. It evoked a feeling of something barbaric and unique in me. I was never the same kid again after getting into that. And I’m fucking glad that happened to me.
What made you decide to pick up the bass and not say guitar? Who are some of your favourite bass players?
ROB: Well, I was kinda late to the party playing an instrument, and I became a little bit interested in playing bass when I was around 17 and still living at home. I bought a shitty bass for a crate of beer from this guy I knew, and started fooling around with it.
It was only after I moved out of the house at 20 that I asked a friend bass player, to help me shop for a more decent one. I was always intrigued by the bass and vocals combination, so I guess that if I was going to end up in a band, I eventually wanted to do bass and vocals if I was up to the task.
I guess since I was a huge Maiden fan in the early years, I like Steve Harris. And I always loved Cronos for the bass/vocals combination. When I got into death metal, I thought David Vincent was exactly where I wanted to be heading.
Now, what was the first concert you went to, and what was the first underground metal show you went to?
ROB: I’m sure I went to some local shows first before going to a bit bigger shows. I just can’t remember which one could have been the very first. My first ‘bigger’ show I went to outside of my local area was Bolt Thrower and Nocturnus together in January 1991 in the city of s-Hertogenbosch. I had just turned 15, and it was fucking awesome. Nocturnus had released The Key just before that time in 1990, and Bolt Thrower played Realm of Chaos tracks, and 1 or 2 from the upcoming album Warmaster. That album was to be released a few months later. Glorious times, alright…
Now, how did the coming of Lucifericon come together? Did you go through several members before you came to a steady line-up?
ROB: And Anton (guitars) played together in a band called Sun’s Blood before Lucifericon. I quit that band in 2005, and Anton quit in 2007 or 08 or something. Anyway, we started talking about doing something new together around that time. And we decided we should do a jam session at my house. If we could come up with some cool riffs, then we would meet for a second session. And if we came up with nothing, then we would leave it be.
We immediately had a few solid ideas, and we continued to create more. Then we asked my old friend Rob van Gompel (ex-Excision) to play drums. This was in 2009.
We remained a 3-piece band for almost a year. Then we decided our music needed another layer of guitars, and we asked Alex from Pentacle to join on the second guitar.
We had this lineup until May 2014. Then Van Gompel decided to leave. We didn’t have a drummer until September that year. We recruited Roel Sanders (ex-God Dethroned, Asphyx, Inhume, etc) as drummer. We played 2 shows with him in March 2015, and we started planning to record the “Brimstone Altar” material in June. Before we went into the studio, he called to say he was close to a burnout. His doctor advised him to take it easy, and he decided to leave Lucifericon, which was a real bummer. Right away, we asked our current drummer, Tim, if he at least wanted to help us out in the studio and play a few gigs with us to close all our obligations for that year. He said yes, and we started rehearsing for the studio recordings.
After a few weeks, he said he liked all of it, and we had a great click, so he asked if he could stay permanently in the band. So, since 2015, the lineup has remained the same as it is now, and it is really working great like this. So we only changed drummers a few times.
Early on, was it understood besides playing bass that you were going to sing as well? Who are some of your favourite singers?
ROB: Yes, but at first we planned to split the main vocal duties between Anton and me more like 50/50. But when we finally got to do vocals on the first batch of songs, it kinda turned out differently, and it naturally evolved in the way that I did the main vocals.
We do experiment a fair bit with the vocals, and we double a lot of words and sentences because it is cool to do, and it works out great. It’s also very powerful in a live situation.
A favourite singer in death metal would be David Vincent. I enjoy Candlemass, and Messiah Marcolin always gives me goosebumps. I have seen Candlemass with every singer they had, but Messiah is the man. Dio is fucking fantastic, of course. As for black metal, I should say Quorthon was great. Just to name a few…
Now, did you as a band start to write original songs pretty much right away?
ROB: Yes, we did. We had no intention to play cover tunes at all. A few years ago, we had the intention to cover Grotesque and a track by the French band Mutilated. But we are too focused on our material. Who knows if it will still happen? We’ll see…
How did you come up with the band name and the logo, and were any other band names thrown around?
ROB: I was, and still am, very fascinated with the character of Lucifer. So I tried to use that somehow.
One day I was playing Grotesque on the stereo, and in the track ‘Blood Runs From The Altar’ the singer screams ‘IA Lucifericon’ (check the lyrics in the booklet) at some point.
And right there and then, I knew that was what I was looking for.
I was aware it was very similar to the defunct Swedish band Luciferion.
But I thought the name was very powerful, and besides…the Swedish band name was not the same, and they were disbanded long ago, so I thought it shouldn’t be a problem.
I suggested it to the others and they agreed.
We never had another name, only an earlier version of our logo that we used on our debut release CD. The first logo version was drawn by a female friend of ours, Marthe Vogels. It was pretty cool, but I already knew I wanted a better version.
We were contacted by Blood Harvest Records (among other labels…) from Sweden, who wanted to release a vinyl version of our first output. So we took the opportunity to improve our logo and album cover for the vinyl version. The improved logo was done by Manuel Tinnemans (Pentacle, Deathspell Omega, etc), and that’s the one we have been using since then.
How long was the band around before your debut release, which was called “The Occult Waters”? Why that title? How long did it take for these songs to come together?
ROB: The band was formed in 2009, and we released The Occult Waters ourselves on CD in September 2012. We wrote like 3 tracks in our early stages. We ended up throwing one away, and the other two became The Temple of Lucifericon and Azazel’s Torch.
Most of this came together in 2010 and 2011. We wrote one more, which became Moon Over Fading Statues, and then we decided we should put that out as our debut material. The title was inspired by the fact that we were conceptually delving into dark topics.
How was it as a band going into the studio for the 1st time? How do you think your debut release turned out? Can you listen to it these days?
ROB: It was not the first time in a studio for us. But it was the first Lucifericon, so it was exciting but also very scary. You can only hope it will go well enough to have a good-sounding result. The Occult Waters was recorded live in the studio to create a natural dynamic and authentic sound we were after. We did the vocals separately, though.
I think it holds up decently now, still, but we have improved ourselves a lot since then. It sounds alright for a first recording, and we immediately got quite a good response on it overall.
I don’t listen to it anymore, though…
Thoughts on your 2016 release “Brimstone Altar” these days?
ROB: There is no release we put out that we dislike. So that applies to Brimstone Altar as well. Could it have been better? Probably so, but it’s a solid release as it is, and it captured the vibe we wanted, and how we were at that time.
Every release is its frame of mind and time, so to speak.
We still play the title track live now and then.
In 2018, your 1st full-length came out called, “Al-Khem-Me”, on Invictus Productions. How did you end up hooking up with them, and thoughts on this release these days?
ROB: We were already friends with Darragh (Invictus Prod.) before we even started the band. At least I was…
The CD version of Brimstone Altar was already released by Invictus, while the vinyl version was still handled by Blood Harvest Records from Sweden. When our contract with Blood Harvest ended, we felt we should move to Invictus Prod. entirely.
Nothing bad about Blood Harvest. They were great to us, but it was just easier, I suppose.
We still love Al-Khem-Me a lot. The tracks on the album are strong, and we made some serious improvements production-wise and as a band as a whole.
It sounds dark and crushing; it crawls under your skin. It has everything we seek with Lucifericon. The only thing we were struggling with was getting the kick drums right on the production. But overall… It’s still a killer album in our opinion.
Were you playing live much around this time?
ROB: Al-Khem-Me was released in late 2018, and a tour was planned already by then.
2019 was a really good year for us on the live show front. We played quite a lot indeed. A European tour of 2 weeks late March into April. And festivals in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, and some more stuff I don’t recall right now. It kept going until February 2020, until COVID put an end to it all.
It took 4 years, and in 2022, you released another full-length called “The Warlock of Da’ath”. How quickly did the songs for this come together?
ROB: Well, after Al-Khem-Me, we first did a 7” ep called ‘Benediction of the Red Earth’.
So we were working on that first. We tried getting another tour going coz we were on a live playing buzz after all the shows we did before Covid happened.
We had started on some new stuff as we usually do. But we weren’t yet too focused on it. When we realised Covid wasn’t going away anytime soon and we couldn’t play live for a while, we decided to use this time effectively and focus on putting together another album. So a lot, or perhaps almost all, material for ‘The Warlock…’ album is written in Covid times. Considering we had no shows to prepare for, etc, we could write a bit faster than usual. And we kinda worked on it in a way that it could be released when Covid was fading away. So the timing for that was pretty good, but the live scene kept on being dead or coming back alive slowly.
We thought once Covid was kinda over, it would take off where it stopped, but we were so wrong.
Did you get to do any type of mini-tours at all to support this great release?
ROB: No, we tried a lot of things like that, but as mentioned above, it was still hard getting stuff organised show-wise after Covid. Plus, everything had gotten way more expensive, too, which made it extra hard. So we didn’t play many shows.
Earlier this year, we joined a new booking agency from Germany called Abyssal Booking. So hopefully this will lead to a bit more live playing. A European tour is in planning for March 2025, so let’s hope this will materialise.
I imagine the response to this release was great. I loved it.
ROB: The response for ‘The warlock…” was mostly very positive indeed. It ended up in some people’s and magazines’ year lists.
We feel we have again made some improvements, and we have again learned a lot from the process of doing this album. You learn something every time.
The production was a bit less muddy and a bit clearer than Al-Khem-Me.
This time, almost all the material was written by our guitarist Anton, instead of by the entire band. This was not something we planned, but it just happened that way.
You can hear that it’s, therefore, a bit different, but still very much Lucifericon in the end. Glad you like it mate, much appreciated.
Just a few days ago, I got a promo for your newest release, a 6-song EP called “Sabatraxas”. It has 3 leftover tunes from your 2022 release and 3 live tracks. Where were the live tracks recorded?
ROB: This release is just out, yes. It was a good opportunity to put the unused tracks to use. We spoke to some bands to try and do a split release with some of these tracks before this, but it didn’t work out.
Then we thought it would make a cool release for our anniversary that was coming up, and fill the B side with some good live tracks, so it will be a bit more value for money, and give the people a taste of how we are in a live situation.
The live tracks were recorded at Dordrecht Metal Fest #4, February 4th 2023, in the city of Dordrecht (near Rotterdam).
I know this release came out because the band is now 15 years old. Does that amaze you in some ways? When the band started, did you think youwould be around 15 years later?
ROB: I certainly didn’t expect this to happen. And we didn’t think about it that much.
I guess we are/were driven enough to keep on doing things, and we are not finished yet. On the other hand, I never saw Lucifericon as a band that needs to release like 10 albums.
We also have families, so that’s even harder sometimes to keep going, coz there are always some family matters that need attending to as well. So in that sense, it may amaze me as I surely didn’t expect at first that we would come this far.
So we cannot work as fast as a band that can put their entire spare time into the band because of that. That’s fine by us, as we don’t have anything to prove to anyone but ourselves, and we never planned to be a band that puts out an album every other year or two. We already put a lot of time and effort into Lucifericon as it is, and a new release comes when we are ready and 100% satisfied with an album.
Do you think the sound of the band has changed much over the years?
ROB: I don’t think so. But I think people outside the band do. In several reviews, we’ve read that our music is black metal. That’s fine by us, of course. We don’t avoid some good old black metal in our music, but we truly believe the core of our music is death metal to start with. I think the clearer production on ‘The Warlock…’ album gave us a bit more of a black metal vibe. It doesn’t bother us, though. It’s all dark music we use to stir our cauldron of metal with.
Are all your releases still for sale in some form or another?
ROB: Yeah, most of it for sure. The band has music formats and merch for sale.
Our first release, ‘The Occult Waters’, is sold out from us.
Invictus Productions, our current label, has our releases available. At least most of them.
Perhaps our old label, Blood Harvest, still has some vinyl of our first 2 mini-LPs.
They only did vinyl releases for us, no CDs.
Otherwise, Google our titles around.
You were around back in the early days of the underground, as was I. Does it amaze you how much it has changed over the years?
ROB: I agree with you, it has certainly changed. But I still meet people from back then to share our like-minded thoughts and feelings for this genre.
Luckily, there are still some younger people who are into it in the way I was back then. But they are a minority among a minority. I did feel like that already back in the day, as I was more into the ’80s, and the obscure underground bands from the time instead of the popular metal bands, so it depends on how you look at it.
These days, I gotta admit I am starting to feel more disassociated with the whole thing. There are probably a number of reasons for that. Age is one thing. I have been around for a while in this scene and maybe been to a lot of places and seen a lot of bands, so I’m not so easily impressed anymore. Another reason is that it seems most bands these days care more about their stage attire, and how much more they can bring of it, than the quality of their music. Everything seems image-driven only before anything else. And what bothers me is that today’s generation of undergrounders seems to dig it for that, too.
Maybe it’s just me. Either I just don’t get it, or I get it completely and see through that bullshit because of it. Or maybe it’s just my different taste. You tell me…(I agree with you-chris)
As opposed to metal being about leather, spikes, sex, drinks, and the underground feeling, like in the early days, yes, it has changed.
For those who have never heard the band, what would you say the band sounds like?
ROB: Jeez… that’s tough, as everyone seems to hear us differently. Right now, in this moment, I would say we are a mix of old Morbid Angel and Possessed and Dissection. So we have the brutality of riffs, outspoken vocal structures, and the melodies to emphasise the darkness. Simply put.
Please plug any social media sites you have and any merchandise you have for sale.
The band still has these items for sale currently.
-Brimstone Altar mini album CD digipack (last copies)
-Al-Khem-Me full-length album 2018 CD and gatefold LP+poster
-Benediction of the Red Earth 7” ep 2020
-The Warlock of Da’ath full-length album 2022 CD and LP (black vinyl and picture disc), and a few cassette tape versions available too (a handful left).
-Logo patches are also available.
-Sabatraxas’ 6-track anniversary LP 2024 is currently sold out. We are getting a few more copies, but half of those are already spoken for.
So I think our copies will go soon. We will make a Facebook post soon if any copies are available from us. If so, you should contact us asap if you want one.
Otherwise, buy from our label instead.
-We have several designs of shirts and long-sleeved shirts available. Check the designs on our Bandcamp page.
Contact us here for merch or questions, or to check us out.
For merch, you can also email us instead of just using Bandcamp.
https://www.facebook.com/lucifericon
https://lucifericon.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/lucifericonband
email: [email protected]
For bookings, please contact;
https://www.abyssalbooking.com
email: [email protected]
Rob, horns up for doing this interview. Any last words to say, and I urge any fan of death metal to check your band out.
ROB: Thanks a great deal for the interest and the questions, Chris.
It was my/our pleasure. Please spread the word about our band if people wanna hear/see a band of the real deal !!!
It would be cool if there were a chance to ever play in the States, but it’s a pain in the ass getting into the country without the proper paperwork, and even then, still.
