With the recent release of their debut album, 'The Tides of Vengeance,' Wasteland reflects on the exhilarating journey of bringing their music to the world. From humble beginnings to a powerful album, discover the band's story and the themes that fuel their unique sound.
1. Congratulations on the release of your debut album,
'The Tides of Vengeance.' How does it feel to have your music out in the world?
There's a been a long road before releasing our first album.
Composing, rewriting and being content with the songs, is a whole process.
It involves working hard, but foremost, having fun with
friends. Then, to finally have our music out in the world is very exciting.
Honestly, it feels a bit crazy to be able to tell people we
released a full album of our own music.
The songs we've released now, we've been playing them for
quite some time and it's cool that it's finally out there for other people to
listen to.
It feels weird to be able to look yourself up on Spotify.
2. Can you tell us about the origins of Wasteland? How
did the three friends - Niels, Tristan, and Jonas - come together to form the
band?
Tristan and Jonas are brothers and grew up in a family where
metal music was being 'blasted' 24/7.
Our parents listened to Iron Maiden, Helloween, Megadeth,
Savatage, Pantera, Death,... all day.
So you could basically say our love for metal music was
shaped by our family.
In secondary school Niels and Jonas became friends and
played a lot of games together (mainly world of warcraft).
Around that time Niels also started to listen to a lot of
grunge / rock / metal music.
By the time we were 14-16 years old we bought our first
instruments and started playing together in a small room blasting covers from
different bands.
A few years later we decided to start a band and created a
rehearsal room in the basement of our parents' house.
3. Starting in a basement that later became your
rehearsal room, how has your journey from the early days shaped the band's
sound and dynamics?
Our sound has evolved a lot over the years, the music has
become more heavy and more progressive.
When we started working on the project City Colission of the
Slanted Mangoose (which was the early version of Wasteland we mostly made
stoner rock with Niels doing vocals.
The interest to play heavier music was at that point gated
by the fact that the vocals were not heavy enough.
With Bart joining the band later on, we were able to
transition to heavier music.
4. Finding the right members is crucial. How did you come
across your bassist Karel and singer Bart, and what do they bring to Wasteland's
musical identity?
We basically first saw Karel on the metal festival Graspop
Metal Meeting after being contacted through an ad.
We had a good conversation about our music taste and were
going to see some of the same bands.
When we got home from the festival we rehearsed together and
felt an immediate 'click' playing a Mastodon and A7X cover together.
With the introduction of Karel we decided we were going to
go back to our 'roots' - metal music.
Karel really loves bands like Tool and i think you can
really hear this in his playing.
In 2019 we went to a smaller festival with a few cover
bands.
In the mosh pit we heard a guy screaming from the top of his
lungs during the slipknot cover band, basically screaming louder than the
singer on the stage.
We walked up to him and asked him if he wanted to come try
out for our band.
On the first rehearsal we got some snacks together and a
friendship was born!
Since Bart joined the band, our music has evolved further to
a more brutal and agressive style due to his ability to scream.
Bart really made room for the heavier songs and this was
also what Karel wanted the band to evolve to.
5. 'The Tides of Vengeance' is a powerful title for an
album. What themes or messages are you exploring through your music, and how
did you decide on this title?
Everybody has their own interpretation of music and the
messages behind them.
The album (for us) is about power in all its parts: feeling
powerless and helpless, having power and influence over people or the struggle
for power.
The album starts with an intro: 'Vengeance', voiced by our
drummer Tristan.
This is a short intro song which kind of resembles at
receiving a quest in a game. Basically starting the adventure.
Condemned is about religion and the power it has to
influence people.
With Fireline, you're literally in the fireline and you're
about to be shot.
The world being f'ed over by the people in charge in the
song Wasteland.
Parasite talks about a toxic relationship with a person you
should've cut out of your life a long time ago.
A prophet is preaching about senseless violence, the Lone
Messiah.
Forlorn is about addiction and not being able to deal with
it.
We talk about grudges and the feeling of being alone in
Creatures.
The album ends with Boss Battle, an anthem of leadership and
managing a batallion.
Everybody deals with power at some point, whether you have it, you don't or you're in the pursuit of it.
6. Your influences include Lamb of God, Killswitch
Engage, Dream Theater, Trivium, and Gojira. How do these bands impact your
sound, and in what ways do you strive to create a unique Wasteland sound?
We do not really try to sound like an other band in
particular. We listen to a lot of music, but these are some of the bands we've
listened to the most (+ Iron Maiden, Death, Tool, Megadeth,...).
I guess by listening to these bands we subconsciously use a
lot of elements in our own music. We just try to create music we like
ourselves.
7.Can you share insights into your songwriting process?
How do you collaborate to create the intense and dynamic tracks we hear on the
album?
Most of the time it involves a lot of cursing and noodling
around on our instruments.
Usually, we rehearse the friday evening in our basement with
some beers.
These friday nights we serve each other 'riff salads'.
We play around and show each other some riffs and work
together to shape them further to our liking.
We mainly start the riffs from guitar/bass parts and then
let Tristan work his magic on the drums.
We create the lyrics and vocal melodies together.
8. October 31, 2023, must have been an exciting day for
the band with the album release. How did you celebrate this milestone, and what
feedback have you received from your fans so far?
We all work full time, so we did not really 'celebrate' the
release day of the album.
A few weeks prior we shot a video (completely home-made)
with some Halloween masks to announce the album (that was coming out on
Halloween).
Honestly, that was a pretty cool thing to do and really felt like it was all
coming together.
Since it's our first album we don't have a lot of fans yet.
However, the feedback we've received from our direct
environment was fairly positive.
We've also pitched our songs to various playlist editors and
have been added to multiple playlist.
It's very reassuring when people who listen to a lot of music, also like the
music you created yourself.
9. As a metal band from Veldegem, how do you see your local roots influencing your music, if at all?
Honestly the metal scene in Belgium hasn't had a lot of
influences on our own music.
It's hard for metal bands to play gigs in the area since
there isn't that much interest in metal music.
10. Looking ahead, what are Wasteland's goals and plans for the future? Can fans expect more albums, tours, or any exciting projects on the horizon?
We've been playing the songs on the album for quite some
time now.
In the few months prior to the release date we've already
started working on some new riffs.
Judging by these new riffs, the fan can expect a heavier
album than the first, since we're going to use that 7nd string on the guitar
(and 5th on the bass) a whole lot more!
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