Keep up with Michiel here:
Born in Los Alamos, New Mexico April 27th 1981, I grew up having a very musical family, my Mom was a piano teacher. When I was 2 years old we moved to Lansing, Michigan and on my 4th birthday I got a small acoustic guitar with a case. I never touched the guitar but started bashing the case with some sticks playing along with my parents records.
It never became an option at that time to go deeper into drums cause when I was 5 we moved to the Netherlands (where my parents are from) and it never really developed until I was 9. I got my first drum pad and drum lessons and played only rudiments for a year. I got my first 5 piece drum kit when I was 10 and I started playing along with the bands I grew up with like Guns n Roses and Metallica. I did that for a couple of years, discovered new bands like Slayer, Sepultura, Napalm Death, Death and so on and tried to play along with some stuff.
When I was 16 I switched schools and met a guy who played guitar in a metal band. I never heard of a local scene, I was only listening to big bands and playing drums in my room. I started jamming with that guy and we started our first band but it didn’t last for long cause we only rehearsed, never played gigs. In this period I took some more lessons for about 4 years. I learned a lot, of different styles, improvement in my technique, independence and so on and so on. Meanwhile I went looking for a different band and found a band called Katafalk. Thrash/death metal with gigs in Holland, Germany and Belgium. After about 2 years I quit the band cause I wanted a more brutal band. The vocalist (Niels van Wijk) used to play guitar in Prostitute Disfigurement and he also wanted to keep playing guitar so we started another band called Toxocara. I met the guys from Prostitute Disfigurement through Niels and not long after, 2004, they called me and asked if I wanted to play on their record “Left in grisly fashion”. This was a really brutal band without any boundaries so I said “yes” right away and we started rehearsing. I did the record and then they asked if I wanted to do some gigs. That’s how I became a permanent member of the band. We did a lot of gigs all over Europe. We got a new record deal and toured Europe as a support act for Deicide in 2005. After the tour we started writing new stuff and meanwhile Toxocara finished a demo and we did some gigs around. We did two albums after that and continued playing weekend shows. In 2006 Prostitute Disfigurement did another European tour as a main support for Cannibal Corpse and after that we continued weekend shows and recorded “Descendants of Depravity”. It took a while before it was released and there were some issues between band members, band and the label and so on so Prostitute came to an end. So I started doing some session jobs and ended up as the drummer for Detonation and did that for a while. In the beginning of 2009 God Dethroned asked me if I wanted to join. Finally a band who played bigger shows and toured a lot. There was a three month tour coming up and God Dethroned took a lot of time so I quit Toxocara. God Dethroned toured the Balkan area, South America, North America, Canada and Europe in a row. After that we did a lot of weekend shows in Europe. In 2010, two years after Prostitute Disfigurement quit, the vocalist called me and asked if I was up for starting the band again. I said “yes” right away. The problems where solved, and I had a great time with those guys in the past, and will have in the future. God Dethroned and Prostitute Disfigurement took so much time so Detonation decided to move on with a different drummer.
Since Prostitute Disfigurement started over again we did a bunch of shows across Europe. God Dethroned did a North American/Canadian tour April/May 2010. After that we started writing “Under the sign of the iron cross”. We wrote it really fast, as soon as we finished we went recording. We even finished a song in the studio while recording. As my job started to get problems with me having a lot of time off for tours I started to give drum lessons. That’s what I’m doing right now… Doing a lot of shows with God Dethroned, Prostitute Disfigurement, teaching drums and doing some session jobs now and then. I’m always trying to improve my drumming so I’m practicing a lot of different stuff.
Michiel Van Der Plicht Interview:
SDM: How old were you when you started playing?
Mike: I got a tiny acoustic guitar when I was 4 but I never touched it. I started hitting the guitar case trying to play along with my parents records. Not really serious drumming of course. I was 9 years old when I got my first practice pad. I played a year only on that pad and a year later I got my first 5 piece drum kit. I bashed it for a couple of years until I was about 15 I got a double bass kit.
SDM: Did you play in a school band or any drum corps?
Mike: Nope. I always played by myself until I got my first metal band.
SDM: Who are your top 5 metal influences?
Marco Minnemann
Derek Roddy
Paul Bostaph
Gene Hoglan
Nick Barker
SDM: Who are some other of your favorites?
Thomas Lang
Johnny Rabb
Jojo Mayer
Virgil Donati
Vinnie Colaiuta
Mike Mangini
Dave Weckl
SDM: Let us know 5 CD's that are in your current rotation
Deicide – Everything!
Cannibal Corpse – Tomb of the mutilated
Luciferion – Everything!
Thorns
Guns n Roses – Everything before spaghetti incident. (yeah I grew up with this stuff)
SDM: What do you do to warm up before a show?
Mike: Rudiments on my knee pad, stretch my limbs and sometimes a couple of push ups.
SDM: Do you read music? Regardless of answering yes or no, please tell us how it might have effected your playing?
Mike: Yeah I read books to learn more. Right now I’m totally into extreme independence by Marco Minnemann. Crazy stuff in there!
SDM: Can you tell us about the gear you use?
Mike: I’m endorsed by Tama, Zildjian and Evans. I have a Tama starclassic bubinga drumkit, 2 bass drums, 4 rack toms, a floor tom and a Tama starphonic brass snare. I use pearl demon drive pedals and ddrum 4 trigger module for my bass drums whenever I play metal.
SDM: If you could give one piece of advice to young drummers, it would be…
Mike: Keep going and keep learning. Always play as if it would be your last performance ever in front of a million people. Always give 100% and try to learn as much styles as possible.
SDM: Who gave the best live performance you've ever seen?
Mike: Iron Maiden 2003 in Holland
SDM: Aside from drumming, what else do you like to do?
Mike: Watch other drummers play, hang out with friends, go to concerts, hang out in bars, play with my playstation
EXTENDED INTERVIEW:
SDM: Tell us about the experience of recording at the Soundlodge Studios in Leer, Germany!
Mike: Well, It's not my first time recording over there, I’ve been there a few times with my old bands so I knew Jörg (producer) and his way of working already. I was pretty happy recording there cause he’s really easy and yet very pro to work with and he makes a killer sound out of my playing
SDM: So far, what has Metal Blade’s opinion of the new album been like? Are they pushing the new God Dethroned product “Under The Sign of the Iron Cross”?
Mike: Metal blade is very pleased with the new album, it's one of the faster and most brutal albums of God Dethroned and we got a very good response from everywhere, so metal blade and us are pleased.
SDM: What exactly did you use to record the drums on “Under the Sign of the Iron Cross”? How much time did you have to prepare to record the drum parts for the album?
Mike: I used my Tama kit, ddrum4 triggers and zildjian cymbals. We didn’t have much time cause of the deadline. We wrote the music in a few months. The way we work is really simple, we do it all at the same time. Henri came up with some riffs and ideas for a song and I just play whatever pops up in my thoughts. So once the songs were finished I already knew every single drumbeat.
SDM: Considering this is your first release with God Dethroned, what do your fellow band mates Henri and Henk think of your playing on the album, and are they confident in your abilities? Is Henri Sattler a hard person to get along with (musically) considering he is the main person in God Dethroned and has seen many drummers come and go?
Mike: Yeah they are really happy with the way I play, also the way I play older songs. They are not difficult persons at all. I don’t think there where that many drummers who left but the reasons why they left had nothing to do with personal stuff. We can get along very well but I also think you have to cause if you’re in a tour bus for 3 months in a row (we did a south American, north American and European tour in a row) you better get along. After all you’re all in one bus all the time.
SDM: What are some of the highest speeds you recorded for this album? Did you play to a click track? What was the method of recording and laying down of your drums?
Mike: Henri recorded scratch tracks to a clicktrack so I could hear both guitars and click. Really easy, just sit and play. This was new for me, I never recorded an album with clicktracks cause I didn’t want it to take control. I like to fully concentrate on my playing and not on a clicktrack. So I practice with a clicktrack but actual recordings I used to play without. But it worked out pretty good and I might use this method more often. He took the tempos from some home made recordings we did in our rehearsal place. The fastest song is the first track “storm of steel”, I believe its 250 bpm and the other songs are somewhere in between 200 and 240 bpm.
SDM: Were you happy about the album being released in November of 2010?
Mike: Yeah! We after all it was more than a year and a half since “passiondale” was released. The other option we had was somewhere 2011 but we thought that would be to long so this was perfect.
SDM: How much of the older material do you play at live venues and how true do you keep them to the original version in which they were recorded?
Mike: A lot! We played almost every song from the new album but we always put in songs from different albums. We even played songs from the christhunt on our release party! That was total chaos but fun haha! I play the older songs with the same feel but mostly a bit faster, different fills and details in my own way of playing.
SDM: Some are saying that the new God Dethroned is a return to the old style of God Dethroned! What’s your opinion of that statement?
Mike: I can imagine since everything is faster and more aggressive but its not something we really wanted to do. We just wrote the songs without wanting to go back to the old style. We just wanted to make a new but different album. It’s a cool thing to hear cause the older albums are my favorite.
SDM: Tell us about your playing in “Prostitute Disfigurement”?
Mike: This is my other band which I play in since 2004. Way more brutal and more technical music. I play on “left in grisly fashion” and “descendants of depravity” and did European tours with Deicide, Cannibal corpse and Macabre. And now we hope to play other continents as well. We have a different way of working compared to God Dethroned, we take more time to put in details in the music, go check it out!
SDM: Can you tell us about your days playing in Toxocara? How come you are no longer in this band? What about “Katafalk” and “Detonation”?
Mike: I left Toxocara and Detonation cause I didn’t have enough time for those bands cause of touring with God Dethroned and Prostitute Disfigurement. No bad stuff, we’re all still friends. Katafalk is a long time ago, I left in 2004 I just wanted something else, something bigger cause we were only playing in Holland and some shows in Germany or Belgium. Katafalk doesn’t exist anymore though.
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Чертовы цеэрушники, проворчал Ковальски.
Усталость, слабость, все еще хочу пить.
Я опять опустился на живот и ""стал смотреть вниз.
Есть еще кое-что, произнес он, по-прежнему не глядя на меня.
В меняющейся форме стал виден сверкающий глаз ""Кота; его конечности начали обретать форму.
По крайней мере, я не собирался возвращаться тем же путем.
Я не такой человек, который ценит деньги, не "Бараш идет по следу Детективные истории" думайте обо мне так плохо.
Я, наверно, не обратил бы внимания, если бы один из них не назвал фамилии Мариньи, которая показалась мне знакомой.
Я пока не готов к этому разговору.
В ту же секунду рядом с его ногой по броне щелкнула пуля, с такой силой, что у Бронзини "взять кредит для погашения другого" лязгнули зубы.
Короче, за ширмой стояли не мирные запасные ботинки, а самые что ни есть боевые, вкупе со своим обладателем.
Он уже готов был обезопасить себя дальше, объявив, что в его детстве таких и в помине не было, однако Флик спасла его от этой необходимости.
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