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SIEGE OF POWER – Bleeding For The Cause
Anthony Morgan
August 2018


Siege Of Power (l-r): Paul Baayens, Theo van Eekelen, Chris Reifert and Bob Bagchus


International death metal outfit Siege Of Power formed in 2013 under the provisional moniker First Class Elite, the brainchild of then Asphyx bandmates Paul Baayens and Bob Bagchus, who respectively handle guitars and drums. Paul’s additional death metal outlet at that time was Hail Of Bullets, their bassist Theo van Eekelen being recruited to the fold. The trio still remain five years later, although the vocal position has changed since that time.

“Paul and me wanted to do some kind of project in the Discharge, Amebix and S.O.D. kind of style, so we just jammed some songs,” Bob Bagchus, drummer for Siege Of Power. “Yeah, that’s how we started. We did a split album with Violation Wound, which is another band of Chris Reifert’s. That came out on Horror Death Gore Productions, and that was five tracks. Then the following year, we recorded other tracks. Last year, we recorded seven more, so we had like 20 tracks.

“It all started by just jamming in the studio. We didn’t rehearse, or whatever. We just booked some studios. We started recording some short, thrashy songs, and that’s about it. We don’t have to be the next big thing, or whatever. We did it just for our own fun. When we started recording in the studio, the jam sessions, we didn’t have a label or a singer. Our old singer left (Hans van den Brenk), so there was just the two of us. Later on, we asked Chris Reifert (Autopsy) – October last year, I think it was – if he wanted to sing on our songs. That’s pretty much it.”

Hans van den Brenk fronted the predecessor to Siege Of Power, namely First Class Elite. “Hans was a friend of ours, a roadie for Asphyx,” the sticksman tells. “He got into a nasty divorce though, so he had to quit the band. We were called First Class Elite, and he came up with that name. When he had to leave the band, we said ‘Okay. Let’s try to find another band name.’ As he came up with it, it was his name anyway, so we said ‘Okay. We’re not going to use it.’ We found another band name.”

The common thread within the Siege Of Power fold happens to be friendship. “Me and Paul have been friends since he started in Asphyx in 2007, and Theo is also a friend of ours,” Bob cites. “We just needed a singer, so we were like ‘Let’s ask Chris.’ Chris is from the United States of course, but I’ve known Chris for more than 30 years now; I’ve known Chris since 1987 when the first Autopsy demo came out. He had just started Autopsy, and I had just started Asphyx. I used to write and trade tapes with Chris in those days, so yeah, it was easy to ask him.

“We love his voice, and we knew that he had a hardcore, crossover band in Violation Wound. He had Abscess too, which had lots of crossover stuff in it as well. We thought that he was the perfect guy for the job, and we were right. He is. I asked him if he could do some vocals for a project we had, and he said ‘Yeah. Send over some songs.’ Then he called me. He said ‘I love those songs.’ That’s why we did the whole album.”

Siege Of Power borrows its name from a Napalm Death composition, taken from July 1987 debut Scum. “When we were talking about how we had to find another band name, at that time, when we were emailing each other, I was playing Scum on my record player – on my little turntable,” the rhythmist discloses. “Then I thought ‘Okay.’ I was listening to the song ‘Siege Of Power’. I thought that that was a pretty cool band name, and said ‘What do you guys think?’ They were all like ‘Yeah, that suits the music. Let’s go for it,’ so it was done there and then.”


Bob Bagchus

A myriad of styles comprise Siege Of Power’s material. “That’s a bit difficult,” Bob muses. “It has some death metal in it of course because we all have death metal backgrounds, but it also has some punk in it too, some crust, some doom – some thrash metal as well. I think it’s a mixture of S.O.D., Carnivore, Discharge, Amebix, some Exploited too. We just put it in a blender, and then you have Siege Of Power. It’s 70% D-beat. Metal crossover.”

Siege Of Power is slightly different than the majority of other entities its members belong or have belonged to, the other entities largely conventional death metal propositions. “They are, yeah, of course, but that’s why we did Siege Of Power,” the musician reasons. “It was just for fun, doing something else than we normally do in our bands or projects, which are death metal of course. We are also fans of the bands I just mentioned, in the first place, like Discharge and S.O.D. That’s why we’re called Siege Of Power. We’re mostly influenced by S.O.D. – Speak English Or Die (August 1985), that album. There’s no use making a typical death metal album, because we are always in death metal bands. We just wanted to do a kind of crossover. Our other bands are 100% death and doom metal. Siege Of Power has two doom tracks in it, but that’s about it. I think this sounds completely different than all of our other projects, and other bands.”

The inclusion of Autopsy mainman Chris Reifert did not affect the material per se, the music having been authored prior to his arrival. “Paul had already done the music,” Bob confirms. “We just sent all 20 of the tracks over to Chris, and then he did his own thing. On ‘Warning Blast’ and ‘Mushroom Cloud Altar’, he really sings the growling death metal kind of stuff, because of the songs. With the more uptempo, fast songs, he sang a little bit different. He really adjusted great to each song, and that really adds to it, I think.”

To fully flesh tracks, studio time was booked. “Paul wrote the riffs and he called me, like ‘Okay, I have plenty of riffs again. Shall we book a studio?’,” the skin-beater divulges. “He sent the riffs by email, for me to check them out. Then we booked a studio, and just went into the studio. We started jamming there, and while we were doing that, a guy was recording the jam session. That’s pretty much what this album is; it’s a jam session at some studios, and then we came up with this. Paul sent us some riffs, like ‘Okay, this riff is repeated four times, and then this riff two times, and then we repeat riff one four times, and then riff two two times, and then another riff six times, and that’s it.’ We said to the engineer ‘Start recording.’ We’d start jamming, and see what it would sound like in the end. That was pretty much it.”

Jamming to see what material emerges is arguably a more old school approach nowadays. “With our other bands, we rehearsed a lot, and then we went into the studio,” Bob observes. “We were totally focused on the songs, we had a record label, and people had certain expectations. With Siege Of Power though, we didn’t have a record label. We just went into the studio, and did our own thing. We’d just jam, and we had fun. We had beers and we did some music we liked, with no stress or expectations or any of that stuff. We’d just have fun in the studio, and that was it. We got a record deal with it.”

No leftover tracks exists. “I think there was one leftover track, which was ‘Mushroom Cloud Altar, Pt. 2’,” the performer references. “That’s played in a slower version, which is more mid-tempo, but we said ‘Just put it on the album.’ 20 tracks were enough for us.”

A variety of topics are covered on Warning Blast. “There’s some gore on it, like on ‘The Cold Room’,” Bob lists. “There’s some mental stuff on it, like ‘Torture Lab’ where you go more and more insane and then you probably lose it. There’s political stuff on it as well, and all kinds of stuff. All kinds of daily stuff you experience when you walk through life, like things which are bothering us, like political stuff. Yeah, all kinds of things.”

Recording sessions for Warning Blast occurred at a number of locations. “The drums were recorded here in our area, the guide guitars as well,” the drummer shares. “The rest of the guitars and the bass were done at Paul’s own studio. When I look at the hours, I think the drums were done in maybe five or six hours or so in total, and then Paul recorded the guitars in his own studio. Theo did the bass there too, and Chris recorded his vocals in the United States, at Earhammer Studios in Oakland. Then we got the vocals back from Chris, and we sent them all to our friend, who is a mixer – Dennis Israel from Germany. He has a studio for mixing and mastering called Clintworks, and used to do some sound things for Asphyx too. He became a friend. They all blended a little bit together, so we we said ‘Can you make a nice mix for a few bucks?’ He said ‘Yeah. Why not?’ He did. It didn’t cost that much, because we didn’t have any money. That’s basically how the whole album was recorded and mixed.”

The sessions in question were a quick affair. “It was all done quickly, and not in a rush,” Bob reckons. “We didn’t really rehearse, and there wasn’t a lot of preparation. I don’t think that there was any preparation at all. We just went into the studio, jammed some songs, and they were recorded. The last session was in 2017; we did seven songs in two hours, and then we went home again. The guy from the studio was like ‘What the fuck are you guys doing? I didn’t make any money.’ I think he made like 70 bucks that afternoon, so we did it really quickly, but just for fun. Not to be serious; not to be the next big thing or anything, but just for ourselves.”

The sticksman’s drum contributions were “nothing special at all,” he submits. “It’s straightforward D-beat drumming with some doom elements, like I’ve been doing for more than 30 years already. This time it’s even more simple, but I like it. That’s what I like. I like to listen to simple, straightforward music myself, not technical or whatever. Last night, I listened to Extreme Noise Terror from the UK. I actually really love that. That’s straightforward stuff, and that’s how my drumming is; just going with the song and being supportive of the song, and not standing out in any way or whatever. It’s just a simple D-beat, and that does it for me. That’s what I like.”

Cover artwork duties were handled by Roberto Toderico, who resides in Naples, Italy. “It’s something different than he usually does,” Bob critiques. “Our album is called Warning Blast. The song itself is about a nuclear blast and what’s left of it, so we just told the cover artist ‘Can you make a landscape which is totally abandoned, where there’s complete loss of all life? Just the grey, depressive landscape. That’s all we need.’ He did it. I think it fits really good; it fits the album great.”

To promote Warning Blast, studio-based performance videos for the tracks ‘The Cold Room’ and ‘Mushroom Cloud Altar’ were released. “They were both recorded in our rehearsal room,” the rhythmist informs. “We did it in one afternoon, also with a friend of ours (Carl Assault). He does other videos. He has a camera and stuff, so we asked him if he could do songs and that we could do it Saturday. He said ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll come over.’ We did it at our rehearsal room, and Chris did his part in a studio in Oakland where he lives, that area, and then our friend kind of blended it all together. Both videos look quite the same, because they were both recorded in the same afternoon in our rehearsal space. We just like the music; we don’t like to do anything too special or whatever, but more straightforward stuff. This is what you get, and yeah, that’s it.”

A second full-length from Siege Of Power is likely. “We signed a deal with Metal Blade for three albums, and that’s pretty standard,” Bob affirms. “There will be a second record. Not yet, but maybe in two years when we feel like it; when we are saying ‘Fuck it. Let’s go to the studio again, and do this again’. I think it’s 100% sure that there will be a second record. We do Siege Of Power for ourselves; it’s not for fans or people out there to please them. We just do this project to please ourselves; if we feel like it’s time to please ourselves again, then we will make a second album.”

The prospect of Siege Of Power embarking on a fully fledged tour is unlikely. “We’ve gotten some offers, a lot of offers already, but it’s a little bit difficult,” the musician explains. “The three of us – Paul, Theo and me – are based in Holland, but Chris is living on the west coast of the United States. It will be difficult to get him over here for just one or two shows. We’ve already talked about it, about when we get a cool offer or maybe two cool offers and we say ‘Okay, that’s worth doing.’ Then we might do some shows, but we are not going to do any touring or whatever. We’ve done that with our bands in the past – with Autopsy, with Asphyx – so that’s out of the question, but what we can do is maybe one or two shows, like at a festival or an indoor gig or whatever. That’s a possibility.”

Outside of Siege Of Power, Bob steps behind the drumkit for several other assortments. “Myself, I have Infidel Reich,” he notes. “I’m playing drums in that, and that’s with Vincent Crowley, formerly with the American black metal band Acheron. I also have a doom metal band; it’s doom / death metal, fairly slow stuff, like Winter, Celtic Frost, old Paradise Lost and Cathedral. That’s called Minotaur Head, and I’m doing that with Rogga Johansson from Sweden (Ribspreader guitarist, among others).”


Siege Of Power (l-r): Theo van Eekelen, Chris Reifert, Bob Bagchus and Paul
Baayens

From 2013 through to 2018, the entertainer had parted ways with Asphyx, Grand Supreme Blood Court, and Soulburn, lending credence to the notion that he was perhaps slowing down. “I wanted to slow down,” he admits. “That’s why I quit Asphyx at the end of 2013; Asphyx was becoming a little bit too big for me, and for my family life and my work and stuff. Yeah though, slowing down. The bands I’m involved in now like Siege Of Power, Minotaur Head, Infidel Reich are pretty much not touring bands, and they’re not full-time. It’s basically more studio stuff. We might do some shows with Siege Of Power, and we might do some shows with Infidel Reich and Minotaur Head. That’s maybe only one or two shows a year and that’s it though, so then I have a lot of time to focus on the studio work.”

Touring was not a factor in Bob’s 2018 exit from Soulburn. “Soulburn didn’t play live that much,” he mentions. “We have played live a lot in the past, but this year we only had two gigs. Yes and no, though. The reason I split with Soulburn was because I kind of lost the feel of doing it. I had other bands like Siege Of Power, Infidel Reich, and Minotaur Head, and I felt more connected with those bands lately than with Soulburn. If I cannot be 100% into a band, when I’m not too sure any more and I cannot put my heart and soul into it, then I might as well quit, because then I’m just fooling myself.”

Remaining within the Soulburn camp would not have been fair on the drummer, or Soulburn’s members. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I’m fooling myself, and I’m fooling the band. I had been thinking about it for half a year already, that maybe I should quit. There was a gig coming up, and I was like ‘I don’t know.’ My head was with another band, another project which I enjoy more. I’d rather stay true to myself and to the guys, and be honest. I said ‘My heart is not in it any more. Please find a replacement.’ That was pretty much it. It was fairly simple.”

Warning Blast will be released on September 7th, 2018 via Metal Blade Records.

Interview published in August 2018. All promotional band photographs by Martijn Peters.

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