Earlier this year at the Eurosonic festival, I came across Traversus: a young Dutch band playing a surprisingly effective blend of dense progressive metal sections and catchy melodies that will appeal to a more pop/rock-oriented audience. Recently they released their excellent debut EP ‘The Only Way Is Through’. In the wake of that release, I sat down with singer/guitarist Madelief de Groot, guitarist Joey Wessels, bassist Mika Linde and drummer Liam de Groot.

Despite their ages ranging from 18 to 23, Traversus has a surprisingly accomplished sound, possibly a result of them being able to hone their chops in the relatively remote town of Emmen for the last five years. “Spending the entire covid period with just the four of us in a rehearsal room without anyone having any opinions about it automatically made our sound something highly personal”, Madelief smiles.

“I think we truly found our sound around September or October of last year”, Joey states. “That’s when we had just finished ‘The Unattained’, the last song on ‘The Only Way Is Through’. Not long before that, we finished ‘Orange Skyline’ and ‘The Weight’. Those songs go together very well stylistically, in our opinion. And that is the direction we wanted to take from then on.”

“This material is a lot more progressive than our older material”, Mika adds. “The sounds coming from our instruments and the way we sound together as a band  has developed as well. We have spent a lot of time figuring out how to sound well together. Things like that really helped us develop a sound of our own.”

“I wouldn’t want to say that we sound more mature now, because that makes it sound like we have already arrived where we need to be”, Madelief says. “And that is never really the case, I think. But we have matured since writing our older songs. In the beginning, we often looked at the bands we liked and how we could imitate their sound in a way.

After a while, we reached a point where we thought: this collaboration works well. That is when you start to make far more conscious choices. And it also helps you dare to do more things you wouldn’t do otherwise and develop your own sound rather than trying to be someone else.”

Tools

The band also points to Hit The North, the Eurosonic-associated talent development program for bands from the northeast of the Netherlands, as an important factor in their recent development. As part of this program, Traversus worked on their sound and presentation for a year with the help of band coach Ivo Severijns, former bassist for Herman Brood’s Wild Romance, Powerplay and Kane, culminating in the Eurosonic performance that blew me away.

“We are lucky that our region is fairly serious about talent development”, Madelief says. “We have tried every project and every conversation with a professional from the music industry we could get. That is what got us selected for Hit The North. That program lasts a year. And in that year, we have learned a lot. We’ve a professional coming to our rehearsal room, nit-picking and perfecting little details that had not even crossed our minds yet.”

“I think we made progress musically through our collaboration with Ivo”, Mika nods. “He really helped us improve the songwriting process and he drilled us to get tighter. For example, he asked us to play a chorus twenty times and it got tighter every time we played it. He has a great open mind and gave us some good tools to help us build our own path from now on. It might have been an advantage for me that he is a bassist. I’m not a power hitter by nature, quite the opposite actually, but he did teach me how to maximize the impact of the notes by hitting them in a different way. Those tips have been very useful.”

“And he helped us professionalize”, Liam adds. “Especially on the business side of things. Of course we love making the music that we make, but there is a necessity to show yourself on social media and to know how things are done regarding copyright collecting agencies. He really helped us find our way in that world.”

Guide

Another thing Severijns helped them with is getting acquainted with producer Joost van den Broek, who recorded, mixed and produced ‘The Only Way Is Through’ at the prestigious Sandlane Recording Facilities. Van den Broek is best known for his bombastic metal productions for the likes of Epica, Stream Of Passion, Ayreon and Powerwolf, but equally adept at more straightforward productions, such as Traversus’ EP.

“Ivo knows Joost and thought he would be a good fit for what we are doing”, Madelief explains. “He also said Joost is really good at what he does and that showed, because it was a fantastic collaboration. He guided us very well with the backing vocals. I had ideas for backing vocals, but Joost knew how to translate those ideas in a way that sounded good on the recording.”

“He gave us some very useful advice”, Joey agrees. “Liam had a drum fill which Joost recommended to play a little differently and in my case, he suggested a few overdubs that generally work well in similar places in other songs. Little extra touches that made the arrangements a bit better.”

“Sandlane is a big studio with a number of movable panels”, Liam says. “So I didn’t have to hold myself back while drumming. Joost even said that to me: just put all your passion into it, because you don’t want to end up with a half-baked drum sound that has no power whatsoever. Ivo also frequently said that in the period leading up to the recordings. So that is exactly what I went for.”

Challenge

The fact that the compositions for ‘The Only Way Is Through’ did not need a lot of tampering speaks volumes about the songwriting skills of the young band. “The skeleton of a song is largely written by me”, Joey explains. “Whenever I write the parts, I will try to imagine a scenario in which we sound powerful together by using three instruments that all play something else.”

Given the busy nature of some of the sections, it is remarkable that the parts never clash. “Most clashes happen when I’m still writing or playing the song on my own”, Joey assures us. “Those are the moments I realize I need to change something. But that’s the beauty of writing songs in Guitar Pro; quickly altering a few wrong notes never takes more than a few seconds.

Since we have two guitarists, I usually try to make sure we generally don’t play the same thing simultaneously, to have a broader soundscape harmonically. But sometimes there are riffs we need to double. If Madelief has to sing over such a riff, I will try to come up with a version that has slightly fewer notes. Or a version that highlights the most important notes. I’ll take care of the faster notes that flesh out the riffs. That usually fixes any potential issues.”

“Whenever Joey sends in a new song, I’ll listen to it about ten times, then I’ll play it on repeat in Guitar Pro at 25 percent speed”, Madelief explains. “Sometimes it doesn’t work and then I’ll go to Joey and cry. However, Joey has gotten a better understanding of the fact that I’m not as good a guitarist as he is. And that I have to sing at the same time. He considers that when writing the parts, which usually works very well.

I’ll be honest: everything Joey writes for me is a challenge. But that makes it fun as well. I remember very well that I couldn’t sing and play guitar simultaneously in the beginning. That frustrated me to no end. But at a certain point, it just clicked. The same thing happened with our live shows, which we wanted to sound roughly like the recordings. When we just started working on that, Mika and Joey had to put in quite a bit of effort to make the backing vocals work. But even that is improving.”

Float

The lyrics and vocal melodies are all Madelief’s work. “I’m not as schooled as Joey in music theory”, she admits. “So I tend to listen what he writes and plays. Then I try to come up with something that sort of floats over the music. ‘The Weight’ would be an exception. The lyrics and melody that ended up being the chorus were already written before I heard the song.

I have the feeling that Joey and I understand each other very well when it comes to such things. Joey has also gotten much better at leaving space for the vocals through the years. He works on that very consciously. That is a very pleasant situation for me. Also, it makes a big difference that Joey’s music already carries a lot of emotion. Because of that, I will usually feel inspired by something he has written, since it stirs up certain feelings in me or it enhances feelings I already have.

My mental health is very fragile, so that is a theme that is fairly prominent in our lyrics. And there are simply a lot of things in the world I have an opinion about and about which I think: this needs to change. But it might be a nice challenge for myself to write something about a completely different subject.”

Traction

Traversus’ home town of Emmen and the province of Drenthe the town is located in are relatively remote within the Dutch music landscape. “The music we play is quite a niche style of music”, Mika says. “And here in Drenthe, there aren’t quite as many options as in a bigger city or in other parts of the country. But at the moment, we are working hard on getting a bit more traction in other parts of the country. Or Germany, for example, where we recently played our first show. The scene there does seem to suit us a little better.”

“On the one hand, it sucks that there aren’t many opportunities for musicians in Drenthe”, Madelief says. “And I don’t want to trivialize the work of anyone who tries to remedy that situation, but the fact is that there are not a lot of places to go. On the other hand, Germany or a city like Groningen is not that far away.

We have discussed things like that at some point. People have told us there are many places to play metal in the west of the Netherlands and around Tilburg. We may be able to find an audience there, but there is also more competition. There is more to choose from, so defending your spot requires much more effort.”

And outside of the rock and metal scene, given the fact that Traversus’ melodies can be quite poppy? “When Ivo said our choruses are quite poppy, I thought that was a bit of a dangerous term”, Madelief admits. “We play hard rock and metal, it’s progressive, so we don’t necessarily want to hear something we do is poppy. Ultimately, we did find out that combination of extremes might be a strength of ours.”

“We never really think about that either”, Joey adds. “It just happens. We never really made any conscious stylistic decisions. It just came together this way, because we all have different musical preferences.”

Fruitful

‘The Only Way Through’ has just been released, but the band already has one eye on the future. “I’m always writing a lot of music”, says Joey. “Simply because I like creating something musically. Sometimes I send those ideas to the others and we’ll work on them during rehearsals, sometimes I don’t. But the ideas are always flowing for me. Sure, sometimes I suffer from writer’s block and I only write terrible things. But in general, I can never wait to share my ideas with the others.”

“Every time Joey has a fruitful period when it comes to writing songs, there will be various e-mails with multiple Guitar Pro files every week”, Madelief smiles. “At the moment, we haven’t rehearsed in a while, because we were very focused on the release of the EP and before that was the summer holiday period, but there are about four new songs we are working on right now.”

“We just finished two new songs”, Joey emphasizes. “And I love both of them. One of them is actually my favorite song we have done so far. It’s a pity that one didn’t make the record. But at least we’ll have something to look forward to for the next record.”

‘The Only Way Is Through’ is out now. You can listen to the EP on Spotify right here: