‘Dark Believer’ finds Dutch heavy metal veterans Martyr at an impressive peak, forty years after the release of their debut album ‘For the Universe’. Founding guitarist Rick Bouwman gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the band, the influence that Japanese metal had on Martyr’s music, and the scene the band had to deal with in its early years.

“We thought we had delivered a really good album with ‘Planet Metalhead’ (2022), which also got a us a lot of good reviews, reactions, and sales internationally”, Bouwman says. “The vinyl and the cd’s were sold out quite quickly. Fortunately, we were able to reissue it on vinyl within a year with our new label, so that we could at least get another product out.

For a follow-up, we were looking for something that was at least as good, and preferably even better. And that, of course, is a challenge, and it is one we have imposed upon ourselves. There is a lot of diversity on the album. There are some very riff-oriented songs on it, there are songs like ‘Dark Believer’ in which the melodic guitars are prominent, and epic stuff like ‘Cemetery Symphony’, which goes in kind of like a Queensrÿche-ish direction.

Rop (van Haren, singer) is very diverse in his vocal work too, which is crucial in bringing a lot of diversity to the album. From the heavy, thrashy stuff to the more Queensrÿche-esque material, he can handle it all. I’m very happy with the way it came out.”

A Fun Challenge

Bouwman emphasizes Van Haren’s importance in the songwriting process. “Rop has a lot of vocal ideas in his mind already”, he explains. “Vocal melodies, song structures, that sort of stuff. Based on that, Rop and I tend to work out a lot of things, right down to the drums in EZdrummer. Of course, there is input from the others. Vinnie (Wassink, bassist) usually comes up with his own bass parts, while Justin (Schut, guitarist) and I come up with riffs as well.

A lot of it comes from Rop’s brain, though. He comes up with a melody, and I will translate that to something that works for the guitars. Based on that, we will look for other ideas; maybe Justin or I had come up with something that would be a cool opening riff or something like that. The other guys contributing fresh ideas is fun, but it’s also a challenge: do their ideas fit the image Rop and I have for the song? But honestly: it clicked really well for this record, and I think you can hear that.

When we have finished an album, and start playing live, we usually don’t reserve any time for new songwriting. That usually happens within periods when we deliberately decide to play fewer shows in order to focus completely on songwriting and recording. That’s also why there is often lot of time between our album releases.

Except for this time. This time, things went really quickly. ‘Planet Metalhead’ only came out in 2022, so for us, it’s nearly the fastest we have ever worked. We don’t usually pile up ideas with the idea of using them for a next record. It all happens when we decide to start working on new material. So we were truly full of creativity.”

Short Words and Syllables

One of the reasons why Martyr originally stood out in the Dutch heavy metal scene of the eighties was because they were audibly influenced by more than just the new wave of British heavy metal. “When we started out, the new wave of British heavy metal wasn’t necessarily our biggest source of inspiration”, Bouwman nods. “Of course, the influence was there; when I saw Iron Maiden for the first time, I was completely blown away, and I listened to a lot of new wave of British heavy metal bands. Raven and Jaguar especially.

But at the time, I also listened to a lot of US metal and Japanese metal. Especially X-Ray, Bow Wow, Loudness, Anthem, and Earthshaker at the time. I loved those bands. And while I loved the guitar work, of course, the vocals appealed to me as well. Even though I didn’t understand a word they were singing, I really enjoyed the melodies, and so did Rop. We listened to that so much, that Rop and I started writing our songs that way, or the vocals at least.

The way Japanese singers sang their songs, it sounds like really short words or syllables, and we started writing our vocal melodies like that as well, and add the lyrics later. Or at least we tried to do it like that. That’s where the early Martyr material primarily came from. The fact that we had songs like ‘Speed of Samurai’ solely came from the fact that we loved Japanese metal bands.

That’s still a classic in our set. I don’t know what it is with that riff, but a lot of guitarists who want to play that riff don’t realize how you need to play it. Very strange. I tried to make a YouTube video explaining how to play it some time ago, but I haven’t often heard it in a way that makes me go: yes, that’s it!

It has been out of our set for a while because our focus was on ‘Planet Metalhead’, but we are planning to put it back into the set. Justin hasn’t actually played it yet, so I’m very curious to hear how he will pick up ‘Speed of Samurai’.”

A Signature Appearance

Bouwman’s preference for Japanese metal is also reflected in his choice of guitars. “I usually record our stuff with the guitars that I have the most feeling with at that particular point in time”, he says. “Sometimes that varies per song, but for this album, I recorded nearly everything with only one guitar. Recently, I had Rutger van Noordenburg, who used to play with Pestilence, bring me an ESP Crying Star Rebel from Japan.

That one sounded really good. Quite heavy, but you can hear every string you hit. However, I recorded most of the album with my ESP Edwards Anchang Star. The black Star shape model, from Sex Machineguns’ guitarist. ‘The Weight of Words’ is a bit slower, it kind of has a Black Sabbath-esque vibe, and I thought the Crying Star Rebel was a great fit for that. For the other songs, and all the solos, the Anchang Star worked a little better.”

Yet, the guitar Bouwman is most commonly associated with is the Gibson Flying V. “I never actually recorded any album tracks with that”, he admits. “But it is my primary live guitar. It’s a very comfortable guitar. And it has become a bit of my signature appearance on stage; I have been playing white Flying V’s since the early eighties. It looks cool and screams metal. That is something that matters to me as well.

But I never recorded with it, because it’s not that convenient when I’m sitting down. It takes away some of my flexibility when recording sitting down, also when it comes to turning the recordings on and off. That works better when a guitar can rest on my legs comfortably. After all, comfort is very important if you want the results to be optimal.”

An Eighties Vibe with Today’s Sound

That means that all the guitars are recorded at home. “At home, I work with amplifier modeling a lot”, Bouwman explains. “So I take a VST that I think sounds nice, usually a Gus G VST or something like that, for the rhythm guitar sounds and lead guitar sounds, to help me create, think of parts, and record them. After that, I send the clean signal to the studio to have it re-amped.

For this album, we used a Mesa Boogie for me and an Engl for Justin. That’s basically our live set-up. Live, I play a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier, and Justin Plays an Engl Fireball. They blend together very well. It also works well in the rehearsal room, because they are both real metal amps, but with totally different sounds.

That is something I always valued, and we always did that with Martyr: to have two guitarists that are quite different in terms of sound, playing technique and dynamics. I think you can hear that on our records, that both guitarists do different things. Against each other, or the same thing in a different key or a harmony, but that you can actually hear the sound being broadened. That will always give us a bit of an eighties vibe, I think.

That is also why it’s important to me that we both record rhythm guitar parts. My right hand technique is slightly different than Justin’s, and that broadens the sound. It wouldn’t sound as dynamic if I had recorded both rhythm guitar tracks. We’re from the eighties, and we still refer to that – especially in the song structures, the guitar work, and the twin melodies – but we don’t want to get stuck in the eighties sonically.

Our playing has developed, and our equipment has developed. We can do much more than when we recorded eight-track demos as teenagers. That is something we want to make good use of, so that we do have that eighties vibe, but with today’s sound.”

Hours Don’t Translate to Euros

“My solos aren’t really composed, but I do come up with things before properly recording them. That’s another advantage of recording stuff at home: I can start by improvising in the comfort of my own home, and it doesn’t really matter how long things take, as my hours don’t translate to euros here. It just takes time, and I have that time, and I truly want to spend that on creating something good.

Also, whenever I have the inspiration, I can just sit down and record something. If it’s nothing, I can throw it away. And if I find something I like, I save a part of it and build from there. When it comes to that, I don’t really impose any limitations upon myself. I can do whatever I want.

When it comes to dividing the solos, it’s a matter of making choices. If I have an idea somewhere, I will do it, but if we want a fast shred solo, Justin’s really good at that. How we want to build up the structure of a solo section is also something we put a lot of thought into, so that it actually contributes to a song.

Sometimes, you’ll hear elements of Rop’s vocal melody in our solos. That’s the kind of memorability that I like most. It can be fast, but it does have to tell a story, preferably one that builds upon the storyline of the song itself. Guitarists who can do that are generally my favorite guitarist. People like Akira Takasaki, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, and Paul Gilbert. People who can shred at warp speed, but do more than just that.”

Much More of a Metal City

The fact that Martyr managed to find its audience in the eighties is quite the feat, as their home town of Utrecht did not have much of a scene. “The scene Utrecht was never all that big”, Bouwman nods. “There weren’t really any metal bars either. There were some bars that sometimes played rock and metal, and some youth centers that would play half an hour of metal every now and then, but that doesn’t exactly equate to a big scene.

We were a band, and there were some other bands in Utrecht, but not a lot of them. Especially if you compare it to the south of the country, to a place like Eindhoven or something. I tend to see Eindhoven as much more of a metal and rock city than Utrecht ever was. Also when it comes to the number of metalheads. We used to go to concerts in Amsterdam and Zwolle with a bunch of metalheads from Utrecht, and that was a fantastic bunch, but there weren’t more than twenty or thirty of us.

Also, I have to admit that in the early days of Martyr, right up until 1986 or 1987, we always played in Noord-Holland, Noord-Brabant, and the east of the country, but almost never in Utrecht, despite being from there. I do think something has changed in the meantime. There still aren’t a lot of metal clubs or bars, but at least there is something like dB’s, which plays an important role in bringing heavier bands to Utrecht.

Some things are happening in larger venues like the Tivoli, where bigger bands will come to play. There used to be a Tivoli location at the Oudegracht which hosted a lot of cool concerts that drew more metalheads to Utrecht. But still, if you ask me: which bands from Utrecht are the stand-out bands? I wouldn’t know off the top of my head, even though I’m from Utrecht, and I’ve lived there my entire life.”

Updating the Set

Now that Martyr is gearing up to tour, putting together a setlist gets progressively harder as they release more quality material. “We have just been discussing that”, Bouwman says. “We will have our release show on the 5^th of September at P60 in Amstelveen at Heavy Metal Maniacs Fest as the headliner on Friday, and we’re really not sure which songs to play yet.

On our release party for ‘Planet Metalhead’, we got away with playing the entire album. But the practical issue is: when you write new songs, record them, then move on to the next song, you might end up unsure how to even play what you had done before. We recently played ‘Dark Believer’ at Into the Grave, and we really had to sit down to figure out how to play that one: shit, did I think of that? Haha!

So for the 5^th of September, we’re looking at which songs we want to play. And what’s perhaps even more difficult: which songs to we take out? You can’t just keep adding stuff, or you’ll end up playing for five hours. But you could also end up suggesting taking a song out that someone else really likes to play.

On the other hand, I’m extremely happy we are able to update the set with new material. We played five ‘Planet Metalhead’ songs in our old set, and that album isn’t even that old yet. But I like a breath of fresh air blowing through our set. And it’s another challenge, because we raised the bar for ourselves.

Plus, we keep gaining new fans. Even though we’re an old band, there are always youngsters our material appeals to. Maybe it’s the fact that these new albums have a somewhat more modern coat of paint. I like the mix of young and old that we see in our audience when we play live.”