Well our early releases simply lacked a descent promotion and distribution at the time they were originally released. Since most of these releases were out of pressing or hard to find we got more and more people asking for our old material. Also because we gained quite some new fans after the release of Flesh_Power_Dominion and My Passion // Your Pain (both on Metal Blade Records). So eventually we decided to collect all our old material and release it as a 2CD, with brand new cover artwork and everything digitally remastered… all this for a fan friendly price of a regular disc. This way our new fans will be able to buy the complete Callenish Circle history for a nice price. The reason why Candlelight USA released the 2CD is simple, Metal Blade Records preferred to focus on our new album instead of releasing our older stuff. Their release schedule was also pretty much packed. Over here in Europe the 2CD was released by Karmageddon Media and they are working exclusively with Candlelight USA in the States. So that’s how Candlelight USA got into the picture and I must say I am very satisfied with their work so far. Manic Music Agency (the agency taking care of the promotion and marketing of Candlelight USA) seem to do a very serious job for the 2CD.

You are right… in the early days and especially on our very first recordings (Lovelorn-demo and our debut album Drift of Empathy) we played a more Doomy kind of Death Metal. You must know we started out in ’92 as a band playing covers of our favorite bands like Death, Pestilence, Bolt Thrower, Cemetary and (old) Paradise Lost. So our early material was also pretty much influenced and inspired by these bands.

Well that’s a tricky question since we never plan upfront how the new material is going to sound. We just start writing new songs and what you finally hear on the album is what came out in the end. Usually Ronster (guitarplayer) comes up with an initial idea (riff or melody) and from there we start working on a new song by putting these ideas into a cool song structure. Piece by piece we build up a framework and in the end we work out the details and add the vocals. That’s how we usually write a new song but for the new album we will also work the other way around with a couple of songs. That means we first write the lyrics and from there we start writing the music. Let’s see how that works… I am not sure because we never worked that way, so for us it’s also something completely new.

To be honest I am not sure about the differences between melodic death metal and melodeath. For me these sound like the same genres but hey… maybe I am not to well informed on this matter, hehehe. Anyway I don’t think Callenish Circle can be labeled as 100% melodic death metal or melodeath. Our sound is way more Thrash influenced compared to most other bands in the mentioned genres. At least that’s my personal opinion.

I am not sure on this one either, simply because I hardly listen to new bands these days. Lately I am more and more rediscovering records of old bands. Personally I get more excited listening to an old classic instead of listening to all these new bands that hardly add anything special to the already overpopulated scene. Maybe other people think the same of Callenish Circle but honestly spoken I don’t give a fuck what other people think. A fact is that Callenish Circle is already around since ’92 and we always played the music we liked ourselves most. We always did and we will keep doing that. Anyway besides [old classics] I am listening to a lot of ‘dance’ music as well these days. Trance, club & groove are my favorite styles. Something completely different than metal music but I really enjoy this kind of music. Didn’t expect that from a frontman of an extreme metal band, did you !?!? :o) As far as that tour goes I would like to tour with the following dream bill… Death, At The Gates & Bolt Thrower and as upcoming band I would pick Callenish Circle, of course. Unfortunately this tour will never be reality, but hey… it’s always nice to dream about it.

Well, you can globally divide the Dutch scene in 2 big camps… on one hand you have a shitload of brutal Death Metal bands. We never had a big Black Metal scene but since brutal Death Metal is popular again, all of a sudden tons of bands popped up playing this brutal style. On the other hand you have a maybe even bigger amount of Gothic Metal bands. After the huge success of bands like The Gathering & Within Temptation it seemed that everybody in Holland started to play Gothic Metal with female vocals and keyboards. Unfortunately most of these bands sound like crap, hardly talented (musically and individually) and just copying the established bands of the already overpopulated genre. A few exceptions confirm the rule of course. Hereby I want to note that The Gathering slowly drifted away from their early metal roots and nowadays there is hardly any metal in their music anymore. With Callenish Circle we are in between these opposite genres I guess, together with bands like God Dethroned (that tend more to the brutal side but still being melodic) and Detonation, who have a more melodic, typical Gothenburg approach. That’s basically all there is to tell about the Dutch scene I guess.

110% true but the last couple of years there has been a little bit too much tolerance in this country. As a result of this a minor group of (mostly) foreign people think they can do whatever they want without following our laws and without integrating into the Dutch society. Some years ago people would immediately have called you a racist if you only mentioned the fact that foreign people need to integrate into the Dutch society and have to respect the Dutch laws and values. Luckily nowadays the people’s eyes are slowly opening and see that things are getting completely out of hand with some foreign groups. Especially the young Moroccans are causing a lot of trouble in the big cities. Hopefully it’s not too late to get things under control again cause it would be a shame if this beautiful country would get fucked up by a minor group that fucks up for the rest. Furthermore it’s really a great country to live in… at least in the area where I live, honestly can’t imagine living somewhere else.

Callanish Circle is a Stonehenge-like circle, situated in the north west of Scotland on the little island Lewis. Ages ago a circle with huge stones was found there and the people back then never could have managed to get these stones in that particular circle. So a myth arose that once a year ghosts appeared at Callanish Circle. When we decided to pick this name for our band we changed the original name Callanish Circle into Callenish Circle so we would always carry a unique band name.

Currently we are very busy writing material for our upcoming (and meanwhile 5th) studio album. So far things are going according to schedule. We have written the complete basics of 5 new tracks and we have plenty of cool material & ideas left for the rest of the album. It’s just a matter of putting the right ideas into a cool song structure and work out the details. The recordings are scheduled from halfway May ‘till the end of June. Then in the first week of July we will head to Denmark where we will mix the album with Tue Madsen (a.o. The Haunted, Illdisposed & Mnemic) at Antfarm Studios. We aim for a November 2005 release worldwide (on Metal Blade Records again). The new material… well… just imagine the best of what we did on both MB albums, add some really cool groovy parts and combine this already deadly cocktail with some hightech wacky soundscapes, delivered by Gail Liebling (mastermind behind Gail of God). I think a lot of people will be amazed when they finally hear our new album. After the release of the new album we will definitely start touring intensively again and also play some cool summer festivals. Hopefully we will make it to the States this time but as you probably know it all depends on the record sales of our new album. So all you Thrashing maniacs out there… make sure you get hold of a copy of our upcoming album and we will make sure to ravage the States as soon as possible.

Thanx for the support throughout the years and keep on Thrashing in a Dead world! In the meantime keep an eye on our official website : www.callenish-circle.com Cheerz, Pat.