The Dutch Rudders, when hearing the band name one instantly imagines wooden clogs, tulips and something with a rudder, whatever that might be. But truth is sometimes stranger than fiction some scientist punk once said. So we at RMP dove in feet first to find out all about the connection between Dutch Rudders, Flemish guys and the French language. Let's see...
- Hello, congratulations with your latest release, “On Verra”. It has been released some weeks ago now. How has the response been?
The response has been pretty good. People seem to like the new album a lot, which is great! We worked really hard on it and we had some pretty stressful moments while writing the songs. We’re very pleased with the way everything came together in the end.
- It was released as a tape on Lost Youth Records and a CD, LP version on Monster Zero. How did these deals come up?
We had the new record ready so we started talking to a lot of people in Europe. We knew Kevin from Monster Zero a bit because he’s a famous rock star with his band The Apers and we knew he liked some of our songs. Apparently he liked them a lot and helped us out in a fantastic way. It’s the first time we release something on vinyl and we’re honoured that we can do it together with him. For Lost Youth Records, it was quite simple, Karel Geuens is a fantastic dude who likes us and he presented us to the rest of Lost Youth and they liked it.
- The band name ‘The Dutch Rudders’ must have caused some laughs along your career. Could you go into more detail about the choice for that name?
It comes from the movie ‘Zack And Miri Make A Porno’. It’s probably the most depressing position in the sexual history. We thought it was funny when we were 17, we still do in fact.
- You recently made a video for the new track “I Was A Teenage Antichrist”. It features 80's aerobic dancers; any athletic ambitions for the band?
In fact we are all very athletic. But in the first place, we thought it was funny to see those athletes jump and dance to the beat of one our darkest and most hardcore songs.
- The band seems to like travelling back in time, from 80's aerobic to That 70's Show references with the song #Redforman. What's the connection here?
This song is about not feeling okay in whatever situation you get. You get up every day with the feeling that today’s a new day, let’s make the best of it. But it gets tiring knowing that by the end of the day, you’re still not okay. And in some ways that made us think of Red Forman. No matter what happens, he always seems an old and grumpy man who wants to stick his foot up your ass.
- Your Facebook band page states ‘Tormented punx’. How tormented is the band and its music according to you?
We thought it sounded cool. Tormented is a beautiful word even though its meaning is less beautiful. But besides the aesthetic side, most of our songs are written with memories of certain events in our head that still haunt us. Seeing someone you love pass away, breaking up, hurting people, those are mostly our main topics we write about. They’re not very happy themes but we can find comfort in writing down what we feel. In the song “I Was A Teenage Antichrist” we sing, “I don’t know why I’m writing this down, I just keep writing and writing.” And that’s true, we don’t know why we write this but it helps.
- Does that torment express itself in the rough sound and hoarse vocals?
The hoarse vocals are necessary because we can’t sing very well with our clean voice. If we sing hoarsely or shout, suddenly it’s much better. Also because we like bands like Off With Their Heads and Dillinger Four.
- For the song “Avoid The Crazy Eyes” you used an intro with a quote about God jizzing in your eyes and so on. Where did this come from?
Californication, Season 3 Episode 10: Dogtown. The two protagonists go out on heavy drinking and they wake up in their car completely wasted. It’s a reference to the song as it’s about lying to yourself, lying to your loved ones about drinking. You tell them every time you’re not going to make a fool of yourself and that you won’t end up drunk but in the end they’ll find you on the floor wearing nothing but bathrobe.
- A Flemish band singing in English, using French songs and album titles like “Ceci N'est Pas La Mer A Boire” and “On Verra”. International plans?
We love the French language, it’s way more sexy and sensual than English. Dries writes most of our lyrics but because his English is terrible but his French is great, he writes everything in French. So before our song is ready to play, we have to translate the lyrics from French to English.This always results in beautiful lines like “Ce n’est pas la mer à boire” being raped. So we end up using them as song titles. And “On Verra”, was the line we used almost every time we had to decide something regarding the new album. So instead of being well prepared, we love to dive in and see what happens. “On Verra” became our new running gag in the band.
- Any future plans we need to know about?
We’re writing new songs right now, we’re hoping to record them somewhere this summer. We’ll see what happens! It would be very cliché to end this interview with ‘on verra’, isn’t it?
– David Marote