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THE ARCHIVES
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Morrigan's Pit has closed down as of November 2006. The site and its articles will stay online as an archive until September at least, but probably longer.
The Archives
2002-2006
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POET'S CRY
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Tim de Man & Raymond Dubbelt
October 2005
http://www.poetscry.tk/
Poet's Cry is a young Dutch band that just released their first demo and still has a lot to learn, but on "Prologue" I heard some things that already sounded very promising to me for their future, like good keyboards and songwriting. They combine power metal with symphonic as well as death elements and use clean as well as death vocals. I would like to introduce this band to you and both founders/singers/songwriters, Tim de Man and Ray Dubbelt, extensively answered my questions. Find out about their backgrounds, interests, plans and why the hell a teenager picks an old Chicago song to cover :P
Poet's Cry is still a young band and was formed in 2004. How did you and Tim
find each other?
Ray: Well, we're going to the same school and we're friends for almost 5 years now. We were both really into music and Tim was already writing some own stuff. Then I said one day: "Why don't we try writing some songs together, I'll write the lyrics and you can write the music". He agreed and within a few days I wrote 2 lyrics, really bad ones by the way, but still.. it was a start. After that things went really fast, and we decided a band should be formed, and almost instantly I thought of the name: Poet's Cry.
Did any of you play in other bands before?
Ray: No, only Leon worked with some other bands. Though I don't have a clue which bands or what styles.
What's the Rotterdam scene like?
Ray: Depends on which scene you're talking about. If you mean the metal scene, well we have the Baroeg and sometimes a good band comes to town, but most of the time we have to go to: Arnhem, Amsterdam or Tilburg to see a good concert. The city itself is pretty okay, but I'm not all that keen on big crowdy places, and that's what a city is.. right?
Have you been able to play much yet?
Ray: Uhm.. no, we started with a gig in a little café, 'Maxim', and it went really good, the audience was really enthusiastic. It gave us a really big boost to put a lot of energy into this band. After that we did a little performance in our school which also went great. That's it, not much yet, but I was promised that we can play a full show in the 'Little Cave' soon, so we have to wait and see…
Tim: The Maxim gig was indeed a boost for the overall confidence in the band. Before that, the atmosphere during the rehearsal 
sessions was like "Well, we're doing this band but it's not like it's going to become anything serious." After all the positive feedback we had the bandmembers were more willing to put a lot of effort in the band. I will take myself for an example here: before the Maxim gig, I was convinced that my voice sounded crappy, and the various recordings we did at that time didn't really help either. However, after it all went so smooth in the Maxim, and people told me I actually had a very pleasant voice, I went to practise a lot on my own to get better. Maybe you could regard this as a self-fulfilling prophecy, though...
The things that stand out for me in your music are the excellent keys and I love the guitar solos too. Did you have any specific training (like classical piano or something)?
Tim: Thank you! Yes, I do play the piano since I was 9 years old, and now I'm at quite a high grade, and I keep improving myself. My teacher tells me that from a technical point of view, I'm quite talented but not all that special. She says, though, that my main talent is putting creativity in my playing. For example, I find it easy to improvise on the piano out of nothing, and keep going for an hour or so. I also always mix the pieces I play with some of my own things. I'm thinking about doing the conservatory, but that's not a certain thing yet. An explanation for the dominating role of the keyboards might be that all songs are first recorded on keys. Most of the times that includes pads (strings, for example), piano, bass, drums and synths. These are then recorded on computer, and soon after vocals and guitars are recorded.
Who (or what) made you ever pick up an instrument or made you want to form a
band - who are your heroes?
Ray: For me, it started with bands like Queen, Genesis, Toto and the Dire Straits, but later on people like: Hans Zimmer, Tuomas Holopainen (Nightwish) and Jari Mäenpää (Ensiferum, Wintersun) made me want to play in a band.
Tim: My interest in playing an instrument actually came out of nothing. I remember that my cousin played the keyboard, and when I first saw such a thing it occurred to me that playing it wouldn't be all that difficult. So my cousin taught me a few things for a while and a year or so later I quit because my parents were going to buy a piano for me. So that was quite a rush. Later on I bought the keyboard from my cousin (the thing is as old as I am...) and I started composing some tunes myself. Then I met Ray and he bought a keyboard too. And one way or another, I'm playing in a band at the moment... Strange thing, don't you think? Oh, and by the way: "Prologue" isn't recorded with the old keyboard, I bought myself a new one (actually, I sold my soul for it).
What are your influences as a band?
Ray: Sonata Arctica and Nightwish in the beginning, but after a while, when I started growling also Norther, Wintersun and maybe a little Children of Bodom.
Tim: Yeah, mainly Sonata Arctica and Nightwish. First, we wanted to sound like Nightwish, but the very first songs we wrote were more like generic happy power metal... But as time passed, the songwriting became more versatile; this is mainly due to the fact that me and Ray were exploring the metal scene. I ended up more in the softer regions, while Ray is enjoying some goregrind at the moment. So let's hope he's not going to write gore lyrics...
Do you guys listen to anything that you may not think of when listening to Poet's Cry?
Ray: Most of the time I listen to black/death metal, but I also listen to: Enya, Sarah Brightman, Toto, Genesis, Dire Straits and some movie soundtracks.
Tim: Well, personally I don't think our music resembles Ayreon a lot ;)... And I, too, have a crush for old rock music, for example the U2 from the 1980's and indeed Genesis along with a little Tears For Fears... Forgive me...
How do you guys at your young age end up doing a cover of an old song like Chicago's "Stay The Night"??
Tim: Ray's responsible!
Ray: I think that's me to blame for. I listened to a lot of old rock bands so I knew Chicago, and I liked the song: "Stay the night". One day I said to Tim, we could try making our own version of it, and so the song was born. When it was finished we thought, "hey it's a pretty good cover" so we decided to put it on the demo. Though most people don't like the song at all when they listen to our album, I think it's pretty cool.
Who is Silke van Alphen and how did she end up doing guest vocals on "Lust Of Light?"
Tim: She's a girl we know through school. We thought it might be a nice idea having some female vocals on the album. First, we had serious ideas of letting her join the band, but for various reasons that didn't worked out.
Ray: She's got a really good voice and we're always experimenting with new elements so it was a test to see if a female voice fitted our music, and I guess it did. I'm really into writing roles in my lyrics, so a female voice could easily appear again on the next album.
What are your lyrics about, where do you find inspiration for them?
Ray: My lyrics are about time, dreams and bad experiences. I get the inspiration from my personal life. I already dealt with a lot of things, and I'm one of those people who you could call, "the outsider". People never seemed to care about me and I always had the feeling nobody even noticed me. I was also depressive a couple of times, and even then nobody cared or even saw it. I couldn't talk about it with anyone so it was all stuffed inside me. I dreamt a lot, so I dealt with all my problems in my dreams, the downside is that in the real world the problems aren't solved at all, so I always had the feeling that I would be much better off if I could just live within my dreams. Time was a also a big factor because there are so many things I would do different now if I could go back in time (and yes I know how stupid that sounds from an 18 year old). When I decided to write for the band all these stuffed feelings came out in writing, I was amazed how easy it went, and it also made me feel better because I could loose the feelings this way. You could say it's some sort of therapy hehe…;)
The demo cover as well as your website is really beautiful, who is responsible for it?
Ray: That would be my brother, Mike, also guitarist in our band. He's really good with the computer, building websites and creating logos etc. He did it from the beginning and he couldn't stop working on it ever since.
What are your plans for the near future? Are you still looking for a bass player, are there any gigs in the works, are you working on new material and what is it like? Etc. :)
Ray: Of course we're searching for a bass player although it isn't really successful. We had one guy last time but he quit the moment he left the rehearsal room. And as for upcoming gigs, as I already said earlier, I'm talking with the "Little Cave" to perform there, so we'll have to wait until I get a precise date from them. The main thing we're doing now is rehearsing and writing new stuff. The funny thing is that we already wrote so much we could easily release another demo, but we wanted to see what the comments on the first one was and then make really great songs to make the second demo much better. I can promise you the next demo is going to be superior in every way!
Tim: The new material differs from "Prologue" in a lot of ways: the mixing is a lot better (Ray experimented on it a lot, and Mike improved his guitar-sound and play), the vocals are… well… different (Ray´s doing more black metal style growls, and with waaay less distortion, and I'm practising on my vocals a lot and they have also improved) and the song-writing is more varied and more symphonic. We felt that "Prologue" sounded like a hard rock album rather then a metal one, so we worked on that too. The songwriting-process, actually, has nearly stopped. We have sufficient material for another two demos, but we were exhausted after we recorded all the keys for the entire second album in one week, so we needed a break. However, a lot of ideas are shaping up to songs again, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the third demo for that... And personally, I think it might be a good idea to once record some REAL drums, for I think that will add a lot to the music.
I want to wish you a lot of success with the band, is there anything left you'd like to tell our readers?
Ray: Check out our site and listen to some songs, then come see us at our next show and I'll promise, you won't regret it! After that we'll drink a beer and hope you can't remember that we actually sucked ;) Just joking…
submitted by Marlies 26.10.2005
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