Congratulations on Unlamented – it’s a really enjoyable record. It’s over thirty years since we last heard new music from you; what prompted the decision to reform the band? “Thank you. I’m very glad you like it. Reforming was a gradual decision I’m not sure we’ve ever really, expressly, made! For a long time, it wasn’t something we’d ever considered – not least because we didn’t really think there’d be any interest in a Hydra Vein reunion. However, we had periodically seen the albums picked up for re-release and when we were offered a slot on Brofest (in 2019), it seemed like a fun thing to do. Honestly, the intention at that time was little more than to get the gang together for one last time to bring the curtain down. A last hurrah, whilst we were still able to do it.

The remarkable thing, though, was just how right and comfortable things felt, the first time we got back together again in a rehearsal studio. The years melted away and getting back on stage all together just felt great and that certainly changed how we saw things.

In the immediate aftermath of Brofest, we got talking and wondered aloud whether there were any new songs in us. Really just out of curiosity. We certainly didn’t want to be trying too hard to contrive any kind of Hydra-Vein-in-the-2020s thing, it was purely to see if we had any of that left in us, naturally… and it seems we still did.

Of course, then, the pandemic hit and everyone’s plans were blown out of the water. As it ground on, a couple of the guys thought long and hard about what working up a new album, long-distance, would mean taking on and decided they’d struggle to put the hours in, so we’ve ended up getting in some new faces to keep everything on the rails but the original guys have remained involved to some degree and are fully supportive”.

We’ll look more thoroughly at the individual tracks on the album later – but can you give those of our listeners without much grounding in the sound of the band a bit of a background to Unlamented? And would long time fans of the band be surprised by the new album? “To me, it sounds like a Hydra Vein record. We’ve never really tended toward the subtle and it’s always been a case with us of just trying to get some adrenaline and aggression into things and largely allowing it to go where it naturally tends to go. That also means we remain fairly old-fashioned in our approach in the studio – the basic tracks are still put down live and we don’t have a tendency to throw very much technology, or even much polish, at things. It’s an approach that still leaves the occasional technical imperfection in there but the aim is to try and bottle the lightning and capture the feel of the songs, to try and present ourselves honestly as the sum of our parts, as far as possible. That might sound a bit pretentious, as it goes, but the idea is to be anything but that.

So as far as that goes, I don’t think the new album will necessarily surprise our longer-standing fans. We do what we do and I think it always comes out sounding like us. Of course, the change of singer does mean we don’t sound exactly the same as we did back in the early days and we’re all now considerably longer in the tooth so don’t play exactly the same as we did when we were kids but I think most listeners would consider it’s still recognisably us (for good or bad)”.

And can you tell us a little about the personnel on this album? “With pleasure. On vocals, we have James Manley-Bird, who did the business for us at the Brofest show. He’s not a Mike Keen soundalike but he’s got plenty of power and attitude and I think suits our material down to the ground. We have three guitarists in the band: Dan Ranger returns from the Rather Death… line-up to provide his particular brand of widdle and he is joined by both the remarkable Henry Pol, who I played with for several years back in the nineties, and Jonas Voorspoels, the baby of the band (a big, Belgian baby but he’s got a few years on the rest of us). Then at the back, we have the bundle of energy that is John den Buitelaar on drums. There’s a chemistry we share that works, so we’ll stick together as long as that’s the case. Logistically, it’s a little complex, as James and Dan are based in the UK, whilst the rest of us live in the Netherlands but we manage.

Do you have any plans to tour behind the record both home and overseas? The touring environment has changed a little since you were tour bus regulars first time around! “Everything’s changed since the first time around! But no, we don’t have plans to tour the album, as such. We have an album showcase in The Hague later this year and will certainly consider anything that looks interesting in the new year – perhaps along the lines of festival appearances similar to Brofest. But it depends on the level of interest there is to see us, so we’ll play that all by ear. We’d love to get out and play wherever people want us to but we’re not particularly up to squeezing our old bones into a van to tour the pub circuit on spec these days, so we’ll see how things pan out and then do what we are able to do.

Give us a brief insight into each of the tracks on the album – First up is Khuylo: “A short mood-setter for the record, this is one of Jonas’s tunes. “Khuylo” is a Ukrainian word we all learnt this year and it’s obvious who it refers to, I think. More-or-less a death march to get things started, so you know where we’re going to be coming from on a couple of levels. Why not?”

Does The End Justify The Means is next. “An old song that we didn’t quite have ready in time for the After The Dream sessions back in 1989 but decided to give it its day on this one because, well, we thought it was still a decent tune and we’ve now had thirty three years to practice it (in theory only, I hasten to add). Rediscovered on a rehearsal tape when we were looking for extras on the last After The Dream re-release, we thought it had something worth reanimating so gave it a crack. Musically, a co-write between Dan, Stephen Davis (from the Rather Death… line-up) and me, with a lyric from my brother, railing about the absolute state of the world and how we justify things to ourselves. I was chuffed to finally be able to get this one done. It’s the only survivor from those days to make it to the album but I don’t think it’s out of place alongside the recent material. In a very nice way, it links us directly to both early versions of the band (and the guys we’ve lost) so it was an obvious choice to be the “opener proper”, if we could do it justice. Did we? I think so”.

Track three is the title track – Unlamented. “A straight-ahead thrasher: get in, get it done, get out again. Lyrically, this goes out to the appalling numbers of the unclaimed: the Jane Does who tragically become footnotes on lists of atrocities. Seemingly always and seemingly forever. Totally unrelated to the dark subject matter, the title also seemed apt to use for a come-back album perhaps nobody was really clamouring for (and I may be being unduly kind to myself with that “perhaps”). So that’s what we did. We shouldn’t ever take ourselves too seriously, after all”.

Tell us a bit about Eradication Zone. “We slow things down a little, here. Take a moment to change pace for a while. This lyric is about the escalating number of murders of environmental activists, investigative journalists and even humanist bloggers worldwide. These people are fundamentally putting themselves in harm’s way as our guardians and protectors and are being picked off by reactionary and repressive actors almost daily. We are under attack and need to be aware of (and righteously angry about) that”.

Age of Plague – I could take a guess what this is about… “What else are you going to call a song written in the middle of a pandemic? Though calling it “a” pandemic doesn’t really do justice to what we’re inflicting on ourselves with our constant encroachment on the wild (MERS, SARS, Ebola, on they all come, dodging the bullets is more down to luck than judgement). It’s a fast, galloping, little bit out of control song for a fast, galloping, out of control problem”.

Blood Eagle Dawn is next up. “This is a James lyric and a sprinkling of heavy metal fun in amongst the more hand-wringing stuff I tend to write. Here are the Vikings rocking up to Lindisfarne, in 793 (and despite the title, there are no actual, pukkah, blood eagle shenanigans going on, here, so anyone hoping for Cannibal Corpse-stylee slash and gore may be disappointed). There’s also a light-hearted equivalence drawn with our return to the stage being in Northumbria, though we didn’t quite leave the place in a similar state when we left. Musically, this is a heads-down-and-go-for-it tune, great fun to play and I like it quite a lot”.

What can you tell us about Blue Lamp? “A shorter tune that gives us the chance to stick some mid-tempo crunch in the mixer… and we do enjoy a little bit of that. Jonas shines on the lead work here, I have to say. It’s quite obviously about police death squads but more generally a comment piece on the propensity of the police, wherever they are, to victimise the powerless, whoever they are deemed to be, to the extent the society they’re operating in will allow them to. If your society shrugs at the existence of death squads, you’ll see death squads, but every one of us can suddenly be deemed “the other”, or find ourselves among the powerless and then just as suddenly, they might well be coming for you”.

Very true indeed I’m afraid… Blue Lamp is followed by Mano A Mano. “Another change of pace and a chance for a good, old-fashioned sing-along (or shout-along, is maybe more accurate) as we get in touch with our inner music hall psyches. Here we touch on the current, partially social media-driven, polarisation of much of the world today… using a wrestling bout as an (arguably obvious but sue me) allegory. Wrestling, not because I’m a fan of it but because it’s obviously confrontational but at the same time thoroughly theatrical and performative… and that’s how a lot of what passes for political discourse around the world strikes me, right now. Come on, nobody seriously believes much of this shit, do they? Really? If they do, we’re in even more trouble than we realise”.

And finally, Twilight… “My personal favourite on the album and one of the first of the new batch of songs, written post-Brofest. I learned, putting this one together, I really didn’t have to work very hard to mine the thrash metal seam, even after all these years. It’s still simply what comes out of me when I’m switched to angry mode. Which I have to sheepishly admit happens fairly often. The lyrics? Well, it’s about the economy, stupid. Or at least, the damage the current model of one is doing to this vulnerable small rock we’re on. Nothing to do with vampires, trust me. All to do with the twilight of the gods … and we have been strutting around playing the part of disinterested gods for too long It’s beyond due we have a good, long think about things and decide whether we really all want to act like sociopaths or not, I’d suggest”.

Although the band is primarily based in the Netherlands, do you still have strong links to the UK thrash scene? And would you say that scene is a s strong as it was in the late eighties? “I have to say I’m afraid I don’t and I’m not actually even sure there’s a “thrash scene” as such in the UK. There wasn’t ever much of one, even in the eighties. We had a small group of like-minded individuals in Brighton back then (where most people who were part of it played in a band) but I couldn’t speak to the health or otherwise of it anywhere else, really. We have a bit of a mutual back-slapping relationship on social media with Gama Bomb (because we like them) and do try and support our old muchachos like Virus when they’re doing things but I’d hesitate to call what I know a scene… that said, I am aware there’s currently a healthy metal scene in the UK at the moment. Not that we’re very close to that, either but I’m not sure it’s fractured to the extent thrash metal really stands out as its own thing, any more. But I might be completely wrong and we’re just on the naughty step for some reason”.

Anything else you’d like to tell the readers of Sentinel Daily about the album? “Sure. You may like it, you may not. You may think we’ve changed beyond all recognition… you may have hoped we’d changed beyond all recognition and are disappointed we haven’t. But do know we’ve worked hard to try and produce something fresh and something we’re collectively proud of. We can stand behind this album”.

Unlamented is out now. You can read Michael Stronge’s review of the album HERE