After more than ten years of hard-hitting live shows and gritty persistence, Belgian heavy metal band Speed Queen finally drops their full-length debut, …With a Bang! And as the title promises, they’re not easing into it—they’re going full throttle. We sat down with bassist Lander Savelkoul to talk about the long road to this release, how their songwriting evolved, and what makes …With a Bang! their most explosive work yet.
…With a Bang! marks your full-length debut after more than a decade as a band. What made now the right time to release a full album?
The album has been cooking for quite some time indeed. We started working on these songs after ‘King of the Road’ was released and in between live shows, a pandemic and line-up change, we are finally ready to release them to the world. Good things take time, we’re very proud of it. …With a Bang!’ is very much meant to be a powerful, “in your face” record. We worked together with Koen Keijers (Tube Driven) and Thibault Chaumont (Deviant Labs) to achieve this. We took our time in the recording and producing process to get everything as perfect as can be. It’s finished when it’s finished.
You mentioned the album has more ‘oempf’ and variation than your earlier work. Can you elaborate on how your songwriting and arranging evolved on this release?
We’ve grown as a band. We used to start writing a song from one single riff and building up from that. Nowadays our rehearsals are more like jam sessions where everyone vibes to a certain idea. Just four guys growing towards each other. If that works out, that’s when magic happens. It gives much more dimension to a song. We’re a live band and want you to come to our shows, dance to the music and sing along. We write our songs from the perspective of an energetic crowd. We’ve been trying some songs of ‘…With a Bang!’ out live and the response so far is great – especially ‘Showdown’ is sure to be a staple of our upcoming shows!
How did the collaboration with Jonny Nesta come about, and what did he bring to the tracks he played on?
We played together with Skull Fist on Wacken Open Air back in 2017. We had a little chat with the guys. When we finished ‘I Want It’ we thought it sounded like a song that was taken from a Skull Fist record. We shot our shot, as fans, and messaged Jonny to make it even more ‘Skull Fist’. He very much liked the idea and was happy to add some more of that melodic juice to the song.
Your live shows are described as fast and energetic with no pauses—how did you translate that raw stage power into the studio recording?
We are not a studio band, so we had to make the studio our own. We filled up the fridge with some beers and started a session with listening to music we like to get the mood set. It’s the ‘bottle of red wine and candle light’ of recording. Koen played a big role in this for pushing Thomas to his limits. It was literally blood, sweat and tears. You can hear that in the results. Fun fact about the vocal recording: It took seven cases of strong blonds to finish nine songs.
The band has weathered lineup changes and the pandemic. How did those challenges shape the final sound and emotional tone of …With a Bang!?
Simple: We stuck together! Being a band is more than playing, in our case, four different instruments with each other. You have to put up with so much bullshit and you have to stick through it. It’s important to look in the same direction together. For example: of course, we took it all pretty heavy when our former guitar player left the band. We tried some stuff with other guitarists, but that didn’t work out quite well. It was at that point that we realized: Speed Queen is Speed Queen and we don’t need external influences. So Andreas and Lander started experimenting with new gear and guitar tones and it actually worked out, we sound better than ever before. Our sound is thicker but cleaner and clearer now. As stated before ‘…With a Bang!’ is an album which we all worked very hard for, individually and as a band, facing the same direction. And that’s what you hear in the result.
Speed Queen has shared stages with bands like Night Demon and played major festivals. What has been the most pivotal live experience for you as a band so far?
Every gig is essential, no doubt about that. It’s the energy of the crowd, bonding with your audience, improvising in different venues, … all that. But the most pivotal live experience for us is our tour with Night Demon. We matured very fast as a band. Playing a show every day and making that happen takes hard work, discipline and responsibility. From the moment someone pays to come and see you, you have to give ‘em everything you’ve got.
What’s one piece of gear—pedal, synth, or amp—that’s absolutely essential to the Speed Queen sound on …With a Bang!?
Andreas’ fingers. All pedals, synths, amps and effects are additional. But we have to admit that we added some extra layers underneath the songs and we’re trying to bring that to our live shows as well. Fun fact about the bass tracks: We’ve blasted Lander’s bass through a vintage, cranked-up Marshall guitar amp, giving a thicker and dirtier sound to the bass. You can hear it pretty well during the intro of Chasing Ghosts.
If the gods of metal cursed you to perform a full set using only weapons and medieval torture devices instead of instruments, what would each of you wield—and which song from …With a Bang! would still hit the hardest?
The gods of metal could take our instruments, but never our voices: We’d go a capella! If that’s not an option: we’d use The Flemish Goedendag, literally translated: ‘The Flemish Good Day’ or The Mace in English. It’s a cultural thing… We’d use the Iron Maiden as a stage prop. No explanation needed. Every song will stand hard. If we start swinging, shit’s about to get real!
After ten years, lineup changes, and a pandemic, Speed Queen have delivered a debut album that’s as relentless as it is refined. …With a Bang! is the sound of a band hitting their stride—loud, proud, and ready to tear up the stage.
Categories: Interviews, Music, Speed Queen
Capital Chaos TV 
Leave a comment