Silenxce - A fan’s perspective

Do you remember the eighties?  The era when the market wasn’t flooded with tons of cd’s and buying and trading demos was a great way of discovering new bands.  The mid eighties were also the period of thrash metal becoming big with loads of great bands from the Bay Area (amongst others).  But the States weren’t the only place where great thrash metal came from.  Holland became dedicated as well with bands like Thanatos and Inferno.

I remember that Inferno released its first demo tape “Terror Strike” and I was really excited about it.  Excellent songs, lots of power… everything a good thrash band needs.  Unfortunately I never saw them live during that period.  The first time was in 1987 shortly after they released their best demo “Infernal Ending” (as Silenxce because the German band Inferno claimed the rights on the band name).  The songs being a little more catchy, but still very heavy and of even better quality than before.

In that time they played a lot in Holland and Belgium and you could easily notice that both the band and the audience were totally into the music.  Vocalist Arno van Duin with a slightly arrogance attitude, the guitar and bass players banging like hell and “Kruup” doing an excellent job on the drums.  This band could easily be a big one!
Even until now I don’t understand why any record company offered them a record deal at that time.  They released one more demo tape after that, the two track “Say What?!” tape, meant for a compilation album which was never released in the end.

I think the lack of a record deal, the unreleased compilation album and maybe some other reasons made them very disappointed in the music industry and this was the beginning of the end.  Gigs weren’t that exciting anymore and both the band and the audience weren’t fully dedicated to the music.  So the once promising band died slowly and ended without fame one day.
I always felt sorry that the excellent songs of both Inferno and Silenxce were never released on cd, so I was very glad that label boss André Almeida from the Portuguese Heretic Sound label was interested in releasing them 15 years afterwards.

I hope you will enjoy the album as much as we do.

Ben van der Weg,
Long time Silenxce and Inferno fan.