Musketeer of death presents

Grinning Ghoul is a Belgian Death Metal band that was founded, in 1991, by Sven Van den Broeck (vocalist) and Leslie Andries (drums). Occulta, now guitars/vocals at Avatar, joined in on the guitar and Steven Heirwig on bass. In those days the band listened to the name Cacodaemon. With this line-up their first number was made, named Bound to Absu. In this song you can still hear the influence of Occulta. Other songs were made then but were lost at the first change of line-up. Which occured half a year later when Occulta stepped out of the band to spend more time with Avatar, a band which had already a good reputation in the Black Metal underworld. It was then when also Steven was kicked out because the lack of skills on his instrument. Mattijs Buys and Spawn Daemon joined in, both on the guitar. At this point the band chaged his name in Grinning Ghoul because too many people had difficulties with pronouncing the original name. About half a year after the line-up change the group found a new bass player, for which they were still looking, Filip de Winter. With these members Grinning Ghoul stepped, in late 1996, into the studio where they recorded their first demo tape Al Azif. On this tape we can hear some really good Death Metal songs which sounds somewhat like bands such as i.e. Morbid Angel, Suffocation, but in their own unique ways and sound. The lyrics are about spiritism and beings which we recognise in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. The demo contains 5 songs : Lifeless lady, Daemonical Existence, Spawn the Rage, Touch of Sickness and Bound to Absu. At the end is an hidden keyboard number. A few months later they did their first gig. This was in a local joint together with Orchist and Avatar. Here they were contacted by someone who arranges free podia on which Grining Ghoul played later that year. Everything was looking well for the band until Sven quit for personal reasons. Whitout vocals the band was going nowhere and to make things worse Spawn Daemon quit also because of meaning differences. The band wasn’t seen or heard of for almost a year, desperatly looking for a new vocalist. By that time Sven’s problems were solved and he joined back in, Spawn daemon was beeing replaced by a new guitar player named Patrick Smolderen (Patje) and the band was back to normal. When Patje could play all the songs, they spend their time with a few more gigs in Schoten, Mechelen, Ranst, Duffel, Lier and making another few good songs. In 1999 Filip quit the band as he had no time to do other activities that he liked. He was rapidly replaced by Patrik Maes (Metal Pat). Grinning Ghoul got back into the studio in January 2000 where they recorded "Beyond the Mirror" wich contains 10 songs. They also started merchandising by making T-shirts an tags.

They're now anno 2002 and al ot changed again. The past year they did their first 2 gigs outside of Belgium. They also had Ivan joining them on keyboards and everything looked just fine but it wasn't at all. Alot of different opinions made them split up back in April. But in June they decided to get back together with 4 of 6 members. They agreed that keyboards didn't really fit into their music style although Ivan is one hell of a keyboard player. Also, Mattijs decided to join Self Inflicted and things were getting kinda complicated (different music opinions and stuff). They're working on new songs as they speak and the music style changed a little into .. nah, just check them out if u want to know :)