"Grinning Ghoul" is a band that started out as a death metal band in the vein of "Morbid Angel", "Suffocation" and the likes. The band was formed back in 1994 (estimate) by Sven Van Den Broeck (Vocals) and Leslie Andries (Drums - ex vocals "Avatar"). Occulta, now guitars for "The Avatar", joined in on guitars and Steven Heirwig on bass. The original name of the band was "Cacodaemon" but since nobody could pronounce that thing it got changed a little later to "Grinning Ghoul". With this line-up the first song was made, named "Bound To Absu".
The first change of line-up occurred about half a year after the start. Occulta stopped so he could fully concentrate on "Avatar", a band that a very nice reputation in the black metal underground back then. Steven was simply kicked out of the band cause he had no fucking clue which way was up or down on his instrument ! This is when Mattijs Buys and Spawn Daemon joined in, both on guitars.
About half a year after the first line-up change, the band finally found a replacement to take over the bass, Filip de Winter. Since the line-up was complete again, they started making new songs which got recorded on their first demo "Al Azif", late 1996 at "Nightingale Studios" in Berchem - Belgium. The songs on this demo tape are : "Lifeless Lady", "Daemonical Existence", "Spawn The Rage", "Touch Of Sickness", and "Bound To Absu". At the end there's also a keyboard outro. The songs are influenced by bands such as "Morbid Angel" and "Suffocation" while the lyrics tell us about spiritism and beings from "HP Lovecraft" and the "Necronomicon".
Between the recordings and the actual release of the tape the band did their first gig at the "Prins Kardinaal" in Lier, together with "Orchrist" and "Avatar". Great reactions and reviews made "Grinning Ghoul" roll into business.
Everything was looking fine for the band until Sven quit because of personal reasons. At the same time Spawn Daemon quit too since he didn't get along anymore with the other members. This crushed the band and they weren't heard of for almost a year. In the meanwhile Patrick Smolderen (Patje) was asked to join the band on second guitars. After the band slowly started going again, Sven joined back and everything looked a lot brighter again ! After Patje could play all the songs, they started doing gigs again and working on new material.
In 1999 Filip quit the band cause he had no spare time to do other activities he liked but was soon replaced by Maes Patrik (Metal Pat). Metal Pat joined the band about three months before the band entered the studio again in January 2000 to record "Beyond The Mirror" at "Cavern Studios" in Antwerpen - Belgium. Some of the songs on this release started going towards death metal combined with thrash metal. This CD also got great reactions and reviews but had the same problem as "Al Azif" : It didn't sound very clear.
2002 was the year of the BIG changes for "Grinning Ghoul". The band attracted keyboard player Ivan (Izzy) to try and change the sound of the band and experiment with new ideas. In March 2002 Grinning Ghoul did their first 2 gigs outside of Belgium on the "Thrash 'Till Death" tour with "Flesh Made Sin", "Suhrim" and other bands. Mattijs was asked to play with our good friends from "Self Inflicted" as fill in guitarist. And then it happend : April 2002, different opinions and feelings made the whole thing blow up ! The band split in not very good terms (at first) and everybody went their own ways. Mattijs became full time guitarist in "Self Inflicted", Ivan went back to concentrate on "The Avatar" which were thinking about a comeback then, etc etc etc.
Patje and Metal Pat started talking about forming a new band but also change style to even more thrashier riffs and stuff. They told their plans to Sven and Leslie and both were very enthusiastic about it. They started rehearsing again from scratch and were thinking about a new band name but nothing sounded really as good as "Grinning Ghoul". When Patje jokingly suggested to take the old name back they just looked at each other and didn't say a word ... A new born "Grinning Ghoul" was alive and kicking ! In this formation they had their first try out gig in Mechelen, playing only covers at somebody's birthday party and everybody was amazed at how well the band was performing !
They started working on new songs although it was a little weird at first with only one guitar but they started to get used to it. After 4 new songs were made and sounding really good they made plans to enter the studio again. Only this time it HAD to sound good so they started thinking about studios that would know something about metal and they found one : "Harrow Studios" in Losser - The Netherlands. They entered the studio in January 2003 to record "Coming of War", a demo cd. Everything's looking brighter then ever as the reactions are better then they expected. Some reviews even describe them as "Superb brutal thrashing death metal" !
After doing a lot of of gigs in 2004 and even going outside Belgian borders again (Czech Republic, The Netherlands) some bad luck struck Grinning Ghoul again in march 2005. Co-founder Les (drums) called it quits after 10 years of madness. Different opinions when looking at the future of the band made this happen. A new drummer was found only 2 weeks later in Kevin De Leener (Ex - Gurthang, Suhrim, Thorax Serpenti, etc). A week or so later founder Sven quit too because he didn't feel at home anymore in the band after the departure of Les. A few months later another singer joined, Greg (Ex - Devoured). In this new line-up 3 gigs were done but things never felt really right between Greg and the rest of the band. The fact Greg and the others didn't speak the same language probably didn't help in this matter either as explaining things to him was really hard. Greg departed after he and the band tried to make things work out for months but it just didn't. The band goes again on a search for a new singer as we speak but some other options might present themselves, more info on this soon !
Source : http://users.pandora.be/gg/
