fter the demise of the doom/death-metal band Vargavinter in 2006, the brothers van Dijk were left without a band. During the band’s 5 year excistence one demo was recorded late 2005 under the title "Destruction of The Norse Lands", which featured influences of early Opeth, Katatonia and Skepticism.
Rem then joined up with viking metal band Svidgar mid 2007 who were left without a vocalist. After a couple gigs with the likes of Korpiklaani, Theudho, Chain of Dogs and Thronar on some well-known Dutch stages (e.g. a sold out Baroeg) things came to an end in 2008 due to loss of time and interest. During his stay in the band Rem provided the lyrics for two new songs ; Fenrisulfr and Vinterkulde. The last one dedicated to his departed grandfather, who sadly past away november 2007. Both songs pushed Svidgar to the boundaries of black metal with the help of N. Hamersma's song writing skills (currently playing bass in Fenris) but sadly remained unrecorded. However, there are still plans to record the songs as a closing chapter in the band’s history.
At the same time wanting to bring their own, more extreme musical inspiration to life, both brothers decided to work out some of the ideas they had in their small homestudio. Since the last and unfortunately unrecorded songs of Vargavinter (including a 16 minute opus by B. Dittmar) already featured some black elements, they decided to travel further down this road. Inspired by the early 90's era, they tried to capture some of the raw essence.
They adapted the name Tranendal on the way cause it suited the misanthropic lyrical theme of war and man's demise. Furthermore, it stressed out their support to the Dutch Black Metal scene (NLBM).
These efforts led to the recordings of a rehearsal session in February 2008, which were only posted as raw ideas on Myspace. Thanks to these blueprints Tranendal got in touch with the small independent label Svartgalgh Records.
The first offspring of this collaboration was a song called "Runes", which was featured on part IV of the Magick Rituals compilation by Svartgalgh Records (early 2008). This 3” MCD was published in 33 hand numbered copies and is now sold out.
Early 2009 finally gave the band some free time to lay down the tracks in their studio with the help of some session members (Moon and P. Barendrecht) but saw them without a split-partner as US-based project Diminishing Light, no longer responded to any form of contact by the band or the label.
Rem decided to put his contacts to use and, after some correspondence, he reached an agreement with his German friend Tino (aka Wulfgar) to do a split with his project/band Metamorph. This split will be released on 3" MCD in the upcoming months by Svartgalgh Records with the working title "Pure Misanthropic Black Metal". The split is momentarely scheduled for february 2010.
At this moment the band is busy writing new material for an upcoming EP entitled "Sounds of War".
Source : http://www.myspace.com/tranendal/
