Two brothers, guitar player Danny Smeink and drummer Eddie Smeink played their music at home, in a room with egg boxes glued to the walls functioning as insulation material. Together with their buddies Arnout Mulder (plucking the bass) and Daan Westenbrink (handling the mic) they formed Art Of Premonition. That was way back in ’94, when wearing a mustache made you look cool.

A year later, the band decided that they had enough material to record a demo. The guys entered a professional studio called ‘Frankie’s Recording Kitchen’ and created a small artwork. The digital recording contained four songs and was named ‘In State Of Confusion’. It came out on audio tape, which can be a little bit confusing indeed for readers under the age of 18.

The four guys liked to listen to bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Napalm Death, Brutal Truth and so on. In the ‘Discography’ section of this site, you’ll be able to hear that the inspiration for the first demo came from those death metal masters.

Then, in 1996 Sebastiaan den Oudsten made his entrance in AOP as second guitar player. Two years later, early ’98, Daan Westenbrink said farewell to the band because of lack of time. Arjaan Kampman replaced him just in time for the recording of the second demo.

‘Exit The Narrow Minded, Nourish The Learning Brain’, ETNMNTLB for short (just kidding) was recorded at the QSA Studios in the summer of ’98. This time, it was an analogue recording consisting of seven tracks, which were copied onto a CD-R. Exclusively for AOP, cartoonist Mark Retera, who draws ‘Dirk Jan’ comics, designed the demo cover.

The following years existed of playing gigs and writing songs. There wasn’t much change of style, except that the music became more aggressive and complicated. In a positive way, of course.

But things changed after the millennium. Art Of Premonition disbanded. Sebastiaan had already left the band. Eddie, Danny and Arjaan wanted to play different stuff. Arnout left to England for a year and got replaced. In a formation that altered throughout the five years that followed, the new band failed to get off the ground.

Thankfully, in 2006 AOP revived. Arnout was reinstalled; Eddie, Danny and Arjaan were still up and running so the system was again fully functional. Sure, having played different kind of music for five years affected the AOP style, but it helped them to look further than they did in the past.

In August 2007, the guys eagerly entered their home-built studio to start the recording of old, not yet recorded, and brand-new material.

Source : http://www.aopband.com