Interview with Marcel Coenen

When I found out about Marcel Coenen last summer, I knew he was an artist I wanted to feature. He is a seasoned professional and an exceptional talent, Marcel has 24 Cd’s and over 420 clinics and performances to his credit. Out of all those performances Marcel’s favorite was last summer (2003) when his band “Sun Caged” played with Queensryche. Marcel said “Queensryche is one of my all time favorite bands, I just LOVE their stuff, especially their older work, like Operation Mindcrime and Rage For Order”. So when we got the chance to open up for them it was a dream come true for me.

All the guys in the band were very friendly to us and it was cool to share the stage with them. It was also great that most of the people there that night seemed to like us too, we got a great response from the crowd.” Marcel’s most recent CD work was on Hubi Meisel’s “EmOcean“. They have worked together several times and the end result has been nothing short of spectacular. I asked Marcel about it, he stated “EmOcean became a great album” he also said ” My favorite track of the EmOcean album is “Sapientia Vitae” I love the vibe that song has.” So read on and learn about the Netherlands best rock guitarist Marcel Coenen…

When did you first realize you loved music and want to make it your career?

MC: I guess I was about 10 years old when I was watching TV, and noticed something about these guys playing that instrument with strings, it fascinated me, especially the sound of it gave me a great feeling. When I then got records from AC/DC and Iron Maiden, I was sold. My mom got me my first guitar when I was eleven years old, and I started practicing a lot. I took some lessons and I discovered that the instrument really fitted me well. So I was very young and already loved good hard rocking music and I surely wanted to learn to play like the guitarists from maiden and AC/DC.

Your Mother owned a radio station and you had your own show, Please tell us about. it and do you still DJ?

MC: Hahahaha well I was VERY young back then, I was about 6 or 7 years old I believe. Well it surely was fun, but it was not hard rocking music at all, I was still a child. Though nowadays I do DJ for an internet Radio station called “Seismic Radio”.

Your second band “Sanctus Spiritus” in 1988 opened for an popular American band at that time called Laaz Rockit who were known to be quite wild, at 15 years of age that would have been an interesting introduction to the world of “Sex Drugs & Rock N Roll” any memories from that come to mind that you would like to tell us about?

MC: Sure. Sanctus Spiritus was my second band actually, I was very young and just played guitar for a few years. The reason we played as support for Laaz Rockit was funny. Our singer back then sent a demo tape to the organization who booked that concert, but we did not know it was not a demo of our band he sent, but he send a very good demo of another dutch band and put our name on the cassette, so the booking agency thought we were very good, haha. The gig itself was horrible, the crowd really did not care for us but we had a lot of fun. I remember a roadie of ours tasted some cake in the kitchen since he was hungry but he felt kinda “strange” after eating that, it appeared to be “space cake” haha.

In 1994 you formed “Aura” that later became “Lemur Voice” and in 1995 the band was signed to an American label “Magna Carta” and your CD “Insights” was released and the band received world wide recognition, do you feel that fast rise to success in some way it was part of reason for the band’s demise and not just “musical differences”?

MC: Well, Lemur Voice never got the recognition it should have gotten in my opinion. The band started in 1993 and we really tried to make good music, we all liked the same music when we started, we were into old classical music and also metal, and we tried to make a great combination of that. But when years went by we got some different tastes in music. Three band members wanted to go into a different direction, and they are doing that now, they have a new band called “Slow Poke Rodrigo” which is Drum and Bass dance music, played live though and very well, but it was not something I wanted to play for instance. So the band fell apart because of the musical differences, just as simple as that.

 

You were voted “The Best Rock Guitarist” (1998) in your country of The Netherlands, this is where you were introduced to Ibanez, has that relationship continued to this day, do you still endorse their products?

MC: Yes I do. I endorse them from 1998 until now, and that is great. I get guitars from them on a regular basis and play clinics around the Netherlands for them also which I love doing.

You recorded a solo CD in 1999 called “Guitar Talk’ was this where your personal recognition as a shredder began or was the CD a result of it?

Well, I learned to shred when I was about 15 years old, on my web site is also a video from me when I was 16. My main focus changed though throughout the years. I am now more a melodic player then a shredder, though I try to combine the best of both worlds. I just play how I feel like playing and it goes from shred to emotional to jazzy to whatever I come up with. The Guitar talk sessions started back in 1998 when I needed instrumental songs to join the dutch guitar contests.

I started to write instrumental songs back then and the first demo called “Guitar talk” was born, it had 4 songs on it. When I got a new PC with a CD burner in it I made my first Guitar talk album, 7 songs it had, and it got to the second version with 9 songs soon. I sold a lot of CDR copies by myself at that time. When we signed with Lion Music with my band Sun Caged I decided to ask Lasse from the label if he was interested to release my Guitar talk album also, and he was, so I decided to record three more tracks. Guitartalk was released in August 2003 by Lion Music in a re mastered version with 12 songs in total.

Can you please tell us about your current band “Sun Caged” as well as your side projects?

MC: Of course I can. Sun Caged is my current number one band. It is the band I go for totally. We have a great vibe in the band, we all like the same thing and want the same which is a great thing! Sun Caged plays progressive metal. People compare us to bands like Symphony X, Dream Theater, Queensryche, Meshuggah (not so heavy though) and the likes, we have very heavy songs but also some very melodic catch able ones, just everything we want to accomplish comes out naturally. We released an album in October 2003 which is available.

Well, I have two cover bands beside Sun Caged, which are Time Machine and Stormrider. Time Machine is a tribute band to guitar master Joe Satriani, we play all kinds of Satch songs which is very fun to do, and with Stormrider we play 80’s metal, from bands like Angelwitch, Helstar, Metallica, Dio, Thin Lizzy, Vicious Rumors, Saxon, Forbidden and a lot more.

On John Petrucci (Dream Theater) Forum a thread was dedicated to you last year, how did that come about?

MC: Ron Thal started that one after a thread was started about him (questions to Ron Thal) and someone there said well we should open a thread to Marcel also, so Ron took the first step and asked the first silly question which was very cool. It is great to see that people seem to like my playing, especially on forums like that, where a lot of guitarists meet and get to know a lot of good players.

What is next for you as a solo artist/side projects and most especially, what can we expect from Sun Caged?

MC: I have recorded a song for an upcoming Shawn Lane tribute CD also to be released by Lion Music. Now I am recording guitars for the next Hubi Meisel album, on which I will play 50 % of all guitars again. I am also working on new solo material and of course we are writing new stuff with Sun Caged. It will become something special.

Sun Caged just recorded a song for an upcoming Jimmy-Hendrix CD tribute Lion Music, we recorded the song “Freedom” which came out pretty well. Sun Caged will be playing Sweden Rock in June together with acts like Europe and Heart and we will play also in Atlanta Georgia in September at the Progressive-Power USA Pre-Party launch.

Thank You Marcel, it has been great learning more about you. Your a talented artist and congratulations on your success so far and I look forward to many great things to come from all your future musical endeavours!

MC: It is truly an honor to be interviewed by you Henry, and I want to thank you for interviewing me. I hope that people get interested in Sun Caged by reading this interview. Cheers everyone and please come by to see us live some day.