Defender live at Keep It True VIII

Defender live at Rusty Cage Anniversary Fest

After 16 years all Defender members are reccording a new album, which contains songs written between 1984 and 1990 but were never recorded before. This album will be released at the end of 2007.

The beginning of Defender starts at the end of 1984 when guitar player Bart decided to leave Hammerhawk, his present band at that time. At a concert of Ronnie James Dio and Queensryche in Amsterdam Bart and drummer Remco met eachother for the first time and started rehearsing the first songs. Soon after their first meeting vocalist Simon and bass player Harm joined the band and after a couple of months this line-up recorded their first demo 'Tales of the unexpected' at the Oktopus studio in the beginning of 1985.

Immediately after recording this demo the band found a second guitarplayer: Jozzy and serious live action began. During 1985 and 1986 Defender played a lot of gigs in the Netherlands as headliner and together with Martyr, Alied Forces, Hammerhawk, Cyclone and Agent Steel. At the same time the demo was spreading all over the world and resulted in many possitive reactions.

Due to musical and personal differences the band decided quit working with Jozzy in the summer of 1986 and was replaced by Stef, who was 15 years old at that time and already very talented. Also Bart couldn't combine his daytime job with playing guitar and was replaced by Henk, one of the guitarplayers of Angantyr. From this moment the band had a new, young, talented guitar duo and began writing songs the way they wanted: melodic up-tempo songs.

With only one demo-tape made the last two years it was very hard to get a record-deal, so the band financed studio time to record five songs and started to contact record labels. Defender didn't have to wait that long for a deal: CBS-records wanted to release 'City ad mortis' and after a year of rehearsing and recording Defender made their 'come-back' at a live show on Dutch National Radio. For Dutch metal standards at that time the record sold very well and 'City ad mortis' was listed in the top ten of best selling albums in Noord-Holland (one of the provinces of the Netherlands) for almost a year .

Every week the band performed live and was being reviewed in many magazines, but despite this bassplayer Harm was replaced by Arwin. During the last months with Harm the band started writing new songs again and Arwin participated well in this process. The musical style changed in 1988 from bombastic songs to melodic speed metal. After completing the songs 'The journey' and 'Tales of the unexpected' Defender started recording their promotion single 'Journey to the unexpected' at Silvox Studio's.

At the same time 'Catch Agency' was taking care of all bookings of the band and the first thing the band did was the 'Hardrock can't tolerate facism' tour in Holland. Together with Jewel and a lot of other bands Defender played at the famous Dynamo club. Throughout 1989 the band did a lot of gigs together with Jewel. At the end of 1989 'Catch agency' and 'Ardschok magazine managed a tour with US metalband Toxic. The tour began in January 1990 at the Scum-club in Katwijk (the same place Defender played together with Agent Steel a couple of years before).

After this tour the band still didn't have a record deal and the metal scene in Holland started to change very rapidly. Death metal and grunge became important players in the field and the majority of these bands were willing to play for just a couple of beers. This was something Defender didn't wanted and after a couple of gigs the band came together for a tough decision: Keep on playing with the chance to become a frustrated band or quit and still have nice memories about the last 6 years. Defender chose for the second option!