Rock Justice
Rocker’s Confession

19.07.2026

A lot of our readers have surely seen Dutch guitarist Bas Maas playing live with German metal queen Doro Pesch. Those into sympho gothic metal and old enough to have witnessed the genre at its peak also know Bas from his involvement with After Forever on their three final albums back in the 2000s. Singer Magali Lyuiten has had her own career going for pretty much half a century - she has sung with Beautiful Sin (promising, but short-lived project of former Helloween drummer Uli Kusch), Nightmare (French power metallers with a history spanning nearly five decades) and, of course, Ayreon. Now the two are paired in a band called Rock Justice that has just released its debut full-length “You’ve Been Served” via Fireflash Records. Forget about all things sympho, gothic or progressive, power metal isn’t really on display here either, but those into good old heavy metal and hard rock surely need to check out this new band with familiar faces. We spoke to Bas right on the album release day, and he was happy to tell us everything about Rock Justice’s genesis and future plans.

Bas, you have been on the rock and metal scene for more than 25 years. Why did it take you so long to come up with a project of your own?

Well, it didn’t take long to come up with it, it took a really long time to get it done. I’ve always been active, I didn’t always have time, and the people that I was working with didn’t always have time. Sometimes everything would kind of break down for months or even for years because of stupid stuff that happens that’s kind of out of my hands. When I’m working with other people, it’s kind of the same - if something goes wrong and stuff doesn’t happen, I’m like, “Hey buddy, I’m on tour again”. Me and Magali are doing different stuff, and before you know it, a couple of years pass (laughs), until somebody says, “Hey, shall we pick up that project again?” “OK, let’s do it”.

How old is actually that material that we’ve now got to hear? When did you start writing it?

Oh, it’s hard to say. For instance, “Rocker’s Confession” is a real old tune, that might have been written in 2006 or 2007, it’s that old.

How did you first come across the voice of Magali? As far as we understand, you first got to hear her voice, and only later you met her in person…

Yeah, exactly! The thing is that I really wanted to work with a male singer, but it appeared almost impossible to find one. One name kept popping up, people kept telling me, “You should check out Magali Lyuten, and I was like, “No, I’m not interested, because I don’t want a female singer”. I did try several male singers, which didn’t work out – they either didn’t know what to do with the music or something, I don’t know, I don’t understand. And the name of Magali kept coming up – even Floor (Jansen), the then After Forever singer, mentioned Magali a couple of times. And then a friend of mine, who’s a promoter, kept mentioning her name. When he heard that all of the singers weren’t working out, he said, “Bas, you really gotta listen to this chick, she’s got a great voice”. He gave me the Beautiful Sin album, and when I heard that, I was blown away. My first thought was, “This chick sings like a dude!” (everybody laughs) My mind changed, and I thought, “Maybe I could work with a woman on vocals”. Floor actually introduced Magali and me during an album presentation of Ayreon, and that was the first time that we met in person. And we actually had a real good click from the beginning on. She told me to send her some songs, I sent her some songs, of course, and she came up with this idea, which is now the first song on the album, “My Worst Enemy”. That was the first song she put her vocals on, and I was immediately blown away. It’s been going fine ever since. As I said, we’ve got a really nice click as persons, but especially, of course, as musicians. It doesn’t matter what song idea I send to Maggy, she turns it into magic. I’m happy!

Could you say a couple of words about the other band members – Nick McGrath (bass) and Mischa Aussems (drums)? What are their backgrounds, and what did they bring to the band?

Nick is a really old friend of mine, we played in some bands together for a short while. He was my go-to bass player (laughs), and his main contribution to the band, apart from his bass playing, is that he puts a lot of enthusiasm in there. Several times when the work stopped, as we discussed earlier, he would often be the one that would kick my ass and be like, “Come on Bas, don’t let that shit sit on the shelf, get your ass moving and work on that stuff!” (laughs) That made us feel like a group. Micha is the latest addition, we had a couple of drummers with us, and none of them was really able to do the job in the way that I was happy with. When we finished all the material to get the album mixed, the only thing missing was live drums. We kind of decided like, “Come on, this project has been going for so long, this time we just need to finish it whatever comes”. Our idea was to use programmed drums, and then Nick heard about that idea, and he was like, “Oh, that’s too bad, we should have live drums”. I said, “I can’t find a drummer who could do it in a good way, we just wanna finish this product now”. And he said, “Well, I might know someone, he’s really fast with stuff, and he’s good on click”, etc. Nick was very enthusiastic about Micha, so I figured I should listen to Nick and give the guy a try. When he returned his first recording, I was blown away, because I heard my drums, the drum parts that I’d wrote and programmed – Micha pretty much copied them and gave them this live vibe. That was perfect for me – he did the job that I was looking for. And a positive thing is also that he’s a really nice dude, we get along really fine as well.

Micha is not a typical name for a Dutch guy. Does he have any Slavic roots?

Actually I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe it’s not a super-common name, but it’s not that rare even over here. But it’s a good question – next time I talk to him, I should ask it. (everybody laughs)

And who came up with the band name? Was Rock Justice the only idea, or did you choose between several options?

It was my idea, and I immediately thought, “This is the perfect name for it”. (laughs) But there’s a long story to it. Rock Justice used to be a foundation. Actually the promoter dude that I mentioned, who gave me the Beautiful Sin CD, used to have this foundation. They organized hard rock and metal concerts in my area, and everybody involved in this foundation was like a big group of friends, obviously a bit older than I am. They kind of raised me in hard rock and metal music, Rock Justice was very-very important for me as a young guy learning about hard rock and metal. When I was trying to come up with a good name, Rock Justice the foundation didn’t exist by that time, and it kind of expresses how I see myself in the hard rock and metal world, if that makes any sense. On top of it, it just sounds really cool. Everybody, Mag and the guys, agreed that it’s a cool name. 

As far as we understand, in Rock Justice you are responsible for music, and Magali writes lyrics. Is she free to write about any topic she wants, or do you make your own suggestions or corrections?

Oh, no! She pretty much has carte blanche, she can pretty much do whatever he wants. Sometimes, just sometimes, I would go like, “Maybe you can use a different word over there. Maybe don’t sing ‘rose’ but sing ‘Harley Davidson’ or something”. (everybody laughs) “Chicks Can’t Rock” was an idea of mine, but just that sentence. I thought it was funny, with my background, you know - I’ve played in a couple of bands, and they all had female singers. I’m still with Doro of course. I thought it was funny, and Mag thought it was funny too. She came up with really cool lyrics for it, a bit of a winky-eye. Obviously a lot of chicks can rock! (laughs)

How did you get Doro involved in the song “First In Line”? As far as we understand, it was actually Magali who sent her a video message asking to contribute…

The thing is long before Magali came up with that idea, I already thought that asking Doro to participate in a song would be a good idea to get some extra attention. But then I thought, “I don’t want that, this is my project, and I wanna do it on my own, without help like that”. For me that kind of ended all that thought. I didn’t want to ask Doro, I didn’t even talk about it. The song was actually finished already, there was a version without Doro when Mag finished it. Then she called me, she said, “Bas, I have this idea!” The lyrics of this song are about our legends, legendary singers, musicians, rockers, the old ones, that are already gone, like Dio or Lemmy, or - you name them, and she said, “Doro is like a link between the older generation and the newer generation. It would be awesome to have Doro on that song, let’s make a duet out of it!” I said, “Well, Mag, I thought of asking Doro to do something on the album long ago, and I don’t really wanna ask her. But if you wanna ask her, go ahead. Just record a video, and I’ll show it to her”. That’s what happened – Mag recorded a video, I showed it to Doro, and Doro, she’s super-cool, she was very enthusiastic about it immediately. She said, “Of course, Bas, of course, I’ll do that”. That’s how that happened in the end. Not my idea – Mag’s idea. (giggles)

In the videos for “First in Line” and “You Know Better” we can also see a second guitarist, the guy named Guido van den Brink, but as far as we understand he is not playing on the album. How did he end up on the filming set?

Guido is a very old friend of mine. He was more involved in the technical part of the recording process: he actually recorded me. He plays guitar, and we thought it would be fun to have him in those videos. It was already clear that he wouldn’t be joining the band, because he has his business, he’s never pursued a job in the music scene. He’s fine being a hobby guitarist, but we thought it was fun to have him in those videos, because in a way he was a big part of the process. I find it pretty hard and frustrating to record myself, to do it all by myself, and it kind of naturally grew that way that he said, “Hey Bas, I can help you out, I can record you, that’s no problem”. 

The album is not very long, only eight songs. Did you intentionally make it short, just like many records in the 80s? Or is it just all the songs you and Magali have written so far?

No-no, the songs on the album are a mix of the oldest and the newest stuff and everything in between. We did it intentionally, because why does it have to be 12 songs or 14 songs or whatever? Let’s make it short, swift, punchy, and to the point. There’s plenty of songs, we could have done a double album with a whole lot of more songs. But we talked about it and discussed -what songs would be cool for the first album? What do we have? And we cherry picked these eight from all the songs we had. Not all the songs had lyrics yet, it all came kind of natural, and we came to the conclusion that we want to keep it short. 

How did you get a record deal with Fireflash? Why do you think they are the best label for Rock Justice?

Coincidentally both Mag and I knew Markus Wosgien, the owner of the label. We had both known him for a long time already, but we didn’t know that of each other. I just always felt that Markus would be perfect for us. He’s a really enthusiastic music lover, he loves the scene, he loves the work that he does, every time we meet him at a gig or a festival he’s always enthusiastic. He’s worked for a lot of bigger labels, so he has a lot of connections and contacts, he really knows how to do a good job, and he’s just a really sweet cool guy. I don’t know if I mentioned the name or Mag, but we found out that we both knew him, and we both had the same ideas about Markus. So it was really natural to contact him, and he was very enthusiastic about our project immediately. He really wanted to work with Magali, he already did with Beautiful Sin, it was released on… oh, I forgot the label’s name, but Markus was working on that label back then (AFM Records – ed.). Mag knew him from that, and I knew him from my time with Doro, I saw him really often. He was pretty much into it immediately when I spoke to him first and I mentioned, “Hey, I’m doing this project with Mag” – he was already sold, and he said, “Let’s do it!”

In the press release announcing your deal with Fireflash you mention “old-school rock values” that Rock Justice has. Can you share a bit more about those values? Do you feel like something is missing in rock music today?

Yeah, kind of. For instance, I miss the riffs in stuff. Nowadays it seems it’s more about very fleshy guitar solos, but rhythm guitars are a bit bland or something. All those old bands, all those old cool songs – you just hear that riff, and you immediately know, “Ah, it’s that song!” I often miss that in more modern metal stuff. I don’t really think about it too often. The music of Rock Justice is a mix of all the old stuff that I really like, and it doesn’t really matter which exact style of hard rock or metal it belongs to. It is an accumulation of all the stuff that I’ve heard, that I like, that I grew up with. I just mix it all it my head, and when I start writing a song, I’m not thinking in a certain direction. I don’t construct songs like, “Now I want to do something like this” or “Now I want to do something like that”. I start writing, and what comes out, comes out. For me that’s also kind of rock justice – let it go, do whatever feels right, and if it rocks, that’s OK. 

This leads us to the next question that everybody asks these days – what do you think about the use of artificial intelligence in music?

(laughs) I’ve just had a discussion about that today. The possibility to pick up one instrument can be kind of handy when we’re figuring out a new song. It helps, it speeds up the process - instead of listening to a part of the song in time, you can put on this AI thing and say, “Let me hear the guitars”, and you will have to listen to it ten times maybe instead of a gazillion times to hear what’s going on. But except for as a helpful tool, I totally despise it, to be honest. It’s much broader than just music. I think it’s horrible for art in general. You can talk really long about this stuff, but I totally dislike this AI thing. It’s horrible to have those AI-generated songs on streaming services, and I’m not even talking if it sounds good or not. Maybe it does sound really good, maybe it will get even better in the future, but in the end it makes the actual persons kind of unnecessary. If people stop caring if it’s AI-generated or generated by an actual band or person… I don’t even wanna think about it. (laughs) I think it will make us dumber too if we stop using our own creativity. The human nature, the imperfection - that’s what makes it perfect in the end, I guess. If a tree looks perfect, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect in every detail, not 100 percent symmetrical, not every leaf is exactly the same, every branch is equally long as the one on the other side. There’s perfection in imperfection, and it gives spice to life and art.

Apart from Rock Justice, you continue playing with Doro and in After Forever. How are you able to be in several bands at the same time and be able to give 100 percent to each of them?

It’s very hard and it’ll be very interesting to see how it’s gonna work out. (laughs) It’s a bit of a circus, I need to work on my juggling act, I guess. (everybody laughs) Anyway, with After Forever we’re not planning that much. It will be cool to do more stuff in the future, but at the moment we’re taking it really slow. We did two shows last year, this year we’re doing four shows in South America, and we haven’t even discussed what we’re doing next after South America. I think we will go do the shows, find out if it’s still as much fun as it was last year, and then we’ll start figuring out what we wanna do next year - or not. (laughs) Doro is going to be a bit more busy in the upcoming years, I think. It was a bit quiet on the live show aspect, because Doro’s mom wasn’t doing that well in the past couple of years, and Doro needed to spend much more time at home with her mom. We didn’t do longer tours, we didn’t do as many shows as we could. It’s very comprehensible, of course, in this case. Unfortunately, her mama passed away a couple of months ago, but it does mean that Doro can do more live work in the upcoming years. Doro is gonna be busy, After Forever - I don’t know, and somewhere in there I want to fit Rock Justice. We definitely want to take this music to the stage, it’s absolutely the music that needs to be played live.

Does that mean that nothing is planned for Rock Justice in terms of live performances?

No, not. For this year, our agendas are too full. The plan is to get live stuff up and running by the end of the year, and by that time I also hope to get some shows booked. It’s definitely a plan for 2027. 

Speaking about Doro, we interviewed her many years ago and we asked her if she ever had any bad experiences with fans at her live shows. She was like, “No, never”, and she was quite surprised by the question. In your opinion, what is her secret behind having such a warm and heartfelt relationship with fans? Not many performers in rock or metal have that.

She’s just a sweetheart. And she loves the fans. I can actually tell you for a fact that it’s really true. They are her life. Of course, she owes her career to them, and I guess she wants to return the favor in a way. She gets a lot of energy from that; she gives a lot of energy, but she also gets a lot of energy back. It’s just the way she is - she’s amazing, she’s just a genuine sweetheart. Also as a boss, she’s super nice. (laughs) 

In the pandemic times, Doro was the first rock or metal performer to do shows in front of people sitting in their cars, so-called drive-in concerts. What were your impressions from those shows?

It sucked balls! (everybody cracks) It was horrible, it’s definitely something you wouldn’t want to do unless in a situation like that. We were really grateful that we were able to do it, and in that sense, of course, it was awesome that we were able to do that. Of course, we had fun playing, and I guess the audience also enjoyed it, but it’s only in that given situation, and let’s hope we’ll  never have to face anything like that again. It’s not nice playing for people sitting in cars meters away or sitting on beach chairs, we even had that. It was cool that we were able to do stuff, the fans were happy to have something, but other than that, it wasn’t fun at all. 

How do you like the current state of the music industry? Quite a lot of musicians say it has gotten worse if we compare it to the times before the pandemic…

It’s definitely gotten worse in several ways, I think. Everything is more expensive. To put on a show or a tour, traveling has become more expensive, and also finding good people. I guess most bands will probably say the same. The tour bus industry had a problem: so many drivers quit their job and started working on regular buses, they figured like, “Hey, it’s actually cool - I get to go home every day, I don’t have an idiot band in the back that’s going on tour for weeks!” (laughs) A lot of people were gone - sound engineers, roadies, technicians, a lot of good people disappeared from the scene. The good ones that remain had so many job opportunities, so everywhere people started asking for more money, more pay, and not only it got difficult to find people, but it also got difficult to pay people, at least if you’re a smaller band. If you’re a big band, of course, the money is there. Luckily for Doro it wasn’t an issue, but I know there’s quite some bands that have struggled with finding the right people to work for them. 

Rock Justice on the Internet: https://www.rockjustice.band/ 

Special thanks to Markus Wosgien (Fireflash Records) for arranging this interview

Interview: Roman Patrashov, Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Promotional photo and images courtesy of Fireflash Records
Live photos by Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
June 26, 2026
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