Poseydon
You Always Keep Improving

04.09.2026

Belgian death/thrash metallers Poseydon started back in 1992, but you would never tell that looking at singerTom Lenaerts and guitarist Leander Karageorgos, whom I got to talk to at the cozy press area of Alcatraz Festival, also in Belgium. Tom might be a bit older than I am, but Leander surely not. The thing is the band’s founding guitarist Alain De Block was not available for interviews on that day. But even with him being absent, our conversation turned out lively and interesting, as far as I’m concerned. We hot to discuss the band menmbers, their latest album “Time Is a River And The Waters Are Red”, as well as the situation on the Belgian metal scene.

First of all, could you please introduce yourselves? because I'm not very good at names, and I will have yet to transcribe the interview. 

Tom: My name is Tom, I'm the singer of Poseydon. 
Leander: My name is Leander, I'm one of the two guitarists of Poseydon. 

I guess none of you are founding member of the band who started it in 1992. Сould you please tell me briefly how you got to the band and how long you have been playing there? 

Leander: Basically, Alain was the founding member. He's still in the band, he’s basically our grandpa. And then quite some years later, I came into the band because there had been some shifts. I've been in the band for about seven to eight years, something like that. And Tom is in the band for, I'm gonna ask you too…
Tom: Almost six.
Leander: Six already? 
Tom: Yeah, 2020 when Covid came. My former band, we quit. And I got a call from a friend of mine, he says, “Hey, a band I know, they're looking for a new singer, maybe you want...” “I'll give it a try.” So we made an appointment for a rehearsal. It was like, “Okay, we're gonna try this.” They sent me, I think, three or four songs. It was like, “Okay, we're gonna do this.” And the second rehearsal was one year later because all the Covid shit. 
Leander: And the funny thing actually is, the moment he came for the rehearsal, I wasn't even there. I never played with Tom before the first gig I think. 
Tom: Yeah, one rehearsal I guess.
Leander: Maybe we had some rehearsals, but yeah, basically I wasn't there with the first rehearsal. Anyway, we get along just fine. 

I must really congratulate you on the show you did this morning…

Tom: Thank you. 

…because there was such a crowd. It was quite hard to me just to get close to the stage inside the tent. So how do you feel after the show?

Tom: You know, you play on a Belgian festival as a Belgian band, so you know there are going to be some people because you know people and they want to come and support you a little bit. But we came on stage and then, yeah, it was fully packed. It was like, oh, yeah, this is cool. And then I think two or three songs into it people start dancing in the front, and it's like, okay this is gonna be epic. It gives you more energy on stage when you see people enjoying themselves.

Yeah, I completely understand it.

Leander: That's a fact. It just doesn't matter whether it's a large gig or a smaller one. If it's a bar, for example, and people are having fun with the band, you're feeling like you are wanted. That's what we do it for. Over here it was nice, there was a large crowd, fantastic. But people were enjoying themselves and that's the most important thing as a motivation and that’s why we do it really. In my opinion it was a great experience. 

I really enjoyed the show and actually I was wondering - how intensively do you tour guys? Do you play gigs around Belgium or also all over Europe? 

Tom: We do play a lot of gigs in Belgium and we're looking for shows outside of Belgium, more particularly maybe Germany or further to the east. We are talking with a guy who wants to get us to countries like Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. Yeah, we'll see what comes. 
Leander: Well yeah, we would be enjoying it, I'm quite sure. We're not too demanding, we just like to have fun, we like to play our music as we like to play it. And we're not too much interested in what other people think about it, which, in my opinion, makes it a good hobby, where we can have a lot of fun. And that's the most important thing - having fun with all those people trying to get towards us and trying to just see our gigs. 

Do you both have full-time jobs? What do you do for living?

Tom: Actually, I'm a welder. A self-employed welder. For me, it's easier to leave for a gig or a tour or whatever. I make my own hours, so...
Leander: For me it's a little bit more difficult. I'm a full-time dad of two children. And I also still have a wife. Next to that I'm also an instructor for rescue and working at heights, rescue from a confined space. Basically I'm a training bitch, meaning that pretty much all the year I'm booked for trainings. Mainly only the festival season remains for doing gigs - apart from the weekends, then we can do some weekend gigs. That's some sort of the cause why we're very often playing close to Belgium. Because yeah, you need to be able to manage all those gigs, and you need to be able to manage your family, which is also important. Yeah, I'm sort of the bitch of the band. 

Does this leave you any time to rehearse, or do you practice at home? 

Leander: Yeah, we do. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's not enough. But we do try and normally we have rehearsals once every two weeks and in between we try to do something for ourselves which is what we all did I think for the festival as well. We try to be there for people who are willing to come and have a look at us. So yeah, we try our best but yeah, it's up to the people whether we succeed, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. So let's talk about your most recent album “Time is a River and the Waters Are Red”. I guess you were both involved in the recording process… 

Leander: We were. 

Could you please introduce the album to the Russian headbangers? I’m not sure if they’re quite familiar with your band and its output.

Tom: We released the album (“Through the Gates of Hatred and Aversion”, 2023) before this, and all the songs were already done when I joined the band. I only put my own voice into it but all the songs they were ready for recording. With this album we worked on the songs together, more as a band. We had a different approach this time because we recorded all the guitars just clean: no distortions, no effects, just clean guitar…

DI, direct input?

Tom: Yeah, direct input and then we took everything and gave it away (to the sound engineer – ed.), like, “You make something of this”. And we are very happy with the result

Is it a kind of studio you went to with the direct input signals and all the stuff for mixing? Maybe it’s famous in Belgium…

Tom: No, no. Actually, guitars were recorded at home and I went to a good friend of mine, I worked with him for…this is the fourth album I have worked with him, my former band also had him, just for the vocals. But he's not only recording my vocals, he's always been a bit of a coach for me. And at the moment I'm recording, he thinks like, “Maybe we can do it this way. You want to try it?” Okay, we try it. “Yeah, that part, maybe we should try it like that”. Okay, we're gonna do that. He’s more of a coach to me than the guy who’s just recording my shit. 
Leander: Which is a very important part of making the songs, isn't it? 
Tom: For me, he’s my own producer. 

You've just said that you joined the band when the songs had already been written. But what about the vocal parts? Did you come up with them yourself or were they already prepared for the recording, like, were the melodies already written?

Tom: They were already prepared, but it's like, okay, this is what we have, but you do your own thing. Sometimes there were some funny conversations with Alain, because Alain, our other guitar player, had recorded them at home with his own voice. Not really singing but just so you know a little bit about what... 

The rhythm and the melody. 

Tom: Yeah. And afterwards I did some pre-recordings at home and he was like: 
- Tom, you have forgotten some lines to sing here. 
- Alain, no. 
- Yeah, you...
- No. 
- But you... 
- No. You told me I could do my own thing. So it's gonna be like this. 
- Okay. 
Leander: Apart from that, Alain is the most wonderful, admirable musician you could imagine. He founded this band in 1992, and he has his own visions which are often very accurate and very, yeah, just... unimaginable. As a guitarist I'm like, what did you come up with in this case? But still there should be some artistic freedom and you should be able to adjust it a little bit and that's sometimes a little bit difficult if someone is owning a certain song. You should discuss it a little bit and find out what the best way is to actually bring this song to completion. And the best way is to just work together as a band and allow everyone to have their own artistic freedom where you can sort of bring in your own piece of, yeah, how should we call it? Should we call it art? Yeah, it's art. 

It's art. And what about the guitar recording? I play guitar in a couple of local bands myself, so I know that sometimes one guy records all the rhythm parts and the other guy records solos. What was your approach to the guitar recording? 

Leander: Basically, we record everything three times. Even though we know they don't need it, but we just want them to have the best parts. So we record every song three times, clean, where we try to approach it in the best way. There's still even during the recording, there's room for improvement, when we start a discussion, like, okay, maybe we should try it this way, try it the other way, which also brings some problems in the end of the production. Anyway, we still try to make it better than it was. On the former album there are a few songs written by me on my own. On the next album there was some repertoire which was still with Alain, where I was like, okay, these are good songs, let's just play them together and try and make the best of it. So we were just working on it a little bit during the whole progress -during rehearsals, but also during recording to get the best outcome that we could do at that moment. I'm pretty sure that we can still get a better outcome but that's what we're working at. That's why we are still trying to get better and better and better. 
Tom: You always keep improving.
Leander: Yeah, that's what you should do, isn't it?

Yeah, and as far as I know, it's just the third full-length album for the band, which is not so much for a band with such a long history. What are your future plans as far as recordings are concerned? Do you have the ideas of some new stuff?

Tom: I think Alain has already come up with an idea for a song for the next album…
Leander: Multiple ones. 
Tom: Whenever he thinks of something, he records it at home. Is it one riff? Is it a part of a song? And then he goes like, “Okay, we're gonna check. Okay, I can make a song with this”. And he comes to rehearsals like: "Hey, I have made a new song. Completely. You can listen to it." And then it's sometimes like: “Ah, maybe that's a bit too long. Should we cut it? Or maybe change it a bit?” But mostly Alain comes with complete songs, even lyrics.

Oh. 
Tom: Yeah.
Leander: He's old! (laughs)
Tom: He's old, he’s had so much time to find out...

For me, I find some similarities between your music and Testament of the 90s when they were playing a kind of groovy death/thrash. What do you think about it and what are your other sources of inspiration, some bands you admire? Because it's just my comparison.

Tom: Because of my voice, it’s more like the old Sepultura. But Testament has been named a few times. 
Leander: Yeah, it's not a surprise because we hear that a lot. When it comes to the inspiration, I'm a big Vader lover, it's Polish death metal. Apart from that, I love Kreator, which constitutes this sort of thrash/death metal mix that IS Poseydon… But basically it's still Alain who started it, he started this idea, and I feel okay with the idea, and I think Tom also does. Even though Tom has his own way of approaching it, he's got his hardcore background which makes it a nice grunt in this music which in our opinion fits together. It's just up to the people whether they like it and and that's what it's all about. We do what we like and that's the most important thing in my opinion. 

I also have a kind of questions because I was thinking that the founding member will also be interviewed. But let's try it anyway. Why is the band called Poseydon, and why is there a misspelling in the name, I mean “y” instead of “i”?

Leander: It's not a tricky question. I have Greek roots, my name is Leander Karageorgos. And it is a misspelling in the name, you're completely correct about that. Why it's called Poseydon is - what I've heard from Alain - because his wife has some Greek roots or some affiliations with Greek mythology and stuff like that. They were just searching for a name and they thought like, “Poseidon is a nice concept, let's go for that one”. That's basically how it got to its point. But indeed you're completely right, there's a huge spelling mistake in it... But anyways, it sort of differentiates us from the other bands. We're all happy with it. 

Oh, I was just thinking it's kind of like Def Leppard or Led Zeppelin… But I don't think that the lyrics of the band have a lot to do with Greek mythology.

Tom: Some of them do but I think the main thing in our lyrics is life, mostly life. Just things that go through Alain's, Leander's, Jeroen's or my mind. They're put on a paper and it's not... Okay, we have the name Poseydon, but the songs are not about Greek mythology or anything. Some do, because on the new album we have a song that's called “Poseidon”, with the right spelling. But in the beginning they were just looking for a name and Poseidon seemed a cool name and they said, “Okay, we go for that”. That's how it started. It's not a tricky question, it's pretty easy. It was just like: “Okay, that's a cool name, we're gonna do that”.

Tom, you have been doing music for quite a long time. When did you personally start singing or playing in bands? Because my next question is connected to that. 

Tom: I started in 1998, I think, or 1999, actually as a bass player in a band and then our singer had to quit because of his job. And because I knew most of the songs already and we were rehearsing just with the four of us without a singer and I was like, “Okay most songs I know, so I will sing at rehearsal and I will see”. I think about five, six maybe seven rehearsals it was like, “Why are we searching for a singer? Why don't you play bass and sing just like at rehearsal?” “Okay, we can do that”. So I started as a bass player/singer at that point. And when the band quit, I always liked to move around on stage. And when you're playing bass and you have to sing... 

Yeah, it's quite tough. 

Tom: So it was like, when I'm joining a band, I otherwise go for the bass or I go singing. And then some friends of mine started a band, and it was like: “We need a singer”- “I want to try” – “Okay, you can try”. And from that point my bass has been hanging on the wall. It stays there, eating dust. And I'm just the guy behind the microphone.

Did you take any lessons? 

Tom: No, actually no. I’m just self-taught. 

What about the Belgian metal scene? I mean, has it changed significantly since the 90s? 

Tom: Yeah, yeah. In my opinion, during the last 10 years, the quality of the bands has improved a lot. When you see festivals like “Alcatraz”, they have, I don't know… 
Leander: Around 30 Belgian bands. 
Tom: Yeah, 30 Belgian bands. When you see the level they are on, yeah it levels up. In the past 10 years Belgian bands have really leveled up.

Yeah, it's cool! Well, I guess we're running out of time, so my final question as always is to say something nice to the Russian headbangers community. Maybe one day, I really hope, you will come to our country when this situation improves. 

Tom: I really hope one day we can play at Russia. I really do. 
Leander: We would love to be there to play for you guys. Yeah, at the meantime, just keep on going on with whatever you're doing. Never give up the fight and keep going on, man. And yeah, just thanks a lot, guys. 

Poseydon on the Internet: https://www.facebook.com/godoftheseaandmetal

Special thanks to Mike De Coene (HardLife Promotion) for arranging this interview

Interview by Paul Vlasov
Photos courtesy of HardLife Promotion
August 8, 2026
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