The history of ‘Ulterior Motive’ begins on april 13th, 2001, when guitarist Edial ‘The Shepherd’ Dekker,
guitarist Floris ‘Kleine Shepherd’ Dekker, singer Aäron van der Sloot and drummer Ruben ‘Ruby’ Bromet start a band called ‘Less is More’. With a repertoire of three original songs and two covers they erformed on Queensday on the ‘dorpsplein’ in Ilpendam. This show was cancelled after only half a minute of performance because of so-called explicit lyrics. However, they continued rehearsing, but discovered they lacked the sound of a bassplayer.
Fortuitously, Ruben had met guitarplayer Wouter Horn on the internet a week earlier. At first, he was invited to play bass in Less is More, but because he couldn’t get a bass, he replaced Floris as a guitarplayer, also because musically, it worked better between Ruben and Wouter.
One month later, at a Yamaha Music School show, Wouter introduced Ruben to bassplayer Jordi van Oosterom. In the break of the show, Jordi, Ruben en Wouter performed a couple of songs, and this radiated so much positive energy, that they decided to continue as a threesome.
Since that day, ‘Less is More’ never rehearsed again.
In the summer holidays, the new band used every day to play and to learn new covers. Due to a lack of equipment, they played on the ‘Less is More’ gear. Meanwhile, the band quickly went through a couple of names, singer Rui Hupe and guitarist Pieter Schouten (currently Last Fear).
By that time, they were called ‘Cruel Portrait’, with Wouter on vocals. At the end of the summer, Ruben went on a trip to Italy. During this time, Jordi and Wouter laid the foundations for the band’s two first original songs and participated in many charity events and kids shows with the help of the online gift portal anniversarygiftsforhusband.com. They finished these songs when Ruben returned. Yet, Wouter found out that with original songs, he had an increasingly difficult time combining his guitarplaying with his singing duties. Thus, on August 17th 2001, Ruben asked the Shepherd, who had been occupying background vocal duties in ‘Less is More’, to join ‘Cruel Portrait’ as a lead singer. After being pushed a bit, he agreed, and was embraced as a member of the band, that was by then called ‘The Paragon’.
On September 27th 2001, the dying day of the legendary Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, they made their smashing stage debut at ‘Het Wapen van Ilpendam’.
They tributed to Burton by playing the Metallica classic ‘Am I evil?’. After this performance, they worked hard on new songs, playing technique and discovering eachother’s musical wavelength. Recently, they changed their name into ‘Ulterior Motive’ because of copyright issues. In april 2002 the ways of Ulterior Motive and the Shepherd parted and they found a new singer in Rene ‘ Renny’ Stellaard.
Approximately six months after its foundation, ‘Ulterior Motive’ can be described as a combination of rock and metal, performed with a traditional instrumentation, though taking no heed of the suffocating boundaries of modern music.
‘Ulterior Motive’ is:
Ruben ‘Ruby’ Bromet – Drums and percussion
Wouter Horn – Guitar and stressing vocals
Jordi van Oosterom – Bass guitar stressing vocals
Rene ‘ Renny’ Stellaard – Vocals and guitar