The nice thing about our job is that you become involved in so many different things. One moment you are huddled around a table with the CEO of a major insurance company, and the next minute you suddenly need to familiarise yourself with the international trade in toys.

Yet the situation could also be very different. For example VIC Records is a customer of ours through whom we learned in a very short space of time everything there is to know about ‘death metal’ music and its related subsidiary genres, such as black, heavy, power, speed, doom and pagan metal. In addition to terms which are normal to us, such as ‘distributor’, ‘royalties’, ‘master tape’ and ‘copyright’, our legal documents for this record company are full of words and names such as JHVA ELOHIM METH, Far Beyond Divine Horizons and Triumph of a Dying Culture. The contracts are almost poetic.

At present VIC Records is gaining a new lease of life from Roel van Reijmersdal, the former founder of the underground magazine, Mortician Mag, which enjoyed fame in the 1980s and 1990s, and the person who discovered bands such as Katatonia and Hammerfall, amongst others. He is constantly signing new and established bands in Sweden, the United States, Russia, Hungary and Greece, amongst other places. De Gier & Stam ensures that nothing goes wrong in this process. One simply cannot contemplate a scenario in which a band full of irate Vikings becomes famous to be followed by the discovery of a small error in a contract. The owner of VIC Records is also acting as an ambassador for Evert van Gelderen.