So first impressions -
Loved MindMaze and Beyond the Black, and I think Helion Prime.
Secondary thoughts - based on a number of suggestions (especially compared with my own), it appears I lean much more towards the ‘rock’ end of the spectrum than the ‘metal’ … to the point that I don’t know what genre I’m really describing - I feel there is something fundamentally different between Within Temptation/Kamelot/(modern) Nightwish/Delain/Evanaesence/After Forever and groups like Ancient Bards/Symphony X/Amberian Dawn/Rhapsody.
Well Symphony X and Rhapsody of Fire lean heavily into the Neo Classical style, with obvious influences from Yngwie Malmsteen. Kamelot, Epica, and Nightwish do borrow from some of the musical influences, but bring less of the shred into them. There is a lot of crossover, and a lot of companion work. However they do tend to share in slightly different circles.
Here’s a fun one. The current singer for Nightwish was originally from After Forever, who had some members splinter off to form Epica, who has had bidirectional collaborations with Kamelot, all of whom have had someone work with Ayreon at some point, as has Sharon van Adel, of Within Temptation, who has appeared on Delian as well as former Nightwish singer Tarja Turinen, and Delian has shared guitarists with Epica and singers with Kamelot, and…
Well you get the idea. And, for the record I knew all that off hand, except the Delian bits.
And every time you bring up Evanesence I give you a side eye.
Hehe, I was actually surprised above that so many people actually did like them - I know they don’t fall into this genre, though in my head I equate them with WT in many ways. Like I said, musical genres are… flimsy. And/or my musical depth is inch deep so it is hard for me to describe preferences.
All this talk about Symphonic Power Metal, and yet nobody has mentioned the first two Avantasia albums?
Avantasia was formed by Tobias Sammet (of Edguy) around 2000 I think, and the project always includes a ton of musicians and vocalists from other bands.
The first two albums (The Metal Opera Part 1 and Part 2) are my favorites. I believe there have been 7 of them so far, with each release becoming more popular, but also more commercial at the same time. I still like the later stuff, but not nearly as much as those first two classically-influenced albums, which still manage to blow me away each time I play them.
Here’s “The Metal Opera Part 2”, a great place to start, with a very strong opening track.
I’ll post more later when I can get some pictures uploaded, but Fabio was singing with Angra on the cruise. He did a pretty good Andre Matos impersonation. Also on the cool guest vocal topics, Alissa from Arch Enemy joined Kamelot to do Shagrath’s part on March of Mephisto.
Saw some great shirts I need to track down. One had a picture of Carl Sagan and had the words Hail Sagan in the back. Saw a Municipal Waste shirt with Trump blowing his brains out and something about walls on the back.
Speaking of symphonic metal, what are some good ones with female vocals? I know the obvious like Sister Sin, Halestorm, Lacuna Coil, etc. I know there are others I’m missing.
You may be being funny, but just in case, @Mark_Crump, scroll up through the last 30 posts or so cascading down from ineffablebob a week or two back; tons of great symphonic metal, with plenty female-fronted! It was like a theme week or something :-D
I keep forgetting one of our number was on 70K Tons, you lucky bastard :-D. We demand pictorial sacrifice!!
In order to feel like I’m contributing, I’m dropping Magnum on y’all. They’re really more prog rock than metal, but vocalist Bob Catley contributes to projects like Ayreon and Avantasia that have been mentioned upthread, so he counts, dammit!
If anyone ever has a chance and money to go on 70,000 Tons, don’t hesitate as it is a great experience. Talking with people who went with the quad cabin and the cost is down to around $700 a person, but we sprung for a two person cabin with a balcony that was closer to $2k a person. It is completely non-stop with bands starting at 10 AM, going to 5 AM and then karaoke after that every day for 4 days. This is on top of band meet and greets, clinics, Superbowl parties, and lots of eating. Based on our pedometer, we walked about 10,000 steps a day as we seemed to cross the length of the ship every 45 minutes getting from venue to venue.
These guys were pretty fucking amazing with a great stage presence and crazy high energy vibe. The crowd response was so great that the singer was a bit overcome and had a hard time expressing himself in English. I had heard them before when they came up on random radio while listening to Subway to Sally, but didn’t pay much attention to them at the time. It was a running gag for us that it wouldn’t be a complete day if we didn’t run into the singer at least 3 times that day. He was everywhere, took a lot of time just to chat with random groups of people, and super friendly.
Another band with great energy and crowd response. I had one of their albums before the cruise and really enjoyed the music. My SO hadn’t heard them before and was blown away by the show. They somehow managed to make a cover of Britney Spear’s Toxic awesome and the crowd turned the mosh pit into a conga line that wrapped through the entire venue. That conga line for some reason was lead by a man in a banana suit. We did the snorkeling shore excursion with the Trollfest singer and he was a pretty cool guy. For the last show of the cruise, they took over one of the hot tubs and were crowd surfing with 5 guys in the hot tub.
Other Cool Moments:
-Turning a corner a bit too fast and almost being knocked over by Chuck Billy. Although I was unable to locate Alex Skolnick.
-Seeing Christofer Johnsson of Therion in a neck brace eating ice cream on the promenade. The only meet and greet we ended up making was with Therion and forgot to ask what he did to his neck. We also ran into bassist and drummer for Therion at the airport and chatted with them at the curbside check-in.
-Getting to the second Arch Enemy show late so that we were behind the band and being able to stare at Alissa’s ass in skin tight leather the whole time.
-Seeing Amorphis, Therion, Arch Enemy, and Orphaned Land twice. All great bands that I loved before the cruise and great shows. I’ll see if I have the energy to see Amorphis again next month when they come through town.
-Met 5 other people from the Denver area coming back from the cruise.
That sounds glorious! It would be so cool to enjoy that party boat atmosphere with so many bands and fans… And a friend and I are driving out to the Amorphis show nearest here, though they’re apparently not headlining that night…
Yeah, it was a pretty crazy party atmosphere and costumes were a big thing. Sadly, we missed Powerglove’s two 4 AM shows, but heard there was a mosh pit with all the costumed people. I think there was a dinosaur, a yoshi, some pokemon, banana suit guy, pink pig onesie guy, and a stormtrooper. Breakfast of champions for the cruise seemed to be a large can of Fosters and scrambled eggs.
So, it’s not exactly metal, but let there be no doubt, between Ba’alberith’s background in metal bands and the visuals and mood of the album and related artwork, GosT’s Non Paradisi is metal as fuck.
Which is why I was pumped as shit to see him performing two nights ago in Chapel Hill! Lemme tell you guys, for an electronica artist, motherfucker puts on a great show. Seeing so many metal dudes there–some in full battle jackets–was awesome, too :-D
I didn’t see the show, but based on the headlines surrounding Megadeth & Metallica’s forrays at the Grammys this year, it was more or less a disaster from beginning to end for anything metal related.
Huh, I never care about the Grammys but this was interesting enough to look up, so here’s the info on the Metallica mic issues:
Here’s what some fan did to clean up the audio (must have sourced in some other recording’s vocals):
Not bad. I mean, it’s still sad that the best that the BIG MUSIC AWARDS SHOW can do for metal is play Metallica again and again… but, at least it’s present?? I dunno, I’m looking for a silver lining anyways.
Anyone else enjoy the mad scramble of getting Metallica tickets this morning? Annoyingly you could only buy 2 at a time and like usual it was waiting queues and Bad Gateway requests. I got some 2 reserved and 2 general admission for my sister. The only VIP package where you got to meet the band was TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED dollars. Limit 12 per show. Seriously?
Last night in Richmond, I hit up the Alcest/The Body/Creepers show. I hadn’t heard much from the openers before, though I did wind up liking Creepers quite a bit (they’re like what would happen if Hawkwind took Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to space on the back of a really loud amp), though the Body is just a little too avant garde for me.
But man, Alcest was just absolutely fucking incredible from beginning to end. Niege, of course, is some sort of blackgaze angel descended from god himself to grace us with True Beauty, but the entire touring band is just a pleasure to watch and listen to, and in that tiny, crowded, weird-art-bedecked venue, with cheap smoke machine vapors mingling with vape-dude-vapors and the smell of food from the bar in back, the sounds of Alcest just utterly encircled those of us present. By the end, as the entire stage was shrouded in blue-tinged haze and the kneeling form of Niege was the last barely visible thing up there, as the final chords were struck, I damn near wept. Goddamn I love this band.
Sounds like a great show, @ArmandoPenblade! Would love to see Alcest, though yeah, I agree about The Body being too out there for me. Their album No One Deserves Happiness got a lot of praise last year, but I couldn’t even make it all the way through before turning it off.
Anyway, here’s another batch of the recent releases that I’ve particularly enjoyed. Oh, and I mentioned Beyond the Black and AfterTime in the symphonic discussion a while back, but they are also new releases that I’ve been listening to a lot of. And Undrask continues to be get a lot of listens – probably my favorite of the year so far.
Persefone - Spiritual Migration (prog death)
The Great Old Ones - EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy (black)
Nyktophobia - Fallen Empire (melodeath)
Balfor - Black Serpent Rising (melodic black/death)
Pimea Metsa - No Blood, No Glory (melodeath)
Kairon; IRSE! - Ruination (prog)
