Author: TheMetalPigeon

December 4, 2012 2012, Finland, Insomnium, Melo-Death, Sentenced 2 Comments

Bearing the Torch: Insomnium Inherit the Legacy of Sentenced

 

A few weeks ago, I went to see Insomnium live here in Houston, on their opening slot on the Epica/Alestorm North American trek. It was my first time seeing them, and was the culmination of many months of anticipatory buildup for me, as I’d only really awakened my interest in the band this year through their excellent recent release “One For Sorrow” (that much to my shame, I missed upon its initial release in 2011). As the days drew nearer to the show, I was listening to the band’s entire discography on heavy rotation, at home, in the car, on the Ipod. There are few things better in metal than being able to see a band live during the period where you’ve just gotten into them, everything’s still a bit fresh, and that new found listener passion is still there. It makes the experience of seeing them live that much more powerful.

 

Insomnium were inspired live that night, playing in front of what I suspected was a larger audience than they really expected (the show started late and most of the Epica fans were already in attendance, a packed house actually). They only played six songs but the audience to the side and front of me were reacting as if they were the headliner — headbanging, throwing up the horns, hair flailing, sweat drops flying off in every direction, and shit eating grins pasted on our faces as I’m sure we made menaces of ourselves to the politely patient Epica and Alestorm fans that did their best to get out of the way. It was a great night, and I jammed them on the way back home as well — I couldn’t get enough. Still can’t.

 

 

 

Symmetry is an interesting thing. Alongside Insomnium, lately I’ve been finding myself listening again to albums by one of my favorite and now long defunct Finnish bands, Sentenced. I realized that the album that introduced me to those manic Finns was 2002’s The Cold White Light, a near perfect collection of songs that I can still listen to all the way through to this day and feel the same magic that I felt back in ’02. As such, there exists a neatly wrapped decade’s worth of time separating my introduction to both Sentenced and Insomnium, two Finnish bands that share more in common that just my personal anniversaries. What I loved about Sentenced was their ability to create beautifully melancholic melodic metal that despite its occasional tongue-in-cheekiness, could be extremely emotional at a very deep level. It wasn’t even about the lyrics, which were simple, effective and poignant, but more about the sweep and scope provided through the songwriting, and the uncanny ability of how something as normal as a guitar melody or solo could evoke feelings of loneliness and isolation.

 

 

 

Their songwriting could be poppy and hook laden to be sure, but still weighty, heavy and definitely not something that could be mistaken for light, alt-radio-rock. It was far too dark for that, there was a pervasive sense of gloom that permeated songs like “Killing Me Killing You”, “Drain Me”, “Cross My Heart and Hope to Die”, and “No One There”. Despite that feeling, those songs were filled with lyrical and musical beauty — take the latter for example, an elegiac pronouncement of remorse for an estranged relationship, and the reality of isolation, abject loneliness, and the feeling of despair at facing the prospect of life and death alone. Its buoyed along with melodic guitars, and an almost positive sounding chorus, yet it is perhaps the heaviest song the band ever wrote, its emotional weight immense.

 

 

Sentenced were a remarkable band, underrated to this day and worse of all, they seemed to call it quits just as they were achieving great things artistically. Their 2005 release. The Funeral Album, was their swan song and it was every bit as awesome as its predecessor. Miika Tenkula, their lead guitarist and primary songwriter, was the heart and soul of the band — and it was his voice that underscored nearly every song  they wrote. When he passed away in 2009, only thirty-four years young, I hardly found it shocking to read that he had a serious drinking problem that apparently got worse after the band ended. The raw emotion and pain within their music had to really come from somewhere true — sadly that is. I wondered if there would ever be a band that could provide me with that particular fix that Sentenced so effortlessly delivered. There is — I believe their countrymen in Insomnium are the spiritual successors to the musical legacy that Sentenced chose to leave behind.

 

Granted, Insomnium’s distinctly unique take on melodic death metal is a distinctly differing style from the crunchy, hooky metal of Ville Laihiala-era Sentenced, but the two bands share an essential atmosphere and spirit — perhaps something found within the Finnish personality itself. This time of year, as autumn colors itself everywhere, I typically long to listen to music that is perhaps a touch more sombre, earthy, gritty, and yes, melancholy. I find within tracks such as “Weighed Down With Sorrow” from 2009’s Across the Dark, an ethereal, haunting feeling as lead guitars seem to weep out melodic passages that convey far more emotion than any lyric could possibly hope to. Primary songwriter and guitarist Ville Friman seems to have this stuff in his blood — his guitar part that kicks in at the 3:20 mark of “Lay the Ghost to Rest” off One For Sorrow is breathtaking … its sheer simplicity; a wailing lonely guitar solo that ushers in a crushing wave of relentlessly heavy guitar riffage in one supreme, emotive sweep is the kind of watershed moment that you’ll hit repeat on a seven minute long song for without hesitation. His interplay with fellow guitarist Ville Vänni on that album’s title track, a slow, moody, tribal drum beat led doom monster is not only delicately intricate, like the best moments between Izzy and Slash, but displays a level of artistry that rises above the typical Maiden-esque guitar approach found in most melodic death metal (read: Gothenburg).

 

 

 

Setting aside music for a second, these two bands share similarities in other aspects of their art. Their booklet pages for The Cold White Light and The Funeral Album are filled with gorgeous photography of desolate arctic desert, serene Finnish countryside, the final booklet page of the latter featuring a photograph of silhouettes of birds in flight — striking when you consider the album art for Insomnium’s One For Sorrow. The overall art direction of both bands in terms of sleeve design and packaging, as well as other media such as music videos shows a tendency to lean towards understatement, and refined elegance — as well as a predilection to juxtapose songs full of complex human emotion against the backdrop of the simplicity of nature. I’m not sure this is on purpose, but regardless for some primal reason it really ties both bands together for me, and if its noticeable to a newcomer to Insomnium like myself, I’m sure others who have enjoyed both bands for awhile now have picked up on it too.

 

If you have never listened to Sentenced, or are even later getting to the Insomnium party than I am, you’d do yourself a favor by remedying both of those issues immediately. Both bands’ discographies are all over Spotify for free even, so you really have no excuse. If you think that what sounds like depressing listening isn’t really your cup of tea. then I again suggest listening to both bands. One more thing they both share is the inexplicable presence of what can only be inadequately described as a positive edge to their music — not in a dopey way, but in that sense that through listening to music that explores these types of emotions and sentiments, there’s a release or catharsis provided that you might not get in trying to cheer yourself up by listening to… I don’t know, Accept’s Russian Roulette (as stupidly fun as that album is). Both Sentenced’s and Insomnium’s elegiac, haunting lyrics and crushing, heavy power will break through you to expose those simple, deep, universal human emotions that most of us keep hidden, while simultaneously reassuring you with an indelible melodic sweep.

 

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFHd0oegYfs?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZMWKCgvaDY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

 

October 29, 2012 2012, Power Metal, Roy Khan, Thomas Youngblood 8 Comments

Kamelot – Silverthorn: Is It the Start or End of an Era?

Here we are, on the eve of the American release of Kamelot’s long anticipated new album Silverthorn, their first with new vocalist Tommy Karevik of Seventh Wonder, and only their third album in their career without the vocals of longtime frontman Roy Khan. Speaking of whom, for those of you who had read my article a few months back discussing the loss and legacy of Khan from the lineup, you’ll know that I expressed a healthy degree of skepticism about a Khan-less Kamelot — even though I have become a great admirer of Karevik’s work in Seventh Wonder. I said then that we wouldn’t be able to accurately determine the failure or success of Kamelot’s decision to partner with Karevik until we could listen to a complete full length. For a band that had suffered the departure of a major songwriter such as Khan, it could really be the only true test. I’ve only had Silverthorn for just under a week, but have had it on heavy rotation daily in that short amount of time. I figure for an album that I’m placing a tremendous amount of weight upon (some might say unreasonably so), it was only fair that I give it more than just the standard multiple listens.

 

I’ll start this off by declaring rather simply that this is the best Kamelot album on offer since 2005’s masterpiece The Black Halo. Karevik’s input as a new primary songwriting force alongside band leader/guitarist Thomas Youngblood and keyboardist Oliver Palotai has rejuvenated the Kamelot sound both into fresh sonic territory, as well as back to its classic Khan-led period.   Gone are the murky, downcast tones of predecessor Poetry for the Poisoned, and there is a togetherness, a continuity that 2007’s Ghost Opera sorely lacked. Those were good albums that had their share of gems apiece, but were slightly marred by a spotty collection of songs that either overreached musically or seemed undercooked melodically. But Silverthorn is not wholly immune from that lingering condition, as there are some tracks that seem unfulfilled and what one could describe as borderline filler, namely the albums title track, its lengthy album concluding trilogy epic “Prodigal Son”, and yes, its lead off single “Sacrimony” (of which in an earlier review of the track itself I hoped would prove to the weakest song on the album).

 

A couple comments about two of these three troublemakers: First of all, until its last few minutes “Prodigal Son” is a bit of an all over hazy mess, and makes me wish that Youngblood would let go of the need to come up with these types of self-contained “trilogies” that he’s been doing in a fruitless attempt to equal or better their great “Elizabeth Trilogy” from the classic Karma album. “Elizabeth” worked because it was in essence three separate equal-length songs of varying degrees of awesome. “Prodigal Son” suffers in that it seems as though kernels of potentially good ideas were stitched together with atmospheric keyboard orchestration to create an illusion of cohesion. It didn’t work, you can see the seams and to be blunt about there’s nothing particularly epic that stands out overall. Moving on to the title track “Silverthorn”, we come upon the most blatant instance of filler on the album, a bland chorus that unless I’m mistaken is essentially a watered down retread of “Moonlight” from The Black Halo (seriously, even in the way the choirs are arranged, go listen to them back to back). Its not a sin for bands to recycle familiar motifs or styles from older works but filler is filler and its gotta be called out. Finally its worth singling out the two pointless instrumentals that bookend the album on opposite sides — lets lose those for the next record guys, because unless they’re gonna be as great as the very lovely violin-y intro track “Solitaire” from Ghost Opera, I don’t want to hear them.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQVTk-z3Jw8&w=560&h=315]

 

 

What makes Silverthorn work however are the inclusion of solid, rocking, classic-Kamelot-styled tracks such as “Ashes to Ashes”, “Torn”, the pompous “Veritas”, and the gorgeous emotional swell of “My Confession”. Speaking of these as a group, they’re not all that far removed from the dark stylings of the past two albums, heavy chug-a-chug rhythm sections, richly dark keyboard arrangements and all. What makes them sound fresh and popping with energy is Youngblood’s purposeful shift back to a more cleaner, uplifting guitar tone and melodic approach that really harkens back to the best of their Khan era work. This singular element was sorely missing from most of the recent albums and its presence all over the majority of this album is smile inducing. “Ashes to Ashes” is an awesome mid-paced crunchy stomper, where Karevik’s nimble vocals provide clever nuance in a chorus that is sneakily catchy — this is the headbanger of the record. The hooky, multifaceted “My Confession” works not only because of the addictive keyboard riffs of Palotai, but the brightly soaring chorus guided by one of Karevik’s best performances that reaches into high registers yet never wavers in its smooth delivery.

 

 

But here’s what I’ve been really wanting to talk about, namely, what makes Silverthorn shine, the true gems of the album. There’s a handful here that start off with the hauntingly perfect “Song for Jolee”, which turned out to be the first song that Karevik and the band collaborated on, as well as being the driving force that led to his invitation to join to the band. This might sit right alongside Kamelot’s Khan-era ballad masterpieces, its that great. Delicate keys tinkle out the fragments of a melody over a bed of orchestration, and Karevik’s emotive vocals usher the song along in a sparse, elegant fashion, with deft, nimble melodies that are built upon the melodic twists and turns provided by the lyrics themselves — in other words, nothing sounds forced. Honestly I don’t know if Khan could do it any better, and while I hesitate to have to compare the two vocally, this is the first moment on the album where Karevik’s vocals sound completely his own. This isn’t to say that he’s ripping off Khan, but there are moments throughout the entirety of the album where he does sound strikingly similar in terms of phrasing. I’ll give him some leeway because for starters their voices are relatively similar, and secondly because the nature of Kamelot’s songwriting is going to naturally bring about memories of Khan. On “Song For Jolee”, Karevik establishes his voice as its own, and fans of Seventh Wonder will recall touches of his work in that band’s ballads.

 

The cascading refrain of “Falling Like the Fahrenheit” is perhaps the albums most rewarding moment; a rich, layered vocal that is impressive not only for guiding its effortless melodies over rather tricky words, but for the way that it seems to soar purely on the strength of the vocal phrasing — the sombre, stately pacing of the music underneath hardly shifts in tempo in transition from verse to bridge to chorus. The album’s most sublime moment however is the following track, the instant classic “Solitaire”, where a bracing, surging verse section launches you forward into the album’s most urgent, epic, melodically triumphant, and lyrically beautiful chorus — a moment where Karevik’s lyrics nearly match the sheer brilliance of the mighty Khan: “Sometimes when I’m out of reach / And sometimes when I’m there / That is when our souls agree and join in solitaire /Sometimes when my will to love has gone away / That is when I hear your name”. The joyous guitar riff that follows those words is Youngblood circa 2000-2005, a moment of indulgence in the sounds of the band’s past that now sound refreshing and vital.

 

 

One final note about Karevik, as I’m sure that most of the reviews online and in various media will focus on his vocals, and perhaps not so much on what he brings to the table as a songwriter in terms of vocal melodies and the quality of his lyrics. Those were the aspects of Roy Khan that really solidified my love of the band and were the things that I feared Kamelot would suffer from the most. Having been a recent convert to the great work Karevik has done in Seventh Wonder, in particular through their latest album, The Great Escape, I found that I was relatively pleased with his contributions to Silverthorn, albeit more for his choices in vocal melodies rather than sheer lyrical poetry. Don’t get me wrong, he delivers good lyrics overall, and in addition to the great lines of “Solitaire”, there’s a really excellent couplet in the chorus for “Song for Jolee” worth mentioning: “One look in the mirror to see / Whats real and fake, Jolee”. That’s Khan-esque in its simple, elegant, and evocative nature. But he does hit and miss throughout the album, for instance I didn’t find the lyrics of “Sacrimony” to be the best they could have been, and perhaps it was the rushed way that song was put together that resulted in that (it was reportedly the final song written for the album). All said, it was a fine effort by Karevik for the first time around, and knowing what he has done in Seventh Wonder gives me confidence that he will be even better on the next album. He might never replace Khan in that regard, the void is too great, but he seems to understand the level of quality that Kamelot fans demand, and maybe that’s all we should be asking of him as a lyricist, and as a vocalist.

October 19, 2012 2012, Melo-Death, Power Metal, Wintersun 2 Comments

Wintersun’s Time I: A Review Without Puns

I’m not going to get into a history lesson here on the maddeningly long span of time (don’t… just, don’t) and events that marked this album’s journey to this one day, when it has finally met its release date. I will however take a moment to put the release of Time I in perspective, in order to illustrate  just why the near Chinese Democracy-like series of delays and pratfalls surrounding the album’s creation are such a big deal. Wintersun’s only other album, their self-titled debut, was released on September 13th of 2004, and for those of you too young to remember, here’s a short list of stuff that’s worth mentioning: In 2004, there was no YouTube; MySpace was the height of social media; Facebook had not yet been opened to the general public; the first I-Phone was still years away; Twitter had not yet been dreamed of; the term “App” had not yet entered our popular vocabulary; the world had not heard of Barack Obama; George W. Bush was still serving his first term, and Dimebag Darrell (R.I.P.) was still alive and rocking.

 

In summary, 2004 was a long goddamned time ago and those of us who have been waiting the long wait for a follow up to that excellent debut should be forgiven for getting a bit agitated, annoyed, apathetic, and just plain “blah” over the years. Genuine enthusiasm is really hard to keep up for that long a time. It was noticeable that in the days following July4th, when the official release date was announced that fan response was muted overall, and even my own lack of excitement for the album came as a surprise. Maybe it was all just a subconscious lowering of expectations, or maybe it was just being realistic. But as expected you can’t dampen people’s curiosity for long, as the release date got closer and the Nuclear Blast hype generator was switched on, fan excitement and anticipation for this album has launched an upward trajectory in particular through social media. As the accolades from the European press pour in with all manner of praise and hyperbole, I find myself far more interested in the opinions of fellow fans who have had to bite the patience bullet all these years.

 

Time I features the first half of a promised eighty minutes of new Wintersun music painstakingly crafted by vocalist/guitarist Jari Mäenpää. The most noticeable thing that can be said about whats on offer here is that the original Wintersun blend of melodic death metal with a touch of power metal has been turned on its head. Gone are the guitar driven styles of the debut, where riffs and six string virtuosity were the meat and potatoes of the songs — on Time I ornately layered orchestral keyboard arrangements are at the forefront of everything. As a result this new sound Wintersun is very much epic power metal blended with a heavy shot of melo-death. Yes there are still some heavy, punishing guitar riffs (in a crunchier tone than you’ll be expecting), but there’s more clean vocals here than grim screams — more orchestral bombast than wild, out of control guitar solos. You didn’t think he’d spend all this time just to write an exact copy of the first album right? Of course not, and while this may not exactly be night and day from old school Wintersun, it is something that can fairly be called a progression. Some people might not be able to get past this genre bending hurdle and I can understand why they would feel that way.

 

 

Fortunately for the rest of us who enjoy our over the top, ridiculously bombastic power metal, Time I delivers ear candy in loads. There’s only three real songs on this album, two being instrumentals, but the the length of those three ranging from eight to thirteen minutes makes up for the shallow track count. It clocks in at just over forty minutes of music and while that is relatively short for an album I find that I’m not dissatisfied with the length — this is only part one after all. The centerpiece here is “Sons of Winter and Stars”, a suite of four separate song sections of urgent pacing, soaring choruses delivered in Mäenpää’s unique deep timbre, amidst a clash of keyboard orchestras, guiding riffs, and an overload of melodies both Japanese and Scandinavian folk inspired. There’s quiet moments too where string backed atmospheric sections provide a backdrop to eerily sung vocals, the lyrics of which concern… well you could probably take a guess at it: the unrelenting march of time, vastness, longing, and despair. No ones really making a big deal about this being a thematic album, but you get the gist from listening to his very discernible words that there are some unifying themes at work within the lyrics. It all works and matches the sheer epic reach of the music quite well, and honestly what else was he going to sing about anyway?

 

My first impressions upon hearing this album was that I found myself genuinely having fun listening to it. I’ve been able to put this on repeat and catch multiple listens all the way through a few times in a row without tiring of it or feeling like its a chore to listen to — that’s a harder feat to accomplish than it seems. I suppose I’m biased with my power metal love, but this is the kind of stuff that’s right up my street. There’s only so many times one can use the words epic and bombastic to describe this record, but they are apt terms and are the record’s core strengths. Mäenpää doesn’t write the catchiest choruses, or deliver exceptionally heavy music even, but he does craft emotional, melancholic melodies on such an exceptional scale that he is in the top tier of songwriters within modern day metal. If I were to point out a particular highlight of this album, it’d have to be Mäenpää’s incredible clean vocals, they are deeper and more resonant than anything he has recorded for the debut or his work in Ensiferum. When I’m not listening to the album, its usually the passages with those clean vocal melodies than come racing back into my head.

 

This is a great record — or a great first half of a record. Time II is supposed to be coming out in early 2013 and once that’s out we’ll be able to put these two pieces together to see if the second half dampens the energy of the first. My doubts are erased however regarding Mäenpää’s abilities to continue to create musically diverse, engaging, and satisfying slabs of metal. The approach has changed for Wintersun but the results haven’t, and for that alone Mäenpää should be applauded. Does it sound like it was worth all those years of incubation? No it doesn’t. There’s nothing on offer here arrangement wise that hasn’t been matched or bettered by recent albums from Blind Guardian or Nightwish, but then again Wintersun didn’t have their budgets either. Oh well, better late than never they say, and Wintersun releasing one of the most fun-to-listen-to albums of 2012 is a victory worth acknowledging.

October 15, 2012 2012, Enslaved, Therion 5 Comments

Dividing Opinions: A Look at New Albums From Enslaved and Therion

 

 

 

So they’re finally here, two new albums from perhaps two of the more radical leaning metal bands out there today. Radical here means pushing the boundaries of their genre, redefining their sounds over time, pissing people off, you know the drill. Pissing people off? Oh yeah, in fact I’m hard pressed to think of a band within metal that consistently manages to confuse, baffle, and alternatively delight their fanbases apart from maybe Opeth. Enslaved’s RIITIIR and Therion’s Les Fleurs Du Mal are both the follow-ups to 2010 predecessors, but dates and timing aren’t the only things they have in common. Both are albums that have already met with sharply divided opinions, from fans and critics alike. I don’t normally like to read reviews of albums that I myself am about to write about, preferring to go in with an clear head, but the extra time I felt I needed to process both of these records resulted in my curiosity getting the better of me. Now I’ll weigh in on both of them to tell you if I come down on the side of love or hate or worse!

 

 

 

Enslaved – RIITIIR:

I’ll be honest about the low expectations I had for this album, as I firmly believed that there was no way that the band could top what they had done on 2010’s Axioma Ethica Odini, an album that hit me with the force of a grizzly bear and left me happily dazed in a modern black metal stupor for weeks afterward. I quietly thought that the album was a refreshing move away from its prog-drenched predecessor Vertebrae back into more visceral, impact-heavy black metal territory. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of it all that made it even better — the band did get a lot of praise for Vertebrae after all, and it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see them continue in that vein.  Now this being the follow-up to Axioma, I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least to see them attempt a part two of that album, in the same aggressive, up-tempo vein… I expected them to really. But Enslaved is nothing if not surprising lately, as RIITIIR sees the band heading once more into prog-influenced soundscapes and slower tempos, in fact its not a stretch to say that the majority of this record is mid-tempoed.

 

Depending on your temperament and patience for that sort of thing, this album may come across as plodding and at times meandering. But I’ll argue the opposite, and say that this is just as sharp a set of songs as those on Axioma, albeit with obvious differences in the brutality department. Unlike Vertebrae, which really did come across to me as largely unfocused and hell, just plain boring — the songs on this album boast memorable melodies, clever hooks, and the best clean vocals on any Enslaved album to date. Opener “Thoughts Like Hammers” is the most meh thing on offer here, excitingly fast at times yes but the chorus isn’t as striking as whats to follow such as on the excellent “Death in the Eyes of Dawn” and “Veilburner” — where Larsen’s expressive, emotive clean vocals elevate the songs into a sound that I can only describe as depressingly uplifting. “Veilburner” is the best of the two, Grutle’s awesome grim vocals set against the albums heaviest splash of stop-start riffage, juxtaposed to a killer chorus that has the album’s best refrain “I found myself crawling, looking for an out”. I can’t emphasize just how great the clean vocals are on this album — and considering that they had been in the past a bit of a weak spot (certain songs notwithstanding, such as “Isa”), the fact that I find myself humming them in my head long after I’ve ceased listening to the album is saying something.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoMInT2Ysi0&w=560&h=315]

 

 

I love the swinging riff in the title track, and the build up to that awesome pay off mid way through the song where Grutle barks over a bed of clean vocals chanting “Hail the flames inside you”. The absolute masterpiece of the album however is “Materal”, an epic track where thundering AC/DC-ish drums pound out an opening drawl from Larsen that sounds more akin to Alice in Chains than Enslaved. This startlingly different  melodic passage recurs alternatively between ugly, soaring black metal tremolo interludes, building up into the album’s most awesomely bizarre moment ever, a Guns N’ Roses-esque wailing guitar solo that seems so surreal you’ll be checking the album booklet to make sure Slash isn’t guesting. The tribal drum laden, Grutle-led assault that immediately follows is the most headbangingly awesome moment on the record, a satisfying series of differing elements that combines to great effect. If I had to pin down the most striking feature of this album, albeit just one thing, it would have to be the greater presence of rock guitar — there’s not a lot sound wise here that will remind you of classic black metal sounds, or even classic Enslaved sounds really.

 

This album has met with some rather surprising criticism, I’ve seen it called everything from meandering and unfocused, to pretentious and a product of trying to do too much. I guess I understand where those opinions are coming from, because I could have easily seen myself dismissing this album upon my initial listen perhaps if my expectations were for something else. But my expectations when I first hit play were pretty much nothing but a clean slate, I didn’t know what I wanted or hoped to hear, and maybe that was the best thing that could’ve happened. Its fair to say that while I don’t love this album, I am highly enthusiastic about it and enjoy it when I’m in a welcoming mood for its strange mix of sounds blending modern rock elements with prog-influenced black metal.

 

 

 

Therion – Les Fleurs du Mal:

This is a strange one. You can’t really call it a proper follow-up to 2010’s Sitra Ahra, because well, it isn’t really a proper Therion album.  Their last album really was the start of a new era for Therion. Gone were the long tenured Niemann brothers and in were new permanent members Thomas Vikström and Lori Lewis, the band’s first permanent vocalists. While their additions to the band were welcome, the music on Sitra Ahra was widely inconsistent, a few good songs amidst a sea of unfocused filler — not to mention that band leader Christofer Johnsson was headed back into a more prog-driven direction, as opposed to the almost pop-oriented rock and metal of the great 2007 Gothic Kabbalah album. The lack of the Niemann’s presence on guitar and bass was felt deeply, and the whole affair just seemed messy and unfocused. I was looking forward to see what this new look Therion could do on their second try, but apparently, a new “regular” Therion album will be years away as Johnsson has stated that he’s working on a real rock opera that will apparently take many years to compose. So where does that leave a proper follow up to Sitra Ahra? Well…either far, far in the future or right now with Les Fleurs du Mal, depending on your perspective and willingness to accept this truly bizarre, as described “art-project” of an album.

 

A word of forewarning: This album does not contain original material as written by Therion. Instead, it is a collection of covers of French chansons done up in the Therion style. You know what I mean, Edith Piaf type stuff, French women crooning about lost love and regrets, that sort of thing. Sound interesting? It is. Let no one call this album boring and unoriginal. Hate it or love it Therion is breaking new ground here, as this is truly something I can say that I’ve never heard before, much less envisioned hearing. And here’s the kicker, its actually really goddamned good. Yes these are Swedes singing in French, so you’ll have to get past that right away. I’ve seen some criticism from European fans discussing the vocalist’s deficiencies in French pronunciations… as if most of us could notice? Leave it to the internet to provide us with people who could bitch about anything. One thing struck me right away after a few listens to this record: Even though these are all covers of French ballads, the band really diversifies their approach to all of them and the result is an album that ranges from fast, aggressive metal, to delicate balladry, to songs with almost danceable waltz-y melodies, to slow, doomy dirges that recall to mind Candlemass (seriously!). The variety on display here is what really makes the album fun to listen to.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6uLIN46AHE&w=560&h=315]

 

 

There’s some truly beautiful music going on here, such as on the clear stand-out track “Une fleur dans le cœur”, which Therion adds haunting acoustic guitars and synth driven strings to create a swelling, nostalgic sounding ballad thats interspersed with metallic guitar flourishes. The female singing on this track is gorgeous, and while my years of French in school don’t help me in understanding much about the lyrics, there’s a pathos going on in the inflections of the vocal that is really moving. “Initials B.B.” has the most striking and memorable musical refrain, an orchestral motif that is repeated over and over throughout the track, only spaced out by bits of rock riffing and a lazy French female vocal that seems to be more dialogue based than anything. Its weird but it works. I absolutely love the ultra-melodic guitar driven melodies that lace together “Dis-moi poupée”, they remind me of traditional Therion funnily enough and honestly this track wouldn’t have felt out of place on the classic Vovin or Deggial albums. There’s a lot of highlights here, more than I should probably list, but if I had to pick the weirdest one that actually works, it would have to be “Je n’ai besoin que de tendresse”, a cover of the sixties French pop singer Claire Dixon’s biggest hit — the original being a bouncy, sugary pop number that sounded like it was sung by a fifteen year old girl. Here Therion transform it into a super fast, metalized rocker with wild vocals (from whom I believe is Snowy Shaw but can’t be sure), the songs shimmering melody morphed into a really awesome riff.

 

This album was apparently too out there for Nuclear Blast, Therion’s longtime record label. I can totally understand why they passed on agreeing to an idea like this. They gave the band their permission to release this on their own through independent financing and according to Johnsson himself he took out a 75000 Euro bank loan to pay for the project. By releasing it independently, the band has assured that all the proceeds from sales will go back in their pocket, and I hope they sell enough to cover the costs. I’ve also read through non-official sources that this album is part of a larger art project that is tied together with the work of French poet Charles Baudelaire, hence it being named after a collection of his poetry — so maybe there’s more to the Les Fleurs du Mal project that we haven’t seen yet. While I applaud the effort and clearly am having fun listening to this thing repeatedly, I gotta wonder out of mild curiosity, with Johnsson’s announcement that this will be Therion’s last tour in a long while, how the hell is this guy going to pay his bills let alone recoup the costs of the bank loan?

 

For Therion fans, this is the last new music we’re gonna get from these guys in a long while, so I urge an open mind before going in to listen to this album. There’s a lot to enjoy here, just brace yourself.

October 11, 2012 2012, Amaranthe, Elize Ryd, Nightwish, Power Metal, Roy Khan 27 Comments

Nightwish/Kamelot in Austin: Karevik and Jansen Hit Their Stride

 

I figured I’d follow up my previous blog entry about Anette Olzon’s abrupt departure from Nightwish with something a little more positive and music related, namely, a few quick thoughts about the Nightwish/Kamelot performance on October 10th at Emo’s in Austin, Texas. By now forums, Reddit, and a ton of other places online have been filling up with talk of just how Floor Jansen and Tommy Karevik have been handling their new roles respectively as the vocalists of Nightwish and Kamelot. To be accurate, Karevik has had a longer gestation period (going on a few months) as Roy Khan’s official replacement — Jansen has had a scant ten days and seven shows to acclimate herself to her new role and the band’s setlist. Most fans are understanding of this fact, knowing that over time and subsequent performances, she’d get better and find the right vocal approach for each song, but this being the internet, there have been a fair share of grumblers, nit-pickers, and cries for Tarja. I went into Wednesday night’s show with a mind to focus on both Karevik and Jansen in particular and to try to just come away with a honest fan’s take.

 

Kamelot was first, walking out in front of a backdrop of the cover of their upcoming “Silverthorn” release. They started off with what struck me as a surprise, two songs from the Ghost Opera record followed immediately by “The Great Pandemonium” from their most recent, Poetry for the Poisoned. There’s nothing inherently wrong about those choices but you’d figure that a band on tour with a new vocalist would try to shoot from the earlier classic era material straight off the bat in a fast approach to try to win over skeptics. Regardless, from the word go Karevik blew me away with his near perfect singing, seemingly effortless reach of higher registers, and his ability to inflect emotion into all the requisite moments that Roy Khan had so pinned down on the records.

 

The band surprised me by bringing out “Seasons End” for this tour, a bonus track left off the initial non-Japanese Ghost Opera releases and one of the band’s true gems. Karevik and guest touring vocalist Elize Ryd (Amaranthe) sang together a powerful rendition of the song and traded off solo A cappella sections of the refrain towards the end only to join back in together for one ultimate climactic chorus. The rest of Kamelot’s short set (they were opening after all) was excellent, but it was “Seasons End” that really sold me on their choice of Karevik — at least as a live vocalist. I hate to say it, because I love the mighty Khan, but Karevik really did appear to be a genuinely better vocalist on stage, and as a frontman he was engaging and didn’t miss a cue and just as importantly he seems to have calmed down on his European tour habits of trying to over hype the crowd. Now comes the album on October 30th, the final test.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTrAyYteTTw&w=560&h=315]

 

 

As for Nightwish, I got the feeling from talking to people in the line outside and in the crowd in the venue that most fans in attendance were pretty much fine with the decision to replace vocalists mid-tour, generally not out of any real malice towards Olzon but just out of the simple satisfaction of being able to see the band live at all. Nightwish has toured the States before, but the tours have been few and far between, and who knows how many years it will be even before the next Nightwish album is out. The fact that the tour wasn’t canceled was seen as something of a miracle by those who were aware of the details of the band’s recent situation. As far as thoughts about the new vocalist… I saw a few After Forever shirts out there, but got the impression that most people didn’t know all that much about Floor Jansen.

 

So I’ll go out on a limb here and say something blunt that might bite me in the ass later down the line: I think Nightwish have found their permanent vocalist. If its not Floor Jansen, then they might as well just openly state that they’ll be using a rotating cast of female singers from this point onwards. She was not only surprisingly great, but there were stunningly amazing moments such as on “Ever Dream” where she delivered the song’s chorus in its true to original spirit of ever increasing high notes. I looked over to the right side of the stage during those moments to see Nightwish guitarist Emppu Vuorinen grinning in reaction in what appeared to be genuine surprise. Jansen was recovering from a cold during the first few shows of this tour but she said in a recent online posting that she’s now able to belt everything out at her full capacity. It certainly sounded that way.

 

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXdrBCOLHX4&w=560&h=315]

 

 

The biggest surprise of the night was an airing of the “Once” album cut and fan favorite “Ghost Love Score”, which hadn’t been played since 2009. Interestingly enough my view was somewhat blocked at this point by longtime Nightwish manager Ewo Pohjola who quietly slipped into the audience to watch the band try its first attempt at performing this song with Jansen. They pulled it off, as well as the rest of the largely Imaginaerum based set list. The only moment that could be pointed out for possibly losing the crowd was “Slow Love Slow”, which works incredibly well on the album with all its moody subtleties, but doesn’t seem to translate as well live. My only other gripe would have to be the morphing of “Nemo” into an acoustic rendition, as opposed to the full dramatic flair of the original. With a singer that good, you should let her open up on your biggest hit — just saying.

 

October 1, 2012 2012, Amaranthe, Kamelot, Nightwish, Power Metal 93 Comments

Anette Olzon: Turn Out the Lights… the Party’s Over

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtGxusvUT3k&w=560&h=315]

 

The legendary Monday Night Football color commentator “Dandy” Don Meredith was a wise man in his simple, inimitable manner, and his belting out of a few bars of the Willie Nelson classic during a lopsided game’s garbage time was a welcome light-hearted distraction from a laborious situation that really just needed to end. And while we can’t be spectators into the inner workings and decision making of a band like Nightwish the way we can during a football game, I suspect that the band’s fans who have kept abreast of the recent 72 hours worth of drama unfolding within the ranks of the symphonic metal giants are in need of some stupid, silly levity right now.

 

Everyone knows the story of Nightwish’s firing of original vocalist Tarja Turunen, and whether one agreed with the decision or not, it was undoubtedly one of the more brutal, ice-cold dismissals of a band member in rock and metal history (for those that forget, she got handed a pink slip type letter mere minutes after finishing a homecoming tour finale in Helsinki — a letter which was pointedly made public online for all to read). Now I felt that the band was justified in their aggressive action towards Turunen, as their reasons were sound and encompassed everything from attempted power grabs, threats of blackmail, interfering business manager/husband, canceling North American tours because the venues were small, and most egregiously, getting the band thrown off a tour with Iron Maiden. I’m thinking that kind of behavior would get you fired from most jobs, or in keeping with the spirit of the NFL football season, you don’t put yourself above or ahead of the team. That’s what Turunen did, and its what newly ex-vocalist Anette Olzon eventually did as well.

 

There’s a lot of misinformation and ignorant buffonery going on in the comments sections of places like Blabbermouth (surprised?), so here’s a factual breakdown of what happened:

 

– On September 28th in Denver, Nightwish was due to play at the Ogden Theater with supporting band Kamelot. The night before the show, Olzon became violently ill, and she went to the hospital the following morning. Doctors suspected it was a kidney stone and after five hours released Olzon with painkillers. At 7pm she began vomiting heavily along with a fever, and upon notifying the hospital she was told to go to the ER immediately. She did, and the band was now faced with the unenviable position of having to possibly cancel the show until it was agreed upon that Kamelot’s backing vocalists Alissa White-Gluz and Elize Ryd (of The Agonist and Amaranthe respectively) would attempt to fill in cooperatively, clutching lyric sheets in hand. The band went out on stage and explained the situation to the crowd, and asked the audience if they would be up to seeing this last-minute, unique performance attempted, as well as giving them the option of getting a full refund at the door. The word is that only seven people got a refund and judging from personal testimonies and the fan filmed YouTube videos of the show, a large audience stayed to watch and participate in the show.

 

– On the night of September 29th, Olzon played what is presumably her last show with the band at The Complex in Salt Lake City. The next day, September 30th, Olzon expressed on her official blog that she was unhappy with the band’s decision to go on with the show and that she was not asked for her opinion on the matter. She continued on to say, “And you know, this is just music. Like life, sometimes we get ill and shows do get cancelled. Rihanna wouldn’t ask Britney Spears to sing for her if she was ill“. This morning on October 1st, Nightwish and Olzon released what appears to be a joint statement explaining the decision to part ways and continue the tour with ex-After Forever vocalist Floor Jansen as their touring fill-in singer, promising that no shows would be cancelled.

 

 

Okay, so with the facts laid out, here’s two immediate things to take away from this: One — That getting a European based vocalist such as Floor Jansen to come in to rather suddenly be the Nightwish touring vocalist for the October 1st show in Seattle, WA is no mere twenty-four hour task. This must have been in the works for at the very least many days to possibly weeks now — because think on it, you’re counting on time for work visas, travel arrangements, travel time, and obviously, enough time for Jansen to be familiar with at sixteen to seventeen songs in the setlist. Things like that do not happen overnight. Olzon’s last show was on September 29th — so the fact that they’re apparently going to pull this off is either incredibly impressive or downright miraculous. Two — That after what they’ve been through with Turunen, Nightwish don’t play around — if you’re not a team player, you’re out. And you know what? I completely understand and support their mentality.

 

I have been, since her induction into the band, a strong Olzon supporter. I think that the pair of albums created with her on board have been the band’s finest, in particular Imaginaerum, and I felt that her lack of an operatic voice such as Turunen’s was what allowed the band to blossom musically and take on an equally prominent role alongside the vocals. The music got better, more interesting, the songwriting more diverse, and Olzon’s pop informed vocal approach was a less overwhelming presence, at least to my ears. That being said, it was easy to see that there were some cracks developing in her relationship with Nightwish.  For starters there was her durability on long tours, she was prone to illness, exhaustion, and the band had to deal with the consequences of those things. Then in 2009, she decided upon getting her own manager — an inexplicable move that was widely speculated upon, and one could guess made the rest of the band have a touch of deja vu. The band seemed to soldier on through all these things but lets fast forward to the present day, and the aftermath of Olzon airing dirty laundry on her blog and publicly questioning a decision that was in large part voted upon by fans of the band in attendance that night in Denver. Now Olzon not only comes across as placing herself before the band, but putting herself above the desires of the fans as well.

 

 

Nightwish’s parting with Turunen seemed to be a traumatic period for both parties involved, judging from interviews taken around that time, and in particular band leader Tuomas Holopainen took the brunt of abuse from disgruntled fans. The band’s greater success from that point onwards was an admirable triumph, and something not won easily. Its hard to discern how far in advance the decision to part ways with Olzon was made, but clearly her comments were regarded by the band as being out of turn and the final contrary straw to the unity they originally wanted with her. As a fan with a financial interest in their current tour (I’m seeing them live in Austin, Texas on October 10th), I feel solidarity with the fans in Denver who had to make the best of a bad situation, as well as the band who alongside the rather brave efforts of both Kamelot backing vocalists all stepped up and did the best they could for the fans. Olzon’s comparison to Rihanna being replaced by Britney Spears is a pretty huge red flag for, well everyone really — this is a metal show we’re talking about, not a pop concert, and when it comes to live metal shows its all about the fans.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing the guys live in Austin in nine days and really amped up about the excellent Floor Jansen being on board for the rest of the tour. Here’s hoping they keep her on as the permanent vocalist. And kudos to the band for their commitment to their fans by not canceling a single show in the midst of a tour where they part ways with their singer, its beyond admirable. I know I’m only one guy, but they’ve got my support in full. The party is over for Olzon, perhaps to her quiet relief, but for Nightwish, its game on starting in Seattle — don’t cue Don Meredith yet!

 

September 30, 2012 2012, Blind Guardian, Ensiferum, Falconer, Melo-Death, Power Metal, Wisdom Post a Comment

Mead Horn Metal! New albums from Ensiferum and Wisdom

 

 

So this year I’ve decided to induct the Fall season with a welcoming, light-hearted, cheery mood — mainly to counteract the eventual headlong plunge into all that excellent dreary, depressing metal that traditionally serves as the soundtrack for the autumn months. And I’ve been keeping my ears open for new music that would fit the bill. I’m talking about tunes that bring to mind sloshy mead horn raising, overeating at Renaissance Festivals type gluttony, lingering outside in the bracing air of the nighttime chill, and the warmth of standing near the fire pit. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Think “The Bards Song” by Blind Guardian, or “Stand Up and Fight” by Turisas. I’m in the mood for some fun in my metal, and lo and behold, here’s a new album by Ensiferum, and a re-release of a year old album by a Hungarian power metal outfit called Wisdom. Can these two deliver the goods?! Someone get the mead ready!

 

 

 

Ensiferum – Unsung Heroes:

Here’s my thing with Ensiferum. I love their first two albums, in fact, lets capitalize that LOVE. I consider the self-titled Ensiferum and its follow-up Iron to be amongst the finest folk metal albums of all time. As for the band’s releases after those two albums?…Eh, really hit or miss to be frank about it. There’s usually a few good, not great songs per album, and a load of formulaic filler. Some coincidence then that I’m writing this as we all sit on the near eve of the release of the long awaited Wintersun album Time I, as it was Wintersun brainchild Jari Mäenpää that was at the vocal and writing helm of those first two Ensiferum albums. Together with Markus Toivonen, the longtime Ensiferum founder/guitarist, the pair created memorable folk metal anthems that are every bit as fresh today as they were upon release. And since seeing the two parties split off and hearing their individual results, I feel that it was Mäenpää whose musical vision was the larger voice showing up on those records; so easy is it to trace the similarities to the music in that first stunning Wintersun album. Toivonen has soldiered on though, with the aid of vocalist/guitarist Petri Lindroos and bassist/lyricist Sami Hinkka. What they’ve managed to come up with on what is now the third post-Mäenpää Ensiferum album can be best summed up as well meaning songs suited to their strengths, and a fair share of unrealized experiments that fall flat.

 

First the good stuff, and that starts off with the lead single (and lame video), “In My Sword I Trust”, a strike directly at the comfort zone of fans of the first two Ensiferum releases. Their last record, From Afar, had quite a few of these as well, the type of emblematic song that defines the core sound of the band in a catchy, energized, and inspired fashion. One thing I’ve been lamenting about modern day Ensiferum however is their tendency to rely too heavily on choirs to provide a musical uplift to a songs chorus, as is the case on this particular song. When I imagine them using harsh vocals all the way through, I feel the song would’ve been stronger, darker, and fiercer. Maybe its the production that’s bothering me, but things seemed a little too Korpiklaani-ish during a handful of moments throughout this album. The other gem here is a rare moment where some radical experimentation works rather well, as displayed in the female vocal laced ballad “Celestial Bond”. Its every bit as overwrought and sentimental as you’d anticipate, but stirring all the same and a nice bit of delicate atmospherics.

 

Then comes the drop off — the rest of the record ranges from the passable to the skippable, and the primary culprit is the reoccurring problem found with Lindroos’ vocals. Quite simply he just isn’t very exciting as a harsh vocalist — I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but I’ve felt the same way about his performances in Norther. Its almost as if he can become so overtly monotone, or staid, that I find myself losing interest and not feeling anything resembling the crackling excitement I found in those first two Ensiferum albums, where Mäenpää’s vocals were a vicious mix of Dave Mustaine-esque snarl and Alexi Laiho sandpaper grit. There is a wide variety of tempos, sounds, and volumes on this album, but the trouble is that most of it isn’t very memorable. Why bother discussing the details of songs that don’t draw a reaction out of me one way or another? I’m sure some fans will enjoy it, but at what effort? I don’t mean to disparage the band, or this album, its worth a listen on Spotify at least. I suppose you could conclude that I’m disappointed, but it didn’t even do that, it just left me shrugging my shoulders.

 

 

 

 

Wisdom – Judas:

This album may be the biggest surprise coming out of European power metal in the past two years. It is certainly the most enjoyable front to back album in that vein since Blind Guardian’s At the Edge of Time; and while I’m not attempting to directly compare the two albums, with 2011’s Judas these Hungarians deliver the same gratifying, big-meal satisfaction that the Bards provided in 2010. The album had been severely limited in distribution until August of 2012, when it was re-released through a worldwide deal with NoiseArt Records. I had been aware of Wisdom in the past, but despite being impressed with their always rockin’ and bare-bones musical approach, their previous vocalist István Nachladal didn’t do much for me.

 

The new guy is another Hungarian, Gabor Nagy, who completely dominates the album with a powerful vocal performance that I can only best describe as blending together prime era Ronnie James Dio, a dash of good Ozzy, with a splash of Hansi Kursch thrown in — all filtered through a Hungarian accent that gives Nagy a stamp of personality all his own. Of course such talent would be wasted if not for what is arguably the strongest collection of Wisdom songs to date, led by the songwriting of guitarist Gabor (must be like Mike over there amirite?) Kovacs. The album highlights here are led by the single “Heaven and Hell”, a vaguely sludgy mid-tempo stomper where Nagy takes center stage over a chorus that is as aggressive as it is soaring, set over a bed of guitars that are perfectly thundering in their short bursts of riffs. “Somewhere Alone” is another mid-paced gem, led along by a strong guitar melody that serves as the song’s true refrain directly after its choir-laden chorus. The band does pick up the tempo to spectacular results, such as on “Live Forevermore”, where the vocals in the chorus seem to race against a drum beat that is putting on the brakes from its all out double bass assault in the verses — the resulting effect being bracing and adrenaline inducing.

 

I suppose its worth mentioning that Wisdom base their songwriting around a lyrical concept that has run all throughout their discography, where each song is based around a well-known quotation, hence tying this all together with their band name and mascot (the cloaked guy on all their album covers). Its an interesting idea I suppose, and although I’m often puzzled at what quotations are actually being utilized within the songs, I feel its worth the tip of the cap to the band for attempting to put some thought and weight behind their lyrics in a genre that sees so little of that. But the lyrics aren’t the selling point here, its the music that will win you over. This is that rare breed of power metal that is done with muscle and aggression, all while emphasizing great melodies and harmonies in the guitars as well as vocals. I realize that’s a fairly vague description especially since we’re talking power metal here, but think of the sparseness of Falconer’s approach mixed with the cheery melodies of Gamma Ray or Iron Savior and maybe you’ll get a better idea. Or better yet, check out the video for “Heaven and Hell” below (which I might add despite its expected corny aspects is one of the most well done power metal music video’s I’ve seen in a long time).

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbWYtuSaWL0&w=560&h=315]

 

September 4, 2012 2012, Amaranthe, Elize Ryd, Roy Khan, Thomas Youngblood 12 Comments

Kamelot’s Silverthorn: First Listen of the Lead Single “Sacrimony”

So yea, I realize that “Sacrimony (Angel of Afterlife)” has been in Kamelot’s recent setlists throughout the summer festival season and that there are recorded live versions floating around YouTube. I also realize that they’ve been of godawful sound quality and it was really hard to make heads or tails of what this new song and lead off single from the Silverthorn album actually sounded like. But today marks the official release of perhaps the most highly anticipated metal single of 2012 — and Tommy Karevik’s Kamelot studio debut — and I’ve been listening to it periodically throughout the day to form an impression.

 

Those of you who had read my recent article on The Legacy of Roy Khan know that I had voiced my concern about how a Khan-less Kamelot could potentially suffer without his tremendous songwriting input. It was worrisome because with all due respect to Thomas Youngblood, the early Kamelot records without Khan’s songwriting presence were mediocre at best. Word was out that Youngblood and keyboardist Oliver Palotai had already been working on 6-7 songs as early as January 2012 — would they even bother to wait for their new vocalist’s input?  I loved what Karevik brought to the table in Seventh Wonder in terms of his rather skillful ability to create memorable and soaring vocal melodies and arrangements and I wanted this injected into the new Kamelot material.

 

Well it was good news that was recently provided to us by Kamelot France as revealed in their interview with Youngblood:

 

KF: Last January 2012 you revealed that 6 or 7 songs were already co-written with Oliver; when and how did Tommy step into the process?

Youngblood: Around February, we started sending him ideas for songs. Song for Jolee was the first one, then Solitaire and so on. He worked closely with Sascha (Paeth, producer) in Wolfsburg on the vocals and lyrics. For the most part he did all the lyrics along with Sascha. I did some lyrics and we all worked together on the concept and storyline.

 

That comes as bit of a relief, and one hell of a smart decision because upon the very first listen to “Sacrimony” its clear that Karevik’s input is all over the vocal melodies for the song, particularly its surging, arcing chorus. The song is a juxtaposition between slow crawling verse sections marked by stop start riffing and atmospheric keyboard soundscapes that leap up into a swoopingly fast chorus section. Karevik is eventually joined by Amaranthe vocalist Elize Ryd who appears on a tension raising bridge section, the songs most brilliant moment — their two voices in succession pushing the chorus to a greater height. But then there’s a passage in the middle of the song preceding the solo section in which The Agonist’s Alissa White-Gluz delivers a raspy-grim vocal that just comes off as fairly pointless.  A strange outro concludes the last half a minute or so with a plucked guitar figure alongside the distorted voice of a child singing “Ring Around the Rosie” — its fine but I find it to be a less than satisfying way to end a song… though I guess you could call that nitpicking.

 

My overall take on “Sacrimony” can be summed up by saying that if this ends up being the worst song off the Silverthorn album, then Kamelot will be in good shape, and I certainly hope that is the case. Its not a bad song per say, I really enjoy the chorus and in particular the sweeping drama of the bridge that precedes it. Its everything else in the verse sections that come off as slightly clunky in that aggravating way that suggests had more time been invested in working on the song, it perhaps could have been molded into something far smoother. Kamelot doesn’t do abrupt and jarring all that well, one of their trademarks is flow and smoothness. It should be noted that in the very same Kamelot France interview Youngblood noted that “Sacrimony” was the last song written for the album, the bulk of it apparently composed in a day, with Karevik adding vocal melodies over the top later. Its clear when listening to it that perhaps they didn’t leave enough room for him to weave in more fluid verse melodies. One can only hope that the other songs didn’t suffer the same fate.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvWT-7l6vJU&w=560&h=315]

 

 

August 31, 2012 2012, Enslaved, Immortal, Insomnium, Iron Maiden, Melo-Death, Power Metal, Striker, Trad Metal Post a Comment

Summer Wrap-Up / Maiden conquers H-Town / Insomnium’s “One For Sorrow”

 

 

As August comes to a close, it signals for me the end of summer. Of course, where I reside in Houston, Texas, its still balls out hot through September, but temperatures and humidity begin to gradually decline as the life affirming months of Fall roll in. With it comes crisp cool air and grey overcast skies, as well as the start of the metal touring season in earnest, the Texas Renaissance Festival, the start of NFL football (go Texans!), and hopefully a slate of new album releases. Its when on cool, autumnal nights I can break out some black metal classics with the old headphones on and become entirely absorbed. Its when I can put on Blackwater Park on the Ipod and take a walk amongst the falling leaves, or listen to Sentenced records — and Agalloch! And when I wake up one morning and find that there’s cold condensation on my windowsill, I know that listening to Immortal will sound so much sweeter when I can wear a goddamned jacket outside. Yeah, if you can’t already tell, I’m big on fall and winter.

 

Now to be fair, although summer in Houston is extremely oppressive, there is a silver lining amidst all the sweat stained shirts and ickyness. I find that the season has always brought about in me an urge to listen more to hard rock, thrash metal, power metal, and traditional metal. And seeing as how I seem to already have the reputation of being a rather curmudgeonly upholder of the latter two genres, that may come as no surprise to regular readers — but I only stress it to point out that I’ve noticed that my listening habits do seem to be affected by seemingly arbitrary things like climates and seasons. It seems more natural to me to listen to looser, free flowing, more melodic power/trad or greasy thrash metal in the summer than say dense, blistering Norwegian black metal. I realize I’m probably a minority in feeling this way, but take it from me, blasting the Scorpions’ Blackout, or Warbringer’s Worlds Torn Asunder is far more summery than attempting to listen to At the Heart of Winter in the hopes that you can pretend to feel cooler. And I’ve been following that mindset for the past few months, unearthing a heap of classic albums and revisiting them, finding new stuff in those styles such as Grave’s Endless Procession of Souls,  the new Testament (better than Formation in my opinion), and the amazing new record by Canada’s Striker, Armed to the Teeth, which has earned a place on my top ten list for the year for sure despite there being four more months left.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17NtR6JjiI0&w=560&h=315]

 

Speaking of summer, there’s the inevitability of Iron Maiden’s North American tours coming to Houston during the hottest part of the year, and this time around it happened on August 18th at the Woodlands Pavilion (of course). This outdoor steam bath of a venue has been the host to Maiden five times now over the past decade and change, and whether in the seats under the pavilion tent, or out on the huge, sculpted “lawn”, you’re guaranteed to sweat enough to refill that empty water bottle you’re clutching. Yeah, gross. Anyway Maiden returned to Houston, as part of their Maiden England tour with the emphasis on the Seventh Son album, and much to my (and my comrades) surprise, the weather cooperated for once, providing overcast skies and a balmy 80 something degree evening. You know what I’m gonna say next, Maiden was fucking killer. By far the best show out of many that I have ever seen them give, Bruce in particular was in immaculate form, and the stage show was the biggest spectacle that I have ever had the pleasure of seeing Maiden provide. I knew it was a breathtaking performance because aside from the giddy, shit eating grins we sported all throughout the show and the state of exaltation immediately afterwards, none of us seemed to dare speak too much about the night at all — as if talking about it would somehow pierce the dream state we were in and bring us all back to our normal cynical selves. I won’t get into a show review, because whats the point? If you saw them on this tour, you know whats up, and if you missed them — I feel for you and only hope it was for a damn good reason.

 

 

 

 

 

One more thing I’ve stumbled upon late this summer is that I completely slept on the incredibly beautiful 2011 album One For Sorrow by Finland’s Insomnium. Had I been paying more attention to the suggestions of several people last year and given it a listen, it would have been an easy shoe in for a place on 2011’s Top Ten List . Yes perhaps the swirling, melancholic guitars mixed into wonderfully Scandinavian sounding melo-death with touches of modern Enslaved is the exact opposite of what I was cooing about earlier in regards to summer listening, but autumn is near enough, and I can’t think of a better record to usher in the season than this overlooked gem (by many that is, I’ve yet to see a lot of people really talking about this one). I’m addicted from start to finish, and have begun to re-explore the band’s back catalog, albeit still preferring One For Sorrow above any of their albums. Here’s they’ve managed to do something that I had begun to quietly suspect was out of reach for most bands who still dabbled in the admittedly overdone melo-death genre, and that is, to prove that the style still has some paths to explore and new sounds to create. Its difficult to call this pure melo-death, its not, and its better for it — instead Insomnium take the melo-death vocal approach and melt it into a dense musical landscape dominated by ultra-melodic harmonized guitar lines, moody and shifting keyboard arrangements, and at times subtly tribal drum rhythms. All encompassed together with a dreamy production that recalls the very best moments of Opeth’s classics and the aforementioned Enslaved’s Axioma Ethica Odini. Icing on the cake here, the excellent artwork, seriously, a great album sleeve just makes everything that much better. Anyway, enough babbling, check out the album centerpiece “Lay the Ghost to Rest” below, that middle section at 3:10 with the ensuing guitar solo is perhaps one of the most beautifully melancholic sounds ever recorded. Can’t wait to catch these guys on tour in November (opening for Epica and Alestorm of all bands, yeh I don’t get it either)!

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7a3q6YBQxM&w=560&h=315]

July 31, 2012 2012, Chris DeGarmo, Geoff Tate, Queensryche, Todd La Torre 25 Comments

Breaking the Silence: Queensrÿche Fans Glimpse Behind the Band’s Veil of Secrecy

 

 

Before I begin: For those of you who are in the know regarding the various stories and details of the recent Queensrÿche drama, feel free to skip ahead. For anyone who’s in the dark about the back story leading up to the recent firing of longtime ex-singer Geoff Tate and the subsequent legal battle over the name that has ensued, I’ll refer you to the following links: firstly a detailed and brutal statement by Queensrÿche guitarist Michael Wilton that served as his declaration in court and is an unflinching look at the private, internal decay of a once great band, and secondly, an excellent straight to the point chronicling of recent events (both legal and publicity related) after the firing of Geoff Tate. They’ll get you up to speed better than any summary I could write (which is what I first attempted to do which in turn made me bang my head against my keyboard in frustration — the fall of Queensrÿche is a long, long, story, and trying to condense it into the space of one article was frankly making me begin to hate writing).

 

My trajectory as a die-hard Queensrÿche fan began and ended with Chris DeGarmo, the band’s original guitarist and primary creative songwriting force. It was he alone who penned “Silent Lucidity”, the top ten hit that was what initially drew me into the band’s discography, albeit a few years after it was considered a “hit”. I was hooked from that point on, and began to scour the then early internet for interviews new and old, and any other information I could glean about the band. The interviews with the band, usually with either DeGarmo or Tate or both, were as equally engrossing as the music. These were intelligent, coherent, thoughtful rock musicians who throughout their career projected that image not only through the depth of their work, but in the way they spoke about their work. Their lyrical themes would invite far more intricate, and complex questions from interviewers than say Warrant would (clever as it may be, there’s no misinterpreting “Cherry Pie”).

 

 

DeGarmo gave the best interviews, and writers often noted on it — he was naturally thoughtful, polite, and modest — a relatable guy who was at stark contrast to the usual braggadocio character types most often found in rock and metal circles. The only contrast more disarming than that was the fact that his compositions were often the very opposite of his low-key character: dramatic, sweeping, aggressive, and epic. Tate was similar in attitudes, and though I favored him a bit less than DeGarmo, I admired the hell out of his unbelievable vocal abilities, and saw through his natural ease with DeGarmo the powerful guitarist/vocalist dynamic that often characterized many artistically successful bands. With DeGarmo at the songwriting helm, Queensrÿche experienced their classic era, and while some Queensrÿche fans will debate the end point of this era, I consider it to range from 1982-1997, the time span of their eponymous debut EP through the Hear in the Now Frontier album.

 

In 1997, DeGarmo exited the band and caused shockwaves in the Queensrÿche fan community. There was no reason given, no explanations forthcoming from either DeGarmo nor from the other band members. The band had always been a tight-lipped bunch about its inner workings, only allowing journalists to see what they chose to make viewable. Problems were kept internal, and only discussed in the press with cursory nods to there being disagreements, but that all was well presently, and since the original line-up had remained intact since the band’s inception, most everyone considered that to be a perfectly valid explanation. But now there could be no avoiding the speculations that something had clearly gone wrong within the Queensrÿche camp to prompt its primary songwriter to exit so abruptly, and fans developed their own theories and waited with bated breath to see how Queensrÿche would continue.

 

His immediate replacement, Kelly Gray, was in my opinion as well as many others, an unmitigated disaster. A childhood friend of Tate’s whose claim to fame was serving as producer of grunge second wavers Candlebox’s multiplatinum debut, he was an ill-considered choice. His guitar tone was muddy, infused with unnecessary wah-pedal effects, and he proceeded to butcher DeGarmo’s crystal clear, fluid, and elegant solos with his own turgid interpretations. The album he participated in via performing and songwriting, Q2K, was near to abysmal, and I grew disillusioned and impassioned in my criticisms of the bands direction. There was a brief ray of hope when DeGarmo returned to participate in the songwriting and recording of 2003’s Tribe album. He was featured on half the albums songs, which were not coincidentally the better half — but any hope of a permanent reunion were dashed when he immediately exited the band once again with no words of explanation from either party. What the hell was going on? I decided enough was enough and stopped hoping for the best. Other bands who harbored noticeable influences from classic era Queensrÿche, such as Kamelot and Therion, were filling the void that the Rÿche had left in me, and I started considering myself a Queensrÿche fan in exile, a fan of the past.

 

 

 

The post 1997/DeGarmo period also brought about a marked change in the band’s public relations. Tate was left as the band’s primary interviewee, and it was obvious to close observers of the band that something had changed. He would contradict himself across interviews, some spanning short amounts of time, and he began to participate in a form of bait and switch, in which he’d mention that the sound and vision for an upcoming album was heavy and close to (insert classic Queensrÿche record here) in an attempt to warm up the band’s metal loving fan base. When the records would come out and not be as “advertised”, his interviews supporting the album would often feature him disparaging the very style he once had promised to work with in older interviews. One could have written it off as artistic license if it had happened just once, but it began to be a pattern with Tate, one that continued up through his final album with the band, 2012’s villainous atrocity Dedicated to Chaos. By 2005 and the announcement of an attempt to release a sequel to the hallowed classic Operation:Mindcime, the band had abandoned their professional management and committed the Spinal Tap-ian sin of having Tate’s wife Susan installed as their manager. She had already been well entrenched within the band’s inner circle, having angered and brought to ruin many fan networks and communities.

 

I’m a frequent visitor at the Anybody Listening forum community, which over the years has naturally developed into a haven of sorts for disgruntled, shunned, and opinionated Queensrÿche fans. A place where fans who disapproved of the current direction of the band could freely voice their opinions and find others to commiserate with. I have to make the distinction you see, because the “official” Queensrÿche fan forum at their own website has for the better part of a decade suffered under heavy moderation and censorship. With his wife at the helm and her influence seeping into all aspects of band operations, Tate seemed to grow leery of the internet and its freely moving conduits of information. The official forum was censored to a point of white washing, often banning anyone with unfavorable opinions — and before long the only people populating the place were blind pro-Tate bootlickers.

 

The admins and community members of Anybody Listening are well-connected, sharp, smart, critical fans with keen eyes and ears who were always the first to see through the charades of Susan Tate, as well as the comical level of hypocrisy and backtracking committed by Geoff Tate over the years through various interviews and public statements. In short, it’s the place from which to view Queensrÿche without filters, and in due time this community and its admins became the worst enemy of the Tates — who openly resented its existence, yet continued to monitor the various discussions that took place on it. And it’s where I decided to take refuge as a longtime fan of classic era Queensrÿche. As a member of this community, I’ve had a front row seat to the various intricacies, details, and speculations regarding the recent events in the Queensrÿche world.

 

In April of this year, the Brazil incident happened, an ugly situation before a concert in Sao Paulo in which an enraged Geoff Tate assaulted both Wilton and drummer Scott Rockenfield. The details of this altercation as well as the circumstances that are believed to have led to the confrontation are documented across the many court submitted legal “declarations” made by band members, crew, and other witnesses. The declarations, as well as additional court documents related to the Tate vs Queensrÿche case are made available to the public at the cost of an access fee, and it was the administrative team of Anybody Listening that first purchased access to these documents and made them freely available online on July 10th. They explain the Brazil incident across a spectrum of perspectives, most that paint Tate’s actions in a deplorable, and guilt-ridden light. These documents have proved to be much more than just the accounting of one night, and perhaps the only way I can adequately describe them is that collectively they are the Pandora’s Box of Queensrÿche’s secret history. In particular, the declarations of Wilton, Rockenfield, and bassist Eddie Jackson are the most revelatory of all, detailing a pattern of dysfunction for well over a decade and a half. At the heart of this dysfunction, including the primary reason why Chris DeGarmo left Queensrÿche twice, was ex-vocalist Geoff Tate and his violent, unpredictable anger — an anger that was extremely well hidden from fan and public view. In short, the information presented within these declarations was shocking.

 

Needlessly to say, the past few weeks have been for myself, and I think I can safely speak for quite a few other Queensrÿche fans, a lot to take in. Once I finished reading all the declarations and processed the information contained within, not only had my curiosity about many long-held questions been answered, but in some cases I felt that I had learned too much. Jackson’s declaration which contains descriptions of verbal abuse from Tate to DeGarmo as early as the recording of the Promised Land album in 1994 somewhat shatters the illusion that these two guys always had a positive camaraderie within the band. To further the point, to learn via Wilton’s declaration that Tate’s anger issues were the motivating factor to push Chris DeGarmo away both in 1997, and in 2003. There are the Wilton revelations that Tate was unhappy with the band’s rock/metal style as early as 1993-1994 and threatened to leave the band, additionally that he went through a messy divorce in 1997 that drug the rest of the band into the middle of a legal battle via subpoenas — something that caused “a large amount of resentment and hurt amongst the band members”.

 

 

There were more recent revelations too, such as the underhanded attempt by Tate to sell the rights to Operation:Mindcrime to a film company for a future production, in which Tate directed that information of the sale be kept from other band members, and payment of upfront monies to be made payable only to Tate himself. Rockenfield, Wilton, and Jackson’s declarations go into lengthy detail about the various ways the Tates’ kept them out of the loop regarding pertinent information relating to expenses, bookings, and business deals. It paints the picture of paranoid control freaks in both Geoff and Susan, and regarding the latter, a wife who was concerned with keeping her husband happy above her duties as the band manager. A portrait of self-delusion, Geoff surrounds himself with yes men both at home with the friends who crash at his house, and those that he insists on taking on tour with him — all on the band’s dime, despite the other members protests. The attempt to remove Susan from the position of band manager, as well as her daughter Miranda from the band’s internal merchandising business is met with blackmail-esque threats from Geoff. Jackson describes the Tates unwillingness as a mix of greed and nepotism, citing that “Geoff refused to go along with the idea because his wife and daughter were on the payroll”. In essence the Tate family was double, even triple dipping from the income made by the band as an organization.

 

I could go on and on, but that is merely a taste of the depths to which these published declarations take us down the Queensrÿche rabbit hole. Fans of a band that was notoriously private about its inner workings suddenly had access to extremely personal accounts of behind the scenes information and perspectives. This must have been a significant decision for the band members involved as well, for even though the declarations were necessary to fight against the Tates’ motion for an injunction to prevent the remaining members from continuing under the Queensrÿche name, it is widely believed that the band knew that this information would inevitably leak out in some form. Fan reaction at Anybody Listening has in many ways mirrored all of my feelings on the explosive nature of these revelations: shock, disgust, curiosity, morbid fascination, and in many ways for myself, a welcome relief to finally understand some of the truths behind the head scratching decisions this band has made in the past decade. It also justifies for myself a personal mistrust of Geoff Tate and his questionable allegiance to the genre that catapulted him to fame, as well as partially absolving the remaining band members of guilt in the degradation of the Queensrÿche legacy. Suffice it to say, I’m relieved to know that they hated Mindcrime II as much as I did and that they were not in favor of creating the sequel.

 

Not all fans were happy about the reality of these revelations coming to light, thinking it to be detrimental to the band’s already deteriorated image as too much dirty laundry to be aired publicly. Most hovered somewhere around the middle, such as Anybody Listening site owner/administrator Samsara who remarked:

It’s bittersweet. The documents are public record. As the guy who pretty much unleashed them into the mainstream, on one hand, I felt like I was doing a public service. Showing folks the depths of the dysfunction. On the other hand, I felt bad, because while I knew some of that stuff (some of it I didn’t), I remember what it was like when the veil of secrecy was lifted and how I felt. It opened a window into reality that I really wish never existed.

 

 

In regards to whether or not this new information would taint perceptions regarding the band’s classic era legacy, Anybody Listening admin Lucretia represented the prevailing opinion amongst the community:

Not at all. The classic lineup of this band is still my favorite musical entity ever, and in-fighting between band mates is a common thing. Now, as others have said, it does color my view of Geoff Tate in the post-CDG era of Queensrÿche. He used to carry himself as a classy, intellectual person who cared about his fans. I’ve been hearing bad things about Geoff for years, and had some negative personal experiences with Susan myself, but I had no idea that it was as bad as the court documents allege.

 

 

Interestingly enough, despite the mixed feelings towards the content of the various published legal documents, most fans are in favor of the current incarnation of the band (featuring Crimson Glory vocalist Todd La Torre) adopting a more open approach to its fans and public via social media and other means. Evidence of this becoming the new norm in the Queensrÿche world post-Tate-dictatorship can be seen through the active Facebook presence of La Torre, Wilton, and second guitarist Parker Lundgren. I’ve been following their posts myself and have been pleasantly surprised to see just how much the social media format has enabled a normally quiet guy like Wilton to come out of his shell. The effort on Facebook seems to be led directly by the newest band members La Torre and Lundgren however, who have taken to answering fan questions and comments as well as posting a great number of pictures of the new lineup hard at work.

 

 

I find myself nodding with approval when I see things like that, and in particular when I see concert footage of the new Queensrÿche on stage playing classic era gems with passion and enthusiasm and ear to ear grins. A few nights ago Queensrÿche headlined the Halfway Jam festival, and listening to the filmed footage of the gig with the headphones on and eyes shut often tricks my brain into thinking I’m listening to a long-lost concert video from the late 80s. La Torre is not quite a dead ringer for Geoff Tate — though indeed very close — but he brings back the fire and the passion that the original material is so full of, and that Geoff Tate’s degrading vocal capabilities over the many years have been unable to reach again. When I watch the videos, I see a united band, much like the long-reunited Iron Maiden. I see a positive environment for Chris DeGarmo to hopefully one day make his reappearance with the band in some capacity, even if it’s just in a creative role in the songwriting process. It’s the slow climb up from the depths of darkness for a band that is slowly beginning to resemble the one that seemed to drop off the face of the earth in 1997. And yeah, I feel confident in actually saying out loud for the first time in well over a decade that I am a Queensrÿche fan.

 

 

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