Metal in all its forms and colours

[Mendalla]

Okay, I have made a decision to stop cluttering up the music threads with my explorations of metal. Instead, I'll start a thread. Yep, a whole thread of speed, thrash, symphonic, death, and whatever other genres of heavy metal catch my fancy.

And obviously others are welcome to chime in but I will point out two debates I don't plan to have here:

• I don't believe in Satan so don't give a flip if you think metal music is "Satanic" stay out. In fact, some of it consciously is, but not in the sense you think. Not having that discussion.
• Metal is music. Some of it ranks among the best popular music being written today, esp. in Europe. Beats the crap out of most of the pop pablum being dominating the charts in North America right now. Yes, I thought metal was loud, unmusical crap myself as recently as a decade or two ago, but not now that I've actually spent some time with it.

So, basically, this thread is to celebrate and appreciate a sometimes unappreciated and even derided genre of modern popular music.

To kick it off, a seminal band in the genre of speed metal, Blind Guardian and their lead singer Hansi Kursch. This band is going strong after nearly 40 years (started in 1984). Hansi has been there the whole time. He packs a powerful voice and is, IMHO, one of the best "clean" male vocalists in rock (we'll get into growls and other "harsh" vocals later). Hansi is also an odd duck, looking more like someone's white collar dad than a heavy metal singer.

In 2020, Wacken Open Air, one of the leading metal and hard rock festivals, went virtual with Wacken World Wide as the pandemic shut down the traditional European festival scene. And this virtual show by Blind Guardian from that festival is a good intro. They even debuted a brand new song.

 

[Mendalla]

From happier times a year earlier, Hansi's side project Demons & Wizards. Hansi is a terrific showman and host as well as singer so is at his best in front of an audience. Sorry for the language but as you'll soon realize, even seemingly polite lady metalheads like Floor Jansen can get pretty liberal with their f-bombs in the heat of a concert. This is a power ballad so not the same beast as the speed metal above. But that's the thing with metal today. There's a wide range of style and genres embracing the label.

And I would be remiss in mentioning that Nightwish is coming up live in less than two hours at the Deichbrand Festival in Germany. It is being livestreamed and if there's any highlights released, you'll see them in this thread.

 

[Luce NDs]

Like a sword or bullet ... stick it to eM! If silvered it may be slick ... and slide light off to the side ...

 

[ninj]

This one isn't old for me yet. Not anywhere near a hardcore fan, but I like what I like.

 

[Mendalla]

This one isn't old for me yet. Not anywhere near a hardcore fan, but I like what I like.

Metallica was probably the only metal I really listened to back then. Some Def Leppard, too, I guess.

 

[Mendalla]

And I did watch Nightwish's full set from Deichbrand yesterday but it's up in the air as to whether the band will let the festival post the recording of the stream. It was a fantastic show, one of their best, and the quality of the stream, both video and audio, was top-notch. However, now the lawyers get involved.

 

[Mendalla]

One of the most popular metal bands of recent years has been Swedish band Ghost. Highly theatrical, prone to blasphemy (from certain points of view), and producing incredibly infectious melodies, they are attracting a lot of mainstream attention while still having a pretty solid following in the metal world. Their latest single, from the album Impera, dropped this morning.

BTW, the Job reference is:

I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my complaint;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

And in 2016, they landed the Grammy for Best Metal Performance for this magnificently dark piece.

 

[Mendalla]

Delain is in a state of transition. The Dutch symphonic metal group started in 2002 and added the marvelous Dutch vocalist Charlotte Wessels in 2005. However, early in 2021, the then-current lineup dissolved. Founder and keyboardist Martijn Westerholt has since pulled together a new lineup but has not so far announced a new clean lead singer, just that the new bassist will do harsh vocals. Wessels has moved on to a solo career and her first solo album is terrific, but not really metal.

From the band's final album under the old lineup:

A frequent guest with the original lineup was Finnish bassist-singer Marko Hietala, then with Nightwish.

 

[Mendalla]

More Delain featuring Marko, live from the Masters of Rock festival in the Czech Republic in 2017.

 

[Mendalla]

So, time to introduce "harsh vocals". "Growling" as it is sometimes known has been a part of music forever, but became a significant style of singing in metal sub-genres like death metal and black metal. It has crept into other metal styles as well, including symphonic metal where Mark Jansen of After Forever and Epica is one of the best known growlers and has a wonderful way of alternating his growls with operatic clean vocals from his female lead singers (Floor Jansen in After Forever, Simone Simons in Epica) in his writing.

Finnish band Wintersun is lead by harsh vocalist Jari Maenpaa. They've been around since 2004, starting as a side project when Jari was in another band but becoming his main group when that previous band fired him due to conflicts between their schedule and Wintersun's. In recent years, they've become a bit of a "farm team" (in sports terms) for Nightwish, with drummer Kai Hahto leaving to become NW's drummer permanently in 2019 after 4 years as a session drummer and then bassist Jukka Koskinen becoming a session/tour bassist for NW last year.

These videos are from the band's 2018 tour when Kai was already touring with Nightwish but Jukka (big bearded guy who is third up the steps in the opening of the second video) was still in Wintersun.

Just released today is this performance from San Francisco:

And from an appearance in Toronto on the same tour.

 

[Mendalla]

And lest you think growling is a "guy thing", one of the best in the business is Alissa Gluz-White. Originally from Montreal, where she began her musical career, Alissa current resides in Sweden where she fronts melodic death metal band Arch-Enemy. The amazing thing with Alissa is that her "clean" voice is quite solid, too, and I sometimes wish she used it more.

From Arch-Enemy's latest album, their newest single:

And an earlier release that has some clean vocals mixed with growling.

 

[Mendalla]

And even classically-trained vocal powerhouse Floor Jansen can hold her own in the growling department. At 2:20 of this performance as a guest of Swedish death metal band Soilwork, Floor joins lead singer Bjorn Strid in a growling duet as well as supplying her usual powerful clean vocals in other parts of the song.

 

[Mendalla]

And since I mentioned Mark Jansen at the beginning, here's Epica with Mark on growls, mezzo powerhouse Simone Simons on clean vocals.

And from 2004, Mark and Floor Jansen in After Forever.

And that's how I kind of like growling. It's a great accent when paired with solid clean vocals. I am still not totally sold on death metal's approach of using all harsh vocals.

 

[Mendalla]

Delain is in a state of transition. The Dutch symphonic metal group started in 2002 and added the marvelous Dutch vocalist Charlotte Wessels in 2005. However, early in 2021, the then-current lineup dissolved. Founder and keyboardist Martijn Westerholt has since pulled together a new lineup but has not so far announced a new clean lead singer, just that the new bassist will do harsh vocals.

And this morning, Delain dropped a teaser. New single, which will presumably finally reveal the identity of the new lead singer, coming in 4 days.

 

[Mendalla]

Some new metal from this week:

The new Delain is out and it's pretty good. New leader singer is Romanian Diana Leah (which is the same name as a Canadian singer-songwriter apparently, but Encyclopaedia Metallum confirms it is the Romanian one).

Avantasia is an ongoing project by German singer-songwriter-producer Tobias Sammet. Described a "metal opera" in its first two albums, Avantasia features Sammet with a backing band and various guest vocalists, most from the world of metal. The latest album is A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society, due out this fall and the second single features my absolutely favorite metal vocalist, Floor Jansen of Nightwish, in a duet with Sammet.

Amazingly, given that both Floor and Tobias have been around the metal scene for a similar time period, it is Floor's first time appearing with Avantasia and she has two songs on the new album.

Past guest vocalists have included some big names like Alice Cooper, Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), and Klaus Meine (Scorpions) as well as some best known to the metal world like Hansi Kursch (see upthread) and Marko Hietala (formerly of Nightwish).

 

[Mendalla]

Summer is festival season, when bands move their concerts from arenas and concert halls to big outdoor spaces. One of the biggest for bands in metal and hard rock is Wacken Open Air in Wacken, Germany. Most of the big and small bands hit this one at some point. Arch-Enemy, whose new album Decievers dropped on Friday, played Wacken this year and used footage from that performance as the video for the latest single from that album. Blue-haired lead singer Alissa Gluz-White of Montreal is in fine form as she growls through this one (though I'm a bit mystified as to why she didn't clean sing the chorus, which is fairly melodic).

 

[Mendalla]

And since we are talking Wacken, it's time to return to the band that got me into metal. Nightwish has played Wacken Open Air several times over the years, but it is their 2013 appearance that we fans talk about the most. It was the end of their "Imaginaerum" world tour which had nearly been thrown into chaos by a change of lead singer midway through. However, by the time of the 2013 Wacken Open Air concert, the band had a new lead singer in the person of Floor Jansen, who remains possibly their most popular and successful yet (out of three), and had also added English traditional musician Troy Donockley, who is also still a major part of the band's sound and has even become their male vocalist after the departure of bassist-vocalist Marko Hietala.

And the results were magical, a performance that is widely regarded as one of the best of the band's 25-year career (though many who saw their performances on the festival circuit this summer have been nodding towards putting some of those shows in there, too). There was incredible energy and Floor had finally settled in, making the music her own after originally having to literally learn the band's setlist in 48 hours when she was called in to replace Anette Olzon mid-tour.

"Storytime" first appeared on the album Imaginaerum, which consists of songs from a Finnish movie that the band was involved in (the idea for the film came from keyboardist-composer Tuomas Holopainen). While Anette Olzon sang on the original recording, Floor's performance at Wacken is the one most Nightwish fans turn to nowadays. It was one of the songs that turned me on to the band originally. It rocks hard, but is also quite melodic and even gives Floor a chance to go into her operatic soprano voice at one point.

"I Want My Tears Back" is also from Imaginaerum (widely regarded as one of the band's best albums) and has bassist-vocalist Marko Hietala (or nowadays Troy Donockley) joining in on the chorus.

And finally, another classic from Once. "Ghost Love Score" is a ten minute epic opus that has been a fixture in the band's setlists since it came out in 2005. And it is Floor's own favorite Nightwish song. At Wacken 2013, she gave it her all and many fans consider this the definitive performance of GLS (as we call it for short). Along with the performance of "Storytime" above, this is the song that turned me into a committed fan of Floor Jansen.

 

[Mendalla]

Back to Avantasia. Tobias Sammets, who also sings lead in the band Edguy, started the project in 1999 with a plan for two albums, The Metal Opera and The Metal Opera II. However, he now circles back every few years to put out a few more of the band's signature concept albums, most recently in 2019 with the album Moonglow and it's soon-to-be-released successor A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society (from which the song I posted a couple posts above is drawn). Each era of the band is basically a story arc. So, for instance, the three albums released between 2008 and 2010 tell a single story called "The Wicked Trilogy". While there is a core band, Tobias then leverages his connections throughout the world of rock and metal to pull in guest performers, mostly on vocals though he does have some guest guitarists and other instrumentalists, too.

From 2010's The Wicked Symphony, here is "Dying For An Angel", which has Klaus Meine of German metal legends Scorpions joining Tobias on vocals. Scorpions were one of the first metal bands I actually listened to occasionally back in my youth, largely on the strength of Klaus' voice.

"Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose" is from 2016's Ghostlights and has Tobias singing on his own. Someone in the comments suggested a resemblance to work of the late Meatloaf and his writing partner Jim Steinman and I have to say, after reading that, I do hear a bit of that in here. Heavier, but still has the operatic rock sound they were famous for. And the video is very much in the vein of a Meatloaf video.

And "Draconian Love", also from Ghostlights, features a bass named Herbie Langhans with whom I am otherwise unfamiliar. It's possibly my favorite song on the album, largely on the strength of Langhans' voice, though it is also a solid piece of melodic power metal.

 

[Mendalla]

So to no one's surprise, Nightwish have announced that Jukka Koskinen of Wintersun is now their permanent bassist after being their tour bassist for just over a year following the departure of Marko Hietala. The success of this summer's festival tour in Europe, where Jukka was pretty clearly integrated well with the existing band members, likely sealed the deal. Here's a couple numbers from their show at Pinkpop 2022 in the Netherlands with Jukkis (his nickname) on bass. The Netherlands is home turf for lead singer Floor Jansen and she made the most of it, performing both solo and with Nightwish (and only 2 hours between shows, too).

And to the delight of his fans, Marko has come out of his break from the music industry and seems to have hit the ground running, touring Finland with the supergroup Northern Kings, of which he has been a member for many years, this summer as well as doing some solo shows. Here's a performance with the Kings, four Finnish metal vocalists who do hard rock and metal covers of popular songs, mostly from the eighties. In the intro at the beginning, Marko is the guy with long blond hair second from the left of your screen. In interviews, Marko has made it pretty clear that he is not returning to Nightwish, another reason the announcement about Jukka was not surprising.

 

[Delightful Life]

I hope people are enjoying this thread :3


Lots of amazing energy in these bands


Mendalla has varied musical tastes indeed :3