Updates

I got up, went outside to get the mail, and damn, the weather here in Finland just keeps getting better and more beautiful.  

A couple of days ago i accidentally discovered this really awesome melodeath band with a touch of brutal in it. Called Inferi:

Inferi features: Jack Blackburn, who is the current drummer for Vital remains, and did the drum works for Enfold darkness, which is a band that i really like, both guitarist's are ex Enfold darkness and the Bass player is current Enfold darkness, and you can really hear the sound of Enfold darkness in this one. Really awesome stuff, and just listen to that drum sound. The guitar work is outstanding, and even that is an understatement, the solos are really melodic, and actually good, there's a couple of instrumental piano and clean gtr parts and even classical guitar parts, which i think are a big part of tho whole melodeath thing. Try it out yourself:






And now, coffee + Inferi!

News

Here i am, once again, and i'v got a nice bunch of news for you, and this will be a long one. i'll just start this off with the one that i like the most: 

Kalmah to enter studio!

                                

During the next January, Kalmah will be heading out to the studio, to record their seventh album, which is to be released during the spring of 2013. This, for any melodeath fan, is great new's, as Kalmah has never but out a bad album, atleast if you ask me. And at the end of September, they will be releasing a new song from the album!

I'll write a small summary of Kalmah here, for those who don't know who they are:

Kalmah is a Melodic death metal band from Finnland, formed in 98, and since that they have been creating awesome albums with a pretty solid phase. For me, Kalmah is one of the top melodeath acts out there, altrough few bands can still beat them, but overall, Kalmah is really decent melodeath. I'm a big fan of Kalmah's use of guitar and keyboard work, and the melodies which they produce, here's a little bit of opinion about their albums:

 Swamplord

Swamplord is the debut album of Kalmah, released in 2000.

here's an example that proves that debut albums can be awesome, Swamplord is filled with complex, and incredibly melodic riff's, drumwork which i'll guarantee, will not get boring, keyboard melodies and parts that make you feel like you're listening to opera (evil in you ending, Alteration beginning). The keyboards wont annoyingly "over-rule" guitars, and are infact mixed below the guitars, which is nice for once :) altrough, there are moments in which keyboards are in their full glory (Heritance of Berija, Evil in you, Dance of the water etc)  Kalmah are also huge users of dual lead guitar melodies, which they execute close to perfection (again, in Heritance of Berija for example) There are some pretty clear Children of bodom moments (Hades for example), but never too much, Kalmah definitely have found their own style of music, and tend to be way more melodic the Bodom, and posses a completely different style of riffs, and lyrically Kalmah is way better too. And that epic spit in the final seconds of the final track, hah!

Favorite tracks:  Evil in you, heritance of Berija and Alterations.

They will return

Amazing colors on this one

Second album, released in 2002.

This one is taken to a bit more "brutalish" way of melodeath, and is certainly way more aggressive as "Swamplord" but still not sacrificing any of the awesome melodic aspect of Kalmah, you can also clearly hear some thrash metallic moments (closer to the end of "hollow heart" the beginning of "They will return , and "the blind leader" intro) The solo work is as strong as on the first album, if not even stronger (Swamphell,). As with the first album, there are some bass solos too, which are always fun. There's also a lot more tremolo riff's on this album. There are also some extremely ambient keyboard bits, like in "Human fates" which is probably the most melodic song on this one. 

Kill the idealist, which is my favorite track on this one, truly shows the essence of Kalmah. Fast, aggressive, extremely melodic melodeath with some thrash moments. 

There's also some slow moments (my nation), which the first album didn't really have. Which all but add to the variety and the reach of Kalmah's musical style. 

The album ends with a cover of Megadeth's "Skin o' my teeth" which is a clear hint about the musical influence of Kalmah. 

Favorite tracks: Swamphell, Principle hero, human fates and the blind leader.

Swampsong

Released in 2003. 

The album starts up with one of my favourite Kalmah riff's ever, which is the intro of Heroes to us, the whole song is really good too, but i'm not a big fan of the "Salyer -ish" solo of it, but then again the album has some really good solos, like in "burbot's revenge (starts at 2:29). This album tends to be a bit slower than the two earlier ones, and more heavier. It's really different record then any other Kalmah record, and the record that has the most "COB moments" ("doubtful about it all" and other keyboard parts mainly) But still, i can in no way say that it's a bad album. The production is the best one so far, every instrument sounds absolutely amazing, and the mixing is really solid too. There are some "weaker" moments like the start of "Cloned insanity" and the "Gothic" song, "Moon of my nights"  or the "happy" keyboard tune at some points, but then again there are some extremely awesome moments like the beginning of "The third, the magical" or Heroes to us" intro riff. Overall, i think that this is the weakest release of Kalmah, but still, not a bad record. 

Favorite tracks: Heros to us, Burbot's revenge, The third, the magical.

The black waltz

An angry looking old man!

Released in 2006. Probably my favorite Kalmah album.

The album starts up with really aggressive song called "Defeat" that certainly leans towards Nightwish styled keyboards (which is not a bad thing), the song ends with an awesome keyboard melody being backed with guitars (which, with Kalmah, is usually the other way around). The COB feel that Swampsongs had is completely gone in this one, (again, a good thing) I cant help but feel that somewhere during the making of "Swampsongs" Kalmah truly found their current style, this brutal form of melodeath, with really strong keyboard melodies, backed with amazing heavy and melodic riffs. "Bitter metallic side" also has some really great moments like the alternating between guitar and keyboard both delivering epic melodies after one another, almost like they're competing which one kicks more ass. And i really love the way the "melody" in which the lyrics are sang, backed with the "creepy" keyboard sections. There's also a small folk metal moment in the beginning of "Time takes us all" (Vocals), and the same old thrash influence moment. 

This is also the first Kalmah release to feature an instrumental track, called "svieri Doroga" which is really melancholic Iron maiden sounding track, played with clean gtr's. and the whole track sort of acts as a passage to "the black waltz" which works really well. 

So, "The black waltz" which is an amazing beautifully orchestrated.title track, and probably the slowest song on the album, but still, it's a really good song. Followed by "With terminal intensity" which bears an odd resemblance to "The black waltz", or atleast the intro's keyboards do. But then the song changes into this really heavy sounding song, featuring the drumbeats, which are backed with keyboards. The next awesome moment of this album is found on the intro of the next song "man of the king" It starts with these basic, guitar chords begin repeated (Em or E, probably), backed with keyboards, and seasoned with a nice bass slide and a nice bend with a guitar right after it. This song overall has somekind of power metal feel to it. 

Yet again, Kalmah fails to dissapoint. 

Favorite tracks: Defeat, Bitter metallic side, The black waltz, Man of the king and Mindrust.

For the revolution 

Released in 2008, Another style change for Kalmah, i feel like they tried to get closer to the really fast sound of the two first albums, and did just that, which wasn't necessarily a good move. The album starts up with the title track, which has some nice pinch harmonicas at the intro, the track also contains some Folk - ish chorus vocals. For the revolution is another Kalmah release that is not top notch stuff, it simply lacks the trademark epickness of Kalmah songs (Evil in you, Heroes to us, Bitter metallic side or The black waltz to name a few),  But, again, it's not a bad release, it contains some gems like For the revolution or Holy symphony of war, which both feature the amazing chorus vocals, "Towards the sky" and the intro riff of "Outremer". Rest of the songs are more or less unmemorable, with exceptions, of course, but nothing groundbreakingly good. Another plus for this one is that the bass is mixed differently then on the other records, taking on the OSDM bass mixing approach. The last track on the record "like a slave" is also pretty good on the melodic side, with its violin - like guitars and the chorus vocals that are in a big position on this album.

Favorite tracks: For the revolution, Holy symphony of war and Like a slave.

12 Gauge

Released in 2012.

12 Gauge starts up with a nice clean gtr melody, which quickly escalates into the brutal form of melodeath which 12 Gauge is. Taking on the more "darker" approach that we alredy know from "Swampsongs" and "The black waltz". This is the Kalmah sound that i love, filled with heavy riffs, melodic riffs, atmospheric keyboard work and killer vocals. "One of fail" demonstrating the epic Kalmah trademark atmosphere that definitely makes Kalmah one of my favorite MDM acts. Some minus points goes out to couple of solos on the album in (Rust never sleeps for example) the solo sounds way too "American"? (no offense) I can't think of another word for it, just that it somehow doesn't really fit to the atmosphere. "Swampwar" even has some kind of a black metal feel to it, or atleast the intro riff. "Better not to tell" is a more calm track, the intro starts up with this riff full of bends, that sounds kind of sleepy, the track overall is not too aggressive, and the nice intro riff is used more then once on it. The title track starts up with clean guitar's that are enchanted by the riff in the background, and after a while, the song really starts up, with some nice tremolo 0's on the E string paving the way for the real riff. This track also contains the chorus vocals, that "For the revolution" contained. 

The next track "Sacramentum" contains an intro of biblical proportions, that soon explodes into a nice melodic riff. And overall the keyboard melodies of this song are really "calm" so to speak. Featuring a really nice solo. A nice end for an nice album. Except that this is not the end of the album, as it still features a cover of Thin lizzy's song "Cold sweat" which is executed with this Rock & roll style spiced with a little Kalmah (and tapping) 

Favorite tracks: Rust never sleeps, One of fail, 12 Gauge and Sacramentum

Favorite albums of Kalmah in the following order:

1. The black waltz (2006)

2. They will return (2002)

3. Swamplord (2000)

4. 12 Gauge (2012)

5. For the revolution (2008)

6. Swampsongs (2003)

Overall, as i said, Kalmah is probably in the top 5 Melodeath bands that there is, with every album containing some pretty amazing songs, all i have to say is that after 12 Gauge, i'm REALLY looking forward to this new album.

And there are the boys from Kalmah.

Soreption new album cover:

 Another really amazing thing that i found was the new Soreption album art:

And holy shit! That's really, really good. As it appears, Soreption's second album will come out in the early 2013. And this is something that i never saw coming, but am really happy that it's happening.

Here's what Blabbermouth said about Soreption:

"Formed in 2005, Soreption unleash their surgically precise and unique, razorsharp voilence with technically and artistically advanced riffs topped off with in-your.face brutal vocals, leaving the listener nothing short of stunned and ready to bow down to the mature display of how death metal should be played"

And this is 100% accurate. if you haven't heard about soreption, i tell you, if you like techdeath, look them up. You will not be disappointed. Here's a track from their first album (Deterioration of minds) Youtube's quality is shit, but give it a try non the less. 

pan>

Even their demo material is absolutely fantastic. 

Soreption's demos

It contains four songs, which are named........ 1,2,3 and 4. The song "4" contains probably one of the most memorable blast beats ever recorded, and if i had to provide a 10 second clip for anyone explaining what blast beat is it would be this:  

1:46 for exemplary blast beat.

And here's the last bit of news:

Aeon streams a new track from "Aeons black"

Oh, Aeon, The angriest band in the world right after Deicide, with lyrics that go so much over the top that i'm not sure if i should be concerned or laugh, (i do the laughing). Still, "Rise to dominate" and "Path of fire" were more than solid good ol' death metal releases. + "Bleeding the false" has probably the most satanic country song ever created.

Aeon's fourth baggage of hatred and anger will be cast upon this poor world on November 20 trough metal blade. And it will be titled "Aeons black" It will contain 15 satanic mantras, which is really a lot for any band. 

Here's the song list for the new album:

"Aeons black" track listing:

01. Still they pray
02. The Glowing Hate
03. The voice of the Accuser
04. I wish you death
05. Garden of sin
06. Neptune the mystic
07. Nothing left to destroy
08. Passage to hell
09. Aeons blacl
10. Dead means Dead
11. Sacrificed
12. Aftermath
13. Blessed by the priest
14. Maze of the damned
15. Die by my hands

                                

And there's the new artwork of Aeons black, it's okay to say the least. But in no way can beat the album art's of "Rise to dominate" and "Path of fire"

On the right we can see the artwork of "Rise to dominate" which is my favorite release from "Aeon" and on the left we can see the artwork of "Path of fire" which comes right behind Rise to dominate. Both are really good baggage's for any fan of Death metal.



Aeon released a new song from aeons black earlier this month i think, called "Aeons black" which i actually found really boring, the main riff is okay, but the problem is that the song has close to no diversity at all, which kills a good song.

The newest track released called "Still they pray" is a bit better than "Aeons black"


you can hear the new song, and read the interview here:

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=181250


And here's the summary for "Still they pray"

It starts up with your basic Aeon riff, lots of fifth chords, tremolo 0's and hammer on's, at 0:35 you can hear Tommy delivering his trademark DM growls, on a side note, i'm a big fan of Tommy's singing style, he doesn't slip into this category of growlers that go so low that you can't make out any lyrics at all, his growling is close to perfection, and his high pitched growls are really solid too, altrough they could be used more often. The drum work is good too, the blast beats sound superb, and the drum sound is awesome. At 1 min mark, we can hear another "trademark" of Tommy's, those vocals that are sang really fast and high up, (probably two vocal tracks, the deep growling on the background and the high pitched in the front) And soon after it a really fast and small solo, or a bit of the solo, which is played in its entirety soon after, including the small part which came before the actual solo. And again, around 2 minutes, we get a fine demonstration on how to growl. Afterwards there's some groovines to be heard, as this new riff comes about. The chorus is your basic Aeon chorus, nothing more nothing less. Overall this one is an okay song, nothing amazing or special, but nothing bad either.



Enough news for one night, i'm off!

Status report!

It was quite the weekend, i spend the Friday  over at one of my friend's place, fooling around, listening to music and playing the guitar, mainly testing the new Cs-40 i bought a couple of days before that.

Now there's a fucking manly pose to play the acoustic :P

Quite the bard's we were! 

I also got started on the newest Assassins Creed novel. Like i have stated, i'm a big fan of those novels :)

Came home on the Sunday, discovered a bunch of new band's, tried to get this funny chord progression down and around the evening i took my family's dog out for a run. 

There's the beast himself, he's a Siberian husky, been with our family for a long time, really nice dog.

I'm one of those persons who actually enjoy going on a run at night, it wont even get that dark during the night's if the moon's out and the sky is clear, and i absolutely love to run in the bare moonlight, while listening to music through headphones, and another plus is that there's NEVER anyone else around at that time, i couldn't count the times i'v sang the lyrics for something absolutely ridiculous when on a run at night :)

The next day i woke up to this view:

Snow. Amazing. I fucking love snow. I'm actually more of a winter person, although i don't really have anything against the summer, except ridiculously high temperatures, but overall, winter is my favorite time of the year. I got up, and had to run a couple of errands for my dad, the first one not being that nice :P

I needed to clean the holding pen of our goat, yeah, we have a goat. 

Good morning to you too, fine goat.

And then i had to retrieve this baggage for him, the views were absolutely amazing!

There's nothing quite like the misty woods, at night or during the day, instant atmosphere for listening to viking themed metal, or anything calm and relaxing. Hah.

Got back home, and that's when i noticed it, a baggage, from Nuclear blast....  holy shit.... I knew exactly what's it contained, and i was more then excited! 

Wintersun's Time 1. Something i, and countless others have been waiting for 8 long years, and after going through it, i have to say that it's an amazing piece of music, different from the first record, but i cant say that its not as good, since i loved Time 1, it's filled with amazing melodies, a bunch of good riff's,  the only problem with it is the fact that it's a two part album, and that the second part wont release until 2013, and Time 1 surely will leave one waiting for more:)

I'll do a thorough review of Time 1 sometimes soon...

I bought the Nuclear Blast mail order limited edition thingy, with the actual record, an instrumental version of the record (which is actually good, because i like to listen to music while i read, but if the music has vocals on it, they will most likely distract me, because i instinctively follow the lyrics, and that distracts me from reading the actual bood)

And a Cd that contains all kind's of extra stuff, you know, your basic extra cd + a nice chapter going trough some of the riff's and drumming tricks of the record.   

And i also bought 15 Dimmu borgir stickers, purely on the heet of the moment, + they are really cheap, 3 euros for 15 stickers. I'll hand a couple of them to my friends, and i already gave one for my sister. Well see what i'll do with them :)


That's it for now 

Frosttide - Fields of snow, for the glory of the first snow fall!

Frosttide is a Finnish epic folk band,  it's a band that i really would love to see catch on, and become a known band around the metalheads of the world, and record more stuff :)

Today.

Today, i found myself in the middle of Tampere, which is this nice city near me, and  the provider of 80% live shows that i attend. Anyway's, there i was, with 4 hours to kill. And what did i do? Marched to the nearest guitar store...

There it is, as welcoming as ever.

 

What i love about these kind of  places, is that you can just basically march in there, and play the guitars. I'v been at this specific store more then once, usually just to kill time, but sometimes as an actual customer :O, i actually bought my guitar there earlier this year, and it's a place that i always visit with one of my guitarist friends if we are around, just to hang around and play with the guitar's. 

And then, after a couple of hours of fooling around the instrument's, i actually ended up buying an Acoustic guitar, or to be specific: Yamaha CS-40, which is a smaller model of the Yamaha C-40. I'm not sure if the C 40 has nylon strings, but the CS-40 sure does, and i fell in love with the sound of the nylon strings. + you can't play Fear of the dark without one of these ;)

And there's the beast itself!

After i took the guitar into my car, i started to hunt for Cd's, there's this nice CD store in Tampere, where i have purchased ridiculous amount's of CD's, but it was closed at the time, so i had to settle for the usual arsenal of this department store of a kind.

The supply of metal was what it is at these places, which is lot's of hard rock, rock, shitloads of pop and stuff like that, few gem's of "real" metal like Krisiun and Amon amarth, i could have picked up one of those, or go for the Iron maiden's which i still lack, but i figured that since i have some pretty fucking sweet record's coming up on the mail i'll just go for something that i actually haven't listened to before. And then an obvious Seth Siro Anton art piece hit my eye's:

And the winner was this album. Moonspell - Alpha noir, It's a band that i haven't hear much about, but i knew that they were some kind of a mix of Black metal, Folk and gothic stuff, so i took it. And it's a funny one, i'm not really sure if i like it or not, some of the tracks i really like and some i don't like at all, now usually at this point i would just think of the album as nothing more then mediocre, but the tracks that i actually like have so many little details and melodies, it's also really atmospheric,  that i can't say that it's a mediocre release. The CD actually contains two albums ("Musical twins") The" Alpha noir" and "Omega white", i'v had time to only listen trough Alpha noir, with actual tough process involved so i shall write something about it. The album is not the most brutal album ever created, but brutality for me never was the mark of quality.

I think that ill go through the whole thing track by track:

So the whole package starts off with this track called "Axis mundi", and before i go on i will say that Moonspell is a band from Portugal, although most of the stuff is in English, there's a lot of Portuguese in there too. 

Axis mundi:  The record starts up with this nice dark ambient music, with the drums and the vocals, repeating this sort of a mantra, creating this nice atmospheric curtain that makes you really wait for the actual music to start up.  And start up is just what happens, with this really heavy and nice sounding riffing, and soon the vocalist ( or vocalists?) start to go over this choir-ish vocals for a while, as i listened to this i couldn't help but to notice that the guitar work is really thrash influenced, which i like. Then there's some more "Gothic" really dark sounding vocal, which usually are not my absolute favorite's, but this singer can do it right. More of the epic chorus action, and the strong, heavy riffing, pretty steady on. I actually really liked some of the parts of this one, the rhythm of it and even more rare, the lyrics of it:  

"Another lie will be enough to illuminate the misery the race has turned into" 

Afterwards, there's  some clean vocal, which work just fine (Wintersun!), if not over used in my opinion, definitely excluding these cute boy band's tho :) and the song is wrapped up by the amazing riff that we heard in the start.

Lickanthrope: Here's a song that's certainly not anywhere near as strong lyrically as Axis was, basic storytelling about werewolf's, but good lyrics are after all always a bonus, and certainly not a requirement for amazing music, but i always appreciate good lyrics. This one starts up with really thrashy intro riff which changes into this more melodic riff soon after, which is at some point's backed with small sections of acoustic. For me, this song wasn't that strong, but not terrible either, pretty basic one. Altrough there are some really sweet keyboard sections around the chorus, and a nice "clock" and a guy really quickly whispering the title of the song, again, i love stuff like that. Around the end there's some tremolo and a couple   

of nice power chord's. 

Versus: I really, really dislike this song, or at least a big majority of it, i just don't like the beginning vocals, which are repeated a couple of times in the song. The best part of the song is the ambient ending of it really. 

Alpha noir: The title track starts up with, again, strong riff's that are partly really thrashy and partly really melodic, spiced with tremolo. And some awesome power chord's later on, actually it's a great song if you look at the guitarist's work, but other then the guitar's there's really nothing amazing to be seen here. 

Em nome do medo: Starts up with a bass line + drums, which is a nice change, soon the keyboards join in too with this really strong atmospheric part. Oh yeah, the whole song is actually sang in Portuguese, so theres diversity for us. Really strong on the keyboards on this one, creating the dark-ish atmosphere, that i was looking for. The guitar lead's are fitting here as well. There's actually a really nice solo on this one too, fits the atmosphere perfectly, backed with the strong keyboards. Then an amazing part with similar clean vocals as Rotting Christ likes to use, backed with a bass, the whole song ends with a really dark keyboard outro. This song is probably my favorite on the album.  

Opera carne: Starts up as most of the songs, thrashy and heavy, there's some kind of a Flanger guitar effect employed here, and as with most of the songs, the thrashines is replaced by melodic riff's. The chorus of this one is really nice, with couple of guys sort of grunting and chanting before and after it (good live stuff right there), a nice bit of soloing is heard here too, which acts as a passage to the chorus aaaand then the thrash - riff is back to end the song.

Love is blasphemy: pretty mediocre one, but still, nice keyboard sections and really strong riffing, which appears to be a constant thing with this album and a nice drum "solo". There's some more brutalish growls used on this one, which, again, brings a nice diversity to the album, obviously i would love to hear more of this more brutal way of singing these songs, but can't always win can i. 

Grandstand: Again, the same pattern, really thrashy guitar intro's, up until 0:40 etc, where the keyboards kick in, which appears to be the pattern that these guys employ a lot. This one is a bit of a mediocre song too, a bit on the repetitive side in my opinion (excluding the solo). Some awesome power chords are employed as a passage to the solo, and to back the solo, which is a nice one, i love the bands who use solos as passages to choruses, like in this one: the solo starts up fast and as your basic solo, and greatly slows down pawing the way for the vocalist. 

Sine missione:  The last in line, and it's an instrumental. And a dark one at that, all kind of flutes and horns are used here, i cant help but to think about a mix of Behemoth and Septic flesh. This track is really great finish to the song, starting really dark, and then there's a "calm before the storm" before the guitar and drums really start to deliver what they did all along the album. Strong riffs, that escalate into more melodic riffs. Nearing the end, the keyboards join in, and there we have it, really dark, catchy and ambient finish to the album that was just that. The whole thing is ended by a nice vibrato dive bomb. 

I'v had some bad experiences with picking a random metal album, but this one certainly did not disappoint, and as i said, i don't like all of it and i love some of it, which creates a mixed opinion about the whole thing, but for anyone who's a fan of more ambient metal, I.e Septic flesh, Stormlord or Wintersun, i would recommend this one, unless the person is a picky guy about vocal styles. 

I didn't want to leave the store empty handed (I obviously didn't just assume that the CD i just bought without any info was good, which it actually was)  so i picked up two coffee mugs too: 

Death: Scream bloody gore.

A Death mug, something that's almost essential to have as a metalhead ;) + i think those skeleton guys look hilarious!

And a nice Iron maiden mug, probably not the best mug design of Iron maiden, but the only one i found.

That's all for now, ill be going to sleep and tomorrow ill go through the second album on the Moonspell back, and see how that turns out!

Renovations

Today has been one busy day, my family had this idea to renovate our sauna, as you know, sauna is the ancient torture device employed by the Finn's.

First of all, i had to take the benches of the sauna away, and rep-paint the old wall to the right in the picture.

I also messed around with the painters tape.

After i was done with the painting, i used this sandpaper grinder thingy to grind the wooden benches, making them look like brand new and softer.

I also shaved my beard with that thing....

After a couple of hours and a few thousand sawdust infested cough's later, i installed the benches back, and now it's looking brand new!

Afterward's i red some Inferno, which is a metal magazine here in Finland, and as i told you yesterday, played some Amon amarth, i chose to learn "Free will sacrifice", probably because "Twilight of the thunder god" is by far my favorite Amon amarth release. 

Oh yeah! i also blasted all kind of brutal dm, and drove a motherfucking tractor. Because i can!

What else? oh yeah, i browser a lot of different metal related new's sites, and there's almost always something interesting to be found (and to be written here!) This time it was Luna ad noctum's new record deal. 

But before that, a word about the awesome bunch of Polish Blackened ANYTHING:

I love the "Polish" scene of symphonic bm / Blackened death, stuff like, Crionics, Thy disease, Abused majesty, Behemoth, Devilish impressions, and bands like those, + the Polish arsenal of such band's seems to uphold some sort of twisted fashion (which i love)  of their own, probably started by Behemoth but i can't be sure. I mean just look at them:

There's good ol' Behemoth, with the general "Polish" look, lot's of white and grey color's, huge medieval-ish armors, and all that.

There's Crionic's, another one of Poland's elite, and just look at the overall color world of the picture, white and grey.

And here's the last example, Devilish impressions, again, lot's of white, you must bee seeing the similarities by now, And damn, every band has at least one member with a similar beard then Orion of Behemoth (Right)

Crionics : second guy from the right, and the left on too?, and Devilish impressions: the guy on the left and the one on the right, but not so much as the left one . I guess this is just the Polish "look" of BM :) And its fucking awesome if you ask me.

Luna ad noctum

So yeah, Luna ad noctum, probably not a band many are familiar with, and i can kinda see why, since they most definitely are not the elite of Symphonic bm, but still a band that i like :) Formed during 1998, first full length during 2001,  three albums in total, containing a couple of gems, but overall pretty much your basic SBM. It would appear that they just signed a record deal for Massacre records (Darzamat, Illdisposed, Legion of the damned, Sinister to name a few) The album will be the fourth one they have released, and it will be cast upon the world in February 2013. They have already published the cover art and one track.

                        And there it is, a thing of beauty, and definitely the best one by them so far.

So, there's the new track, called "In Hypnosis" starts up with a riff that i actually don't like at all, but it get's better after the vocalist starts to deliver his proficient Black metal vocals, backed with the good ol'  tremolo picking, which is more or less a safe bet for this kind of music, and with some much lower growls (backing vocalist?) which create some nice diversity to the track, and the singer can definitely work with the guitarist to create this groove-ish storytelling. The drum work is a step up from your typical BM drumming, but nothing amazing (the drummer is from Abused majesty, so he certainly is not a beginner with this stuff) Around 2 mins a small, creepy  keyboard "effect" can be heard, i'm a big fan of these "small" things in songs, which are never repeated again, and you just have to find them out yourself, even tho this one is a bit obvious, but a nice touch non the less. Closer to the end we can hear some nice (possibly pinch harmonica) bending, which is another thing that i love., around 3:50 we have these Dimmu borgir - Puritania - ish, kind of a cliche vocal effect, but that's only used once so i don't mind.  And then there's another small keyboard passage to the solo, which wraps the whole song up. 

Overall, if the whole record is as solid as this one, we are looking at more than decent Symphonic Bm release! 

And now i'm off to devour some noodles! 

Sunday

It's Sunday, the worst day of the week, but as it appears i'm currently not working, so i can't complain. 

I spend the weekend with friends, mostly playing resident evil 6, which quite frankly was disappointing as a game, but it didn't really matter, co-op is always fun in the right company. Came home, and basically spend the Sunday watching Dexter, and listening to this stuff:

Revocation

If you haven't heard Revocation, and if your'e a fan of Thrash influenced Death metal, go check them out!

I love their Aggressive drummer and the fairly technical guitar-work, and those oh so thrashy chanted choruses (I.e Dismantle the dictator), actually interesting solo's +their albums are mixed close to perfection, the snare and double-bass sounds just as "tight" as they should, and the bass sounds awesome too, and some of the songs contain nice bass solos, i.e Existence is futile.

I love that bright red Jackson Warrior!

I'm not a huge fan of David's (vox / gtr) singing style, but it doesn't bother me really, and other than that Revocation is more than your average Dm / thrash band. The only thing that i REALLY hate is, that Revocation played in Finland last week, but the venue was in Helsinki (The capital of Finland) which is about 3 hours away, or 1.5 via train, so i really can't go there unless it's weekend (or i'm free for the next day), and obviously, Revocation played on Thursday, and i had an awesome 6.00 am wake up at Friday, so i didn't go for it, but if i get the chance, which i probably will someday (i hope), given the growing popularity of this band, ill definitely go and see them!

Oh yeah, revocation released a new music video quite recently, and after watching it, i have to say that these guys have an awesome sense of humor too!

I'm off to learn some Amon amarth!

The beginning

It felt appropriate that my first post should be about me telling something about myself and the overall direction of this blog.

But lets start about me, i'm an 19 years old guy from western Finland, and like i stated in the "about me" thingy, music is the absolute center of my world, i listen to it, i play it, i search it, i sing it, i draw it, i write it, i study it, i collect it and i love it, its a constant factor in my life and something that i will not give up.

About the blog: i will be posting mostly metal music related stuff, like new's, reviews, opinions and all that comes with it.

Still missing "few" studios :/

I'v been a metalhead since age 9, when my mother bought me Iron maiden's Fear of the dark cd, and that was it. That one cd probably played a huge part in my musical taste and ultimately my persona, which largely revolves around my musical taste. And the song "fear of the dark" is probably the most "meaningful" song for me, and Iron maiden is still one of my favourit bands of all time.

So about my musical taste, i am not someone who patrols around the internet pointing fingers at people or bands and accusing them of not being "true metal" or anything like that, i detest ignorant people who are carrying out this inquisition of alleged true metalheads. As long as you're a nice person in general, i wont have a problem with you. I'm also a guy who listens to
basically any form of metal (and rock), Death metal, Symphonic bm, bm, Thrash, gothic, osdm, power metal, ambient, tech death, folk, melodeath, i listen to it all, and love it all. With the exceptions of Doom metal, 90% of deathcore, screamo and anything with      pigsqueel vocals in it:)

My CD collection so far, plus a couple of other things not music related.

And like i have stated in the "about me" i'm always open for band suggestions, but ill have to say that my musical library has grown quite huge, which means that asking if i like Amon amarth, Behemoth, Nile or Immortal would be pretty pointless :) But fire away, and well see if i have it / if i like it!

I picked up the guitar earlier this year, as you can see, my guitar is an Ibanez RGR321-EX, which is a decent guitar to say the least, the hardware is excellent for a price of which i bought it, it keeps the tuning well, it has two Ibanez Infinity series pickups, which are pretty okay, not excellent but not bad either, i'm looking into changing them, but don't know about that one. + the guitar is really light too.

My amp is a Roland Cube 40xl, and i must say, its an amazing amp, it has two channes, the JC Clean and the Lead channel, with a huge load of different setups: Tweed, Brit Combo, Black panel, Classic stack, R-Fier, Acoustic simulator and Extreme. It contains more than enough efx's, reverbs, delays, loopers, which is absolutely amazing, you can basically record whatever it is that you're playing and then have the amp repeat it, useful for playing backing guitars for example. The amp also has a tuner in it.  

I'm also looking into buying a mic and a pre amp for it, so that i could do vocal covers, which i already do, solely because i love to dig deeper into the layers of music, lyrically or otherwise. I just don't record it. I got my growling technique down around two years ago, and i'v been improving it ever since. 

What else is there to tell about me, hmm, during winters i do downhill skiing, which i'v done since age 13 or so, its actually shitloads of fun. I also play some games, my absolutely favorite genre being stealth based games like. Hitman series, Splinter cell series, Metal gear solid series, Assassins creed series, Thief series and so forth, but i also enjoy the occasional action packs like: Resident evil's, Halo's, Mass effect's, The elder scroll's and so on. I love to play through the games on the hardest difficult, it really makes you think, and dig deeper into the mechanics of the game, and upon failure (which are many, with certain games) adjust your tactics and approach of the obstacle and so forth. I love that stuff. 

I also read whenever i have the time for it, i love the novels based on Assassins creed series, and i have all of them, except AC3, because i want to play the game before the book, i also read horror books occasionally. 

So yeah, there's a bunch of info for you, whoever it is that's reading this. I shall end this "discussion" with a nice piece of Hypocrisy, and i think that the name is quite appropriate. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EWBVx0U484

(Copyrights wont allow me to embed this video into the site, so ill just go with the good ol' hyperlink)