Today, Amorphis released a trailer of the long awaited “Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes” Live-DVD:

Can’t await to get that piece!

Holy Shit! Actually I’m not that much into classical metal music, but this really kicks ass:

Amazing! 10 Genres of Metal in 3 Minutes by Raz Ben Ari:

中国摇滚乐 (China Rocks). As you can probably assume this part of my Asian Metal Bands-series is about chinese bands. Why do they rock? China has a pretty large rock/metal scene and slowly their are finding to an own identity

In the previous part of the series, I complained a bit about the fact that it was difficult to choose just a few bands from all those great bands, but I can assure you, in case of the chinese bands that task was even harder.

Ego Fall/Against Me:

The foundational line up of China’s first Metal Core Band Ego Fall came from the former inner Mongolian Grunge band called Subconscious (潜意识 QianYiShi) which was found back in 2000.

One year later, a new vocalist and a guitarist came into the band and led the music changed more towards metal style. In the beginning of 2004 the band name was officially changed to Against Me, and the music tend more into power metal. 2005 the initial vocalist and guitarist returned and brought their Melodic Death Metal influences into band. Now with two shouters on stage they also let different elements like industrial, NuMetal etc. flow into their music and mix it all up into nowadays Metal Core Style.

Up to date they released one album “Spirit of Mongolia” (2008) as Ego Fall.

The Rule in Troubled Times from Spirit of Mongolia

Read the rest of this entry »

The 14th April 2010 is a raven-hued day for me as well as for the music scene in general and the metal scene in particular. It’s the day on which Peter Steele, the lead singer, bassist and composer of the Gothic Metal band Type O Negative had succumbed to a heart attack at an age of 48 years.

The death news has been confirmed by fellow bandmate Kenny Hickey and also by Fuse Host Mistress Juliya and Revolver’s editor in chief Brandon Geist who posted messages on their twitter.

There have been rumours about Peter Steeles death in 2005, as Type O Negative announced the reputed demise of their singer on the bands homepage. The hoax also included the cause of death: heart attack. It must be irony of fate that Peter Steele succumbed to a heart attack now, but I’m pretty sure that Peter would like that kind of humour and would laughing his ass off.

In April 2007, Pete revealed that he had embraced the Roman Catholic faith after many years of atheism. In an interview with U.S. metal magazine Decibel, he said:

There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realise my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what’s after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it’s a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can’t believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.

The very first time I heardt about Type O Negative was in 1993 as the video of ‘Christian Woman’ has been presented during the legendary MTV show Headbangers Ball. The song got me from the very first moment and so I bought their album ‘Bloody Kisses’ – and in the end I’m owning all of their records.

I became a real fan of Peter Steele and Type O Negative in particular, and I’ve been always drooling over their next release. Unfortunately I did not have the chance to see them live on stage, and I’m sad that I won’t have that chance anymore.

My heart, support and thoughts are with his family, Kenny Hickey, Josh Silver and John Kelly. I wish you will have the strength to tide over those dark and bad times.

Steele’s death is a serious loss to music and he would be remembered for his notable contribution to the world of music.

Rest in Peace, Peter. Thanks for the gifts you left behind. We will miss you.

Welcome to the second article of my Asian Metal Bands-series. In this part I will cover the metal scene of (South) Korea and it was really a hard task to break all those great bands down to a few.

Oathean

Oathean is a korean melodic black metal band that has been formed 1993 originally under the name Odin, but changed their name three years later after a short hiatus.

Neither their lyrical themes are subject to satanism or anti-christianity nor they are using corpsepaint which is actually typical for black metal bands. Their lyrics mainly deal with depression and sadness and they incorporate influences of folk metal as well as korean world music with the use of traditional korean instruments.

Since their name change, Oathean has released five albums: “The Eyes of Tremendous Sorrow” (1998), “Ten Days in Lachrymation” (2001), “The Last Desperate 10 Years as Ever” (2003, containing the 1997 demo and remastered old songs), “Fading Away into the Grave of Nothingness” (2004), “The Eyes of Tremendous Sorrow + As a Solitary Tree Against the Sky” (2005, containing five new songs and the first album) and “Regarding All the Sadness of the World” (2008).

Cruel Sadness from Regarding All the Sadness of the World:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mea Culpa! While browsing through my articles archive I noticed that I haven’t written about the Amorphis gig that I attended on 5th November 2009. To cut a long story short, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen and though I don’t like that expression, but it was truly energetic!

Shortly after I’ve seen them, they announced that they are about to film the show at Club Teatria in Oulu/Finland and release it on their first-ever live DVD, which is also known as the 20th Anniversary DVD. Regarding to the offical Amorphis website the release date is scheduled for early june:

The previously announced 2oth Anniversary DVD will be titled Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes and is scheduled for relase in early June. It contains a full live concert, filmed in November 2009 at Club Teatria in Oulu/Finland.

Besides the standard version, there will be a limited Deluxe Edition, which in addition to the Oulu concert (also available in Dolby Digital 5.1) contains a bonus DVD featuring the complete Summer Breeze 2009 gig, a documentary titled Tales From The 20 Years, a collection of promo video clips and a photo gallery. Furthermore, the Deluxe Edition will include the Oulu gig in its entirety on two live CDs.

Premiere Alert: Though I’m not a big fan of such live DVDs, I’m more than just willing to buy the limited Deluxe Edition and hardly can wait till june.

I can’t pretend, but some of you might already noticed that I’ve a got a big weakness for good made cover versions and so I was kinda surprised that Vika completely passed my attention so far. I’ve to confess, her piano cover versions are the best I’ve ever heardt so far. Here’s the song that completely catched me and made me breathless:

Do not forget to checkout the rest of her cover versions on here website or on Youtube. You won’t regret it at any rate!

I have to confess that although I’ve been into metal for ages now, I’ve never really listened to hardcore — I don’t mean hard stuff, but sub-genre hardcore — and so I was kinda surprised as I listened to Converge for the very first time. Converge is a four-piece American band, formed in the winter of 1990 in Salem, Massachusetts, United States. Playing a blend of extreme metal and hardcore punk, this pioneer outfit helped define a lot of the rudiments of the fast-burgeoning metalcore and mathcore genres.

You can say that I’ve got a weakness for technical skilled musicians and so they hit me directly, though I think I will need a bit more time to get used to the singers voice and style, but see for yourself:

By the way, thanks goes out to Andy for commending and pointing my interest to them!

Kalmah will release their sixth longplayer 12 Gauge on March 3 via Spinefarm Records. Nine new songs and one cover version were laid down during the sessions which “went [smoothly], as always, even though this time the recordings were done in three different time periods within a half a year,” according to the band.

12 Gauge track listing:

01. Rust Never Sleeps
02. One of Fail
03. Bullets Are Blind
04. Swampwar
05. Better Not To Tell
06. Hook The Monster
07. Godeye
08. 12 Gauge
09. Sacramentum

The album will be made also available in Japan on February 24 and will include a cover version of Thin Lizzy’s “Cold Sweat”.

For the Revolution, the predecessor of 12 Gauge, in May 2008 landed at position No. 17 on the Finnish national album chart. This was the band’s strongest chart showing to date in Finland. The CD’s cover artwork was designed by former Sentenced drummer Vesa Ranta, who was also responsible for the artwork of The Black Waltz.