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.
Kalmah has published a press release on their official website announcing that they’ve finished the recordings for their 6th studio album. Once again the album has been recorded in the Tico-Tico studios (Finland) and mastered at Cutting Room (Sweden).
Lead guitarist Antti Kokko:
Everything went fluently as always even thought this time the recordings were done in three different time periods within a half a year. Swamp spirit among the band is high and every body is very satisfied with the result as should. Actually I think it was even better to leave the breath taking gaps here and there so that the new material didn`t numb ears and head. What comes to new material under the guidance of our dear Swamplord it is very Kalmah like but we haven`t forgot to introduce new tuning here and there
Cover art and promotional material is on its way. The exact release date is yet unknown, but will take place somewhen in january/february 2010.
By the way, you can find the 12 Gauge studio diary, videos and so on at: studio diary
Barymetallon, who’s doing Kalmah covers which he publishs on youtube.com has released another fantastic cover: “Moon of My Nights” from the upcoming album “12 Gauge”.
Welcome to the first article of my Asian Metal Bands-series. As there is a huge variety in quantitiy and qualitiy of english information regarding to asian bands, I have decided to pick those two bands that impressed me most and take a closer look on them. I think I will keep it this way for the following articles about korean, chinese, japanese and the other bands.
ChthoniC
ChthoniC is a melodic black/extreme metal band from Taipei that has been founded in 1995. The band incorporates influences from traditional taiwanese
music including instruments such as the erhu (which is called hena in native taiwanese).
ChthoniC is also known as the first taiwanese metal band that gained regional and international recognition. They won numerous awards like 2003 the Best Band Award at the Taiwan Golden Melodies Award Ceremony.
They also have been part of the 2007 Ozzfest tour as a rotating second stage act. While taking part in the Ozzfest, they also toured as a support act for Nile. From the US they flew to Germany to play at the Wacken Open Air 2007.
The themes mostly surround the defiant spirit of early Taiwanese colonizers, fictional wars between aborigine’s gods with Han’s gods, Taiwanese folklore and mythology, and the historical event known as the Wushe Incident, which was a rebellion against the Japanese governor by the Seediq people.
Some of their songs are partly or entirely written in taiwanese, japanese or taiwanese aboriginal languages, but most of the band’s songs have their lyrics written entirely in classical chinese, which is rarely seen in contemporary chinese music.
Since their formation, ChthoniC has released five studio albums: “Where the Ancestors’ Soul Gathered” (1999), “9th Empyrean” (2000), “Relentless Recurrence” (2002), “Seediq Bale” (2005) and “Mirror of Retribution” (2009).
Within three months of their formation in December 2001, the melodic black metal act recorded and released their first demo, but because of excessive touring it took them five more years for their debut album “Bloodshed Rebefallen”.
Interweaving brutal rhythms, sorrowfully beautiful piano melodies, and strings of grandeur, Anthelion’s music encapsulates beauty, intricacy, extreme intensity, and conflict into a single expression.
The vocals are an elaborate web of croaks high and low, stringed together with ear-dissecting screeches that fully express the strong emotions in the songs. The guitars incorporate a sound deeply influenced by speed metal and techniques from classical music onto a foundation of dark and heavy black metal guitar, which compliments Anthelion’s resplendent style of music arrangement. Though still fast and brutal, the drums differentiate itself from the usual black metal act by alternating different techniques and tempos (reminds a bit of the old Dimmu Borgir) to enhance the sense of rhythm in the music.
Their official website seems to be down at the moment, but you can check them out on MySpace.
The Tome of Broken Souls from Bloodshed Rebefallen:
More interesting bands:
The Melodic Death Metal band Infernal Chaos has been formed in 2004. Up to now they released one album “Vision of Disorder”. Checkout “We Stand Alone” from their debut EP.
In 2007 Emerging From The Cocoon started to spread their vision of Death Metal throughout asian countries. Since their foundation they have released one demo “Arise After Withering” (2008) and an album “Sanguinivore” (2009). The Sickness Unto Death by EftC.
Crescent Lament is a Gothic (Metal) band that has been founded in 2007. Since then they released two demos “Crescent Lament” & “The Forgotten Winter”. Danse Macabre by Crescent Lament.
I’m convinced that nearly each blogger knows that problem: you want to write an article about something that you discovered or expierenced and while doing some research or working on the article you get lost in the world wide web and/or the topic itself.
In fact I wanted to write this article a couple of weeks ago as I found a taiwanese black metal. The band is called ChthoniC and I found it by chance. While checking out some online resources, amongst others last.fm.
While browsing through the similiar artists of ChthoniC I had the chance to discover a few more asian black/death metal bands that I would like to share with you. In the end I decided to write a whole article series of at least five parts.
Each part will cover bands from a specific country, namely Taiwan1, China, Japan and Korea. The articles will mainly focus on black and death metal bands and will also feature some gothic or doom metal bands as well as metalcore.
Arch Enemy is going to release their new studio album “The Root Of All Evil” on 28th September 2009 in Europe. The album contains a selection of completely re-recorded tracks from the first three albums “Black Earth” (1996), “Stigmata” (1998) and “Burning Bridges” (1999).
The recently unveiled artwork/layout of “The Root Of All Evil” has been done by the brazilian artist Gustavo Sazes.
The vampires of Helsinki, The 69 Eyes will release their new album “Back In Blood” on 28th August in Europe via Nuclear Blast Records.
The first single cut will be the hard & dark rocking “Dead Girls Are Easy” of which the band shot a video with Brandon Cole “Bam” Magera (Jackass, Viva La Bam) as the director. By the way, Bam has also directed the video of “Lost Boys”.
Worldwide premier of the new video was on playboy.com on 17th July.
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