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Blah blah blah music blah blah blah
Apr. 28th, 2006 11:58 amIn case you hadn't noticed I've been in another of my music phases the last couple of weeks. In fact, one phase was eclipsed by another -- just as I was getting interested in German Medieval Rock I instead got sucked into Operatic Goth Metal, mostly because someone on Second Life played Nightwish for me and I ordered one of their cds -- and haven't been able to stop playing it.
So when I'm in one of these phases what I do is research, and the way I do that research is to go to Amazon, read reviews, listen to music samples, and then click on links to explore so-called similar bands or read somebody's list of the greatest Goth Metal bands with female vocalists or whatever and then check out the various cds they link to. My first foray naturally led me to some of the other great bands in the genre -- Leaves' Eyes, Within Temptation, After Forever, The Gathering. Subsequent forays lead to more bands that fall into the same genre but aren't exactly standout bands. You get the list of great Goth Bands with female vocals that was compiled by some guy who thinks anything vaguely gothic and metal with a female vocalist is absolutely brilliant. So I've been reading about and listening to samples from bands that simply aren't of the same caliber as Nightwish. Given that Nightwish is probably one of the very best metal bands in any genre active today, that's understandable. But if I look under enough rocks I'm bound to find a new hidden treasure.
One band that comes up a lot when you start researching goth metal is Evanessense. I've known about them for a while, and a friend has played a lot of them for me. They're very pop oriented, more than metal oriented. I'm inclined to dislike them just because they're a popular pop band. But I don't know, I could probably get into them if I tried, I just haven't tried. I could probably pick up one of their cds pretty cheap though.
Another band that apparently fits into the same mold is Lacuna Coil, from Italy. Simply the fact that they're a hard rock/metal band (like Evanessense many goth metal fans don't consider Lacuna Coil to be true metal) from Italy makes them interesting, because for whatever reason, hard rock and heavy metal has always been much more a Northern European and North American thing (and you could even say North Asian, as opposed to South Asian). I really don't know why that is. There are always exceptions, and Australia/New Zeland have to be counted as pretty much North European type places... but anyway, Lacuna Coil is said by many to be really, really good. I listened to some samples, I wasn't all that impressed.
I checked out other bands -- My Dying Bride, a band that tries to be as depressing as possible. Xandria, a German goth band that some guy thought was incredible, but they weren't really. Flowing Tears, another generic goth metal outfit. Ditto for the band Elis. Midnattsol, another Norwegian band that is much more generic than Leaves' Eyes... and I really want to like them, because they play on Norwegian mythology and folk music, and because the lead singer Carmen Elise Espanaes is the younger sister of Liv Kristine Espanaes of Leaves' Eyes. But I dunno, even after playing the clips on Amazon several times over, I'm not sure there's enough there to like.
Visions of Atlantis, another German goth metal band, sounded very promising. People called one of their cds an "operatic metal masterpiece", and one fan went on and on and on about how they were so much like Nightwish that they were practically cloned from that band. So I listened to some tracks... and they didn't sound one bit like Nightwish. At all. I mean, even After Forever and Within Temptation sound a little bit like Nightwish.
I'm more and more convinced that I will probably just buy everything Nightwish ever did, instead of more cds by other so-called similar bands. I'll buy the other Leaves' Eyes cd too, and probably more from Within Temptation. The Gathering and After Forever are interesting but I don't know if I need to own more than one cd of each.
One cd was called "Fate of the Dreamer" and featured the voice of a 14 year old girl. The reviews made it sound very very intersting, but there were no sound samples on Amazon. I went looking, first at Your Tube, which has been very helpful lately in helping me explore music, and then searched the web until I finally found a single song sample on one web page -- actually it played the full song -- and yes, it was pretty interesting.
The next step was that the cd also was not available from Amazon, not even used. I tried Amazon Canada and Brittian but they didn't have it either. I couldn't find it for sale on a web search, so I went to Gemm.com, which has the slogan "if you can't find it here, fugettaboutit". Their slogan has proven true almost every time I've turned to them, if they don't have it, nobody does. ^_^ And yes, they had Fate of the Dreamer -- a cd place in Brazil had 4 copies of the Brazillian version of the cd. $23.00 each plus shipping. Not cheap, but not bad either. Now... do I really want it?
Another band, Brave, is an American goth metal band that someone described as "Enya meets Rush". Well, that didn't turn out to be the case, but I found them interesting. (Again, there are no sound clips on Amazon and I was only able to find a sound clip from one song elsewhere to listen to). But their cds are easy to get -- you can order them for $12.00 right from their web site, or used for less from Amazon.
So what do I do? I place the Brave cd in my Amazon basket -- I often do this with the intention not of buying it immediately, but of thinking of buying it at some future date, or I may eventually decide not to buy it. Meanwhile I'm very tempted to order the Fate of the Dreamer cd, but probably not because I was more impressed by the music on it, as opposed to the Brave cd, but simply because it's rare and hard to obtain and I might not be able to get it later. I'm always scarred by those occasions where something I was interested becomes unavailable, and then I regret not getting it when I had the chance -- and whether it was really so fantastically worth having is almost beside the point.
I've been waiting for my Within Temptation cd to arrive all week. I might just explode if it doesn't arrive tomorrow. But in the meantime, the thing that I can't talk about because it's a present even though she probably knows all about it that I ordered for Jeri-Lynn's birthday arrived yesterday, and of course it's the size that Jeff told me to get and not the size that I should have actually gotten... but I can still give it as a present, or I can think about whether I want to keep it for myself and order a new one in the right size. Or something.
Meh. I haven't even thought about a gift for Michael yet. I suck.
I'll probably need to lend Leaves' Eyes to Kristin at some point. I don't know if she'll like them or not. Or rather -- I know there are one or two songs she'll probably like, but they are after all a metal band, and can get pretty heavy. But they sing parts of at least two songs in Norwegian, and another song completely in Norwegian.
So when I'm in one of these phases what I do is research, and the way I do that research is to go to Amazon, read reviews, listen to music samples, and then click on links to explore so-called similar bands or read somebody's list of the greatest Goth Metal bands with female vocalists or whatever and then check out the various cds they link to. My first foray naturally led me to some of the other great bands in the genre -- Leaves' Eyes, Within Temptation, After Forever, The Gathering. Subsequent forays lead to more bands that fall into the same genre but aren't exactly standout bands. You get the list of great Goth Bands with female vocals that was compiled by some guy who thinks anything vaguely gothic and metal with a female vocalist is absolutely brilliant. So I've been reading about and listening to samples from bands that simply aren't of the same caliber as Nightwish. Given that Nightwish is probably one of the very best metal bands in any genre active today, that's understandable. But if I look under enough rocks I'm bound to find a new hidden treasure.
One band that comes up a lot when you start researching goth metal is Evanessense. I've known about them for a while, and a friend has played a lot of them for me. They're very pop oriented, more than metal oriented. I'm inclined to dislike them just because they're a popular pop band. But I don't know, I could probably get into them if I tried, I just haven't tried. I could probably pick up one of their cds pretty cheap though.
Another band that apparently fits into the same mold is Lacuna Coil, from Italy. Simply the fact that they're a hard rock/metal band (like Evanessense many goth metal fans don't consider Lacuna Coil to be true metal) from Italy makes them interesting, because for whatever reason, hard rock and heavy metal has always been much more a Northern European and North American thing (and you could even say North Asian, as opposed to South Asian). I really don't know why that is. There are always exceptions, and Australia/New Zeland have to be counted as pretty much North European type places... but anyway, Lacuna Coil is said by many to be really, really good. I listened to some samples, I wasn't all that impressed.
I checked out other bands -- My Dying Bride, a band that tries to be as depressing as possible. Xandria, a German goth band that some guy thought was incredible, but they weren't really. Flowing Tears, another generic goth metal outfit. Ditto for the band Elis. Midnattsol, another Norwegian band that is much more generic than Leaves' Eyes... and I really want to like them, because they play on Norwegian mythology and folk music, and because the lead singer Carmen Elise Espanaes is the younger sister of Liv Kristine Espanaes of Leaves' Eyes. But I dunno, even after playing the clips on Amazon several times over, I'm not sure there's enough there to like.
Visions of Atlantis, another German goth metal band, sounded very promising. People called one of their cds an "operatic metal masterpiece", and one fan went on and on and on about how they were so much like Nightwish that they were practically cloned from that band. So I listened to some tracks... and they didn't sound one bit like Nightwish. At all. I mean, even After Forever and Within Temptation sound a little bit like Nightwish.
I'm more and more convinced that I will probably just buy everything Nightwish ever did, instead of more cds by other so-called similar bands. I'll buy the other Leaves' Eyes cd too, and probably more from Within Temptation. The Gathering and After Forever are interesting but I don't know if I need to own more than one cd of each.
One cd was called "Fate of the Dreamer" and featured the voice of a 14 year old girl. The reviews made it sound very very intersting, but there were no sound samples on Amazon. I went looking, first at Your Tube, which has been very helpful lately in helping me explore music, and then searched the web until I finally found a single song sample on one web page -- actually it played the full song -- and yes, it was pretty interesting.
The next step was that the cd also was not available from Amazon, not even used. I tried Amazon Canada and Brittian but they didn't have it either. I couldn't find it for sale on a web search, so I went to Gemm.com, which has the slogan "if you can't find it here, fugettaboutit". Their slogan has proven true almost every time I've turned to them, if they don't have it, nobody does. ^_^ And yes, they had Fate of the Dreamer -- a cd place in Brazil had 4 copies of the Brazillian version of the cd. $23.00 each plus shipping. Not cheap, but not bad either. Now... do I really want it?
Another band, Brave, is an American goth metal band that someone described as "Enya meets Rush". Well, that didn't turn out to be the case, but I found them interesting. (Again, there are no sound clips on Amazon and I was only able to find a sound clip from one song elsewhere to listen to). But their cds are easy to get -- you can order them for $12.00 right from their web site, or used for less from Amazon.
So what do I do? I place the Brave cd in my Amazon basket -- I often do this with the intention not of buying it immediately, but of thinking of buying it at some future date, or I may eventually decide not to buy it. Meanwhile I'm very tempted to order the Fate of the Dreamer cd, but probably not because I was more impressed by the music on it, as opposed to the Brave cd, but simply because it's rare and hard to obtain and I might not be able to get it later. I'm always scarred by those occasions where something I was interested becomes unavailable, and then I regret not getting it when I had the chance -- and whether it was really so fantastically worth having is almost beside the point.
I've been waiting for my Within Temptation cd to arrive all week. I might just explode if it doesn't arrive tomorrow. But in the meantime, the thing that I can't talk about because it's a present even though she probably knows all about it that I ordered for Jeri-Lynn's birthday arrived yesterday, and of course it's the size that Jeff told me to get and not the size that I should have actually gotten... but I can still give it as a present, or I can think about whether I want to keep it for myself and order a new one in the right size. Or something.
Meh. I haven't even thought about a gift for Michael yet. I suck.
I'll probably need to lend Leaves' Eyes to Kristin at some point. I don't know if she'll like them or not. Or rather -- I know there are one or two songs she'll probably like, but they are after all a metal band, and can get pretty heavy. But they sing parts of at least two songs in Norwegian, and another song completely in Norwegian.
