(no subject)

[miko2]

Today's Song: Vampiro by Anabantha

Another obscure metal band I came across on some outdated metal download site was a Mexican gothic metal band called "Fortaleza". Their cd was called La Fortaleza De La Soledad (my Spanish is so rusty that I didn't recognize this as meaning "Fortress of Solitude" until I translated a web page from Spanish to English and read about Superman's favorite hideaway, instead of some goth metal band's cd). Anyway this looked exactly like the kind of goth metal that I really enjoy -- shades of Nightwish, After Forever, Within Temptation, etc. Who knew there was a band like that in Mexico?

Well, apparently they're so obscure that it took me quite a while to find out anything more about them. Even less-than-legal downloads were impossible to find, but eventually I was able to determine that someone was selling their cd on Ebay if I wanted it, and then I found their myspace page: Fortaleza goth metal band from Veracruz.

And, as I'd half expected, they were obscure for a reason. Not that they're bad, but they aren't the next Nightwish, that's certain. But not all obscure bands are weak imitators of someone else... some of them are rather strong imitators, heh. Following the links from Fortaleza's page leads you to a lot of other Mexican metal bands. (That's the great thing about the internet these days, you can learn about bands that really, you'd never know they even existed otherwise). Thus I came to the myspace page for another Mexican gothic metal band: Anabantha.

Now here we have a band that, while not really that much more original, are far more accimplished, with a half dozen albums to their name. They are described in several places as "el primero gotica metal band de la Mexico" (that's not a direct quote, that's me butchering the Spanish language I suspect). Anyway they've got quite a few fans and I actually kind of like them, especially their Spanish-language version of El Fantasma de la Opera (you can hear it on their myspace page) which owes a great deal (a great deal) to Nightwish's own Phantom of the Opera cover.

I haven't gone insane and ordered any cds by this band yet, but maybe that's because there are so many to choose from. The one with the Phantom cover is on Amazon though, and three others are available through Ebay. ^_^

Anabantha -- Vampiro