Browsing around on Google sometimes turns up interesting results for the curious among us... Also when finding the page http://www.metalmap.org/ .
Here you can find an entire overview of which countries brought forth which bands and which genres of metal the bands are. There is also an option to filter tje information you're looking for to which type of metal, or if you want information on e-zines, record labels and so on...
Clicking on a band name will directly take you to the official website, which is also a really cool feature of this Metal Map of Europe site.
To conclude, this site is nice to spend some time on, for the people who look for information on bands and metal.
Good... Well.. From progressive black metal we now turn a page onto what was called Goth metal, with the singer who actually had the fangs to give it all a gothic, vampiric feel... The band I'm talking about is of course Type O Negative, and in special one of my all time favorite singers, Peter Steele.
I first got to know Type O Negative through a remix version of one of their songs Blood & Fire, which was on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. This version is called the Out Of The Ashes Mix. I loved Peter Steele's voice so I dug in a little further.
Type O Negative started out in a band I haven't heard anything from unfortunately, called Northern Lights, to later change the name to Fallout. They played classic rock covers at first but then changed their style to original gothic-style rock. After several band members left Peter Steele founded thrash metal band Carnivore, but... This band went on hiatus after the second album got released.
The band members that joined later led to another name change to Repulsion, and Sub-Zero, but after they found that name had already been taken, they decided to call the band Type O Negative after the "o" negative tattoo's for subzero which they already had.
To be honest their first album I didn't think to be all that spectacular. What I did like was the Black Sabbath cover of Paranoid on Origin Of The Feces. Steele made this sound darker than Ozzy ever could.
And then... On to bigger and better things... The albums Bloody Kisses and October Rust came which contained the songs I truly love of Type O Negative. These songs are for Bloody Kisses "Blood & Fire", "Christian Woman" and "Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)", "Suspended In Dusk".
October Rust.... "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend", "Love You To Death"Cinnamon Girl, Green Man, Wolf Moon, "Red Water (Christmas Mourning)", "Die With Me" and "Haunted".
In World Coming Down there were of course the songs "All Hallows Eve", "White Slavery", "Everything Dies", "Creepy Green Light" which made it to my all time favorites. Of the Life Is Killing Me album I only know "I Don't Wanna Be Me" and of the album Dead Again the songs "Tripping a Blind Man", "September Sun", "Halloween in Heaven" ...
Then.... on April 14th, 2010, came the news we didn't expect to hear...
" It is with great sadness that we inform you that Type O Negative front man, bassist, and our band mate, Peter Steele passed away last night of what appears to be heart failure. Ironically Peter had been enjoying a long period of sobriety and improved health and was imminently due to begin writing and recording new music for our follow up to "Dead Again" released in 2007. The official cause of death has yet to be determined pending autopsy results. The funeral services will be private and memorial services will be announced at a future date. We’d like to share our thoughts and those of Peter’s family below. We are truly saddened to lose our friend and appreciate the tremendous outpouring today from around the world. Sincerely, Josh, Kenny and Johnny "
No matter what, Peter Steele's voice is still wonderful and his persona, known for his vampiric affect, towering stature of 6'8" (203 cm) tall, which gave him a famously menacing stage appearance, rich bass-baritone vocals, and a dark, often self-deprecating sense of humor will be missed.
According to Wikipedia, in a November 2010 interview with Rock Hard magazine, Johnny Kelly and Kenny Hickey confirmed that following Steele's death, Type O Negative had definitely split-up.
On a recent album, Lacuna Coil made a song called My Spirit, which is dedicated to Peter Steele, with a similar bass line as Peter Steele's sound, because they were fans of the band. Vocalist Ferro said, “He was a big friend of ours because we toured together and have been friends for many years and the night we knew he’d died, Marco (bass player) wrote all the music that night, so it was a very spontaneous tribute to our friend.”
Should you want to buy Type O Negative you can find their music everywhere online, including Large.nl and Amazon.
What can be said about this band that has already been able to withstand the test of time as they've been in the black metal scene for so long? As I've written before, Axioma Ethica Odini, the 11th studio album, released in 2010, was a difference from what they have done before, with the risk of being labeled 'not true black metal', but now the Norwegians have proven yet again that they are here and are still here to stay.
RIITTIIR is somewhat more melodic than Axioma Ethica Odini was, but this does not make the album less fantastic. Enslaved released their newest studio album called RIITTIIR in September 2012.
Enslaved originally produced very dark and raw black metal, but the past few years the band has started walking down the path of the more progressive side. The more progressive path has brought forth the albums Isa, Ruun and Vertebrae, before releasing Axioma Ethica Odini, and also the EP's The Sleeping Gods and Thorn have proven that black metal can blend into the more progressive styles with added ambient-like parts and still sound awesome. This new album is clearly yet another step forward in this same direction.
It yet again combines the awesome deep grunts of Grutle Kjellson with the clean and awesome sound of Herbrand Larsen, to give the listener another awesome experience.
The name RIITTIIR is not just something random, it is a re-shaped version of the word 'Ritual' or 'Rite', as they explain in an interview I found on Darkview.be:
What does ‘Riitiir’, the name of your new album stand for? Ivar: It is a re-shaped version of the word “Ritual” or “Rite”. It was a natural step for us to deal with the rituals of man at the point we had reached conceptually with our albums – we have dealt with the runes as a mystical language, we have dealt with specific runes and their associated powers, we have dealt with flesh/mind-borders, we have dealt with the philosophy of ethics, and the psychology of moral. The next dark house along the path was the Rituals that we humans utilize to see change through. We wanted to re-shape the word itself in order to make the concept truly universal – it is neither Norwegian, English or anything else – but still it contains the core of the word so that people know what it is about.
An impression of what the new album sounds like can be found here, with the music video of Thoughts Like Hammers.
Aside of all this wonderful news I've found that Enslaved will be coming to The Netherlands again, on tour for this newest album. They will be in Amstelveen on March 24th, and I'll surely be there to cheer them on :)
Should you be interested to buy this album, you can do so at for example Nuclearblast.de or Large.nl, or any local record store that sells black metal/progressive metal.
As you undoubtedly already noticed by now my metal taste varies from the symphonic, to the black, to mellower rock/metal, to basically anything I find appealing and inspires me in any form whatsoever.
A friend of mine who was working with me for a few years tried to get me familiarized with Tool but for some reason I was not interested in it as I was more into the symphonic Goth metal scene at first. He did tell me about a few songs and I made a mental note to check it out sometime. He also told me about the singer, Maynard James Keenan.
As time progressed and my search for new bands I like continued, I would sometimes grasp the somewhat lighter, more rock-like scene as well. I started getting into A Perfect Circle, which is somewhat like alternative rock, alternative metal, after my brother played the song Pet. It was not before long that I realized the song Pet had somewhat similar lyrics to one of the songs my former colleague told me about, which was called Counting Bodies Like Sheep (To The Rhythm Of The War Drums). This opened the door for me to listen to more of A Perfect Circle. I found the album [i]Thirteenth Step[/i] and loved it instantly. Out of A Perfect Circle the songs which still get to me are Weak And Powerless, The Noose, Pet, Blue, The Outsider and Gravity.
I then listened to a few of Tool songs, which include the same singer, and loved those too. Tool can be somewhat defined as alternative metal, art rock, progressive metal, progressive rock. My favourite Tool songs: 10,000 Days, Wings For Marie, 46&2, The Grudge, Parabol, Ticks & Leeches, Lateralus, Right In Two, Sober, Schism..
A song of the band Deftones features Maynard in it, and is called The Passenger. The mix of the two voices makes this song really worthwhile as well.
I then remembered my former colleague once talking about a song called Rev 22:20 and looked it up. It is from a band called Puscifer, which can be classified as ambient, comedy rock, experimental, post-industrial, trip hop, yet another of Maynard’s projects. I loved that song Rev 22:20 too, which featured on the Underworld soundtrack. I have yet to listen to the rest of Puscifer’s CD’s but I reckon as I loved all of Tool and all of A Perfect Circle, Puscifer will fit into this picture just fine.
I had stopped listening to A Perfect Circle and Tool for some time when I rolled into the Black Metal scene, however sometimes I roll back into it, as I have done a few months ago. The songs still have the same impact for me.
Most recent rumours are Tool is working on a new album, to be released sometime this year. For A Perfect Circle new album ideas were first frozen until in 2010 a Twitter message appeared indicating that there might be a new album release in the future as well. I can’t wait to hear more from this singer, who definitely has a talent for diversity in all of his projects.
I''m really curious about what the future will bring for both bands and in the meantime I will check out Puscifer as well :)
In addition to what Nightwish brought me, the voice of what Nightwish was before Annette Olzon came into the picture, the voice of an angel, still allures me.
The operatic voice of Tarja Turunen is something that still gives me goosebumps, no matter if I listen to her voice in Nightwish or on her solo albums.
Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen Cabuli,born on 17 August 1977, is a full lyric soprano and has a vocal range of three octaves. She represented Nightwish from 1995 until 2005, until the band fired her as a singer. While she was in Nightwish, she participated in a project of Beto Vazquez for Infinity. After this she launched her solo career and released Henkäys Ikuisuudesta (2006), which was a Christmas CD, My Winter Storm (2007), What Lies Beneath (2010). She is currently working on a new album, which will be released somewhere in 2013.
She came to The Netherlands for the first time since she started her solo career, which
happened on 25 February 2012 at the Effenaar in Eindhoven. She was very energetic and happy to be there, and put up quite a show. It was certainly worth travelling to Eindhoven for. :)
Almost all of her songs have an emotional link for me, but the ones I love most: The Reign, Oasis, Our Great Divide, Ciaran's Well, Anteroom Of Death, Until My Last Breath, I Feel Immortal, Rivers Of Lust, Dark Star, The Archive Of Lost Dreams, Crimson Deep, mostly because it brings out the emotions in her voice...
Here's a song which will be featured on her upcoming album:
