Metal in all its forms and colours

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What happens when two of Sweden's top metal acts team up? One hell of a great performance. Here Sabaton, the band that gives a history lesson in every song, teams with the trio of lead singers from the band Amaranthe for a show in Oslo. The song is "82nd All The Way", a Sabaton song about which the video description says, "In 1918, Alvin York from Tennessee led the 82nd Infantry Division against the German defensive machine gun nests on Hill 223. He captured 132 German soldiers. York became one of America’s most celebrated heroes and acquired numerous medals, including the Congressional Medal of Honor."


Yes, Sabaton's drummer, Hannes Van Dahl, sits on top of a tank in their shows. They take this history thing quite seriously.
 
Swedish band Dynazty is now about 17 years old but I somehow missed them until now. They came up in my recommendations on YouTube and Spotify, but for some reason I just shrugged and bypassed them. Then today I discovered that they are the original band of Nils Molin, who also sings clean male vocals in the Amaranthe and who is an excellent male metal vocalist. This is the title track from their new album, just released a week ago.


And German medieval power metallers Feuerschwanz are following in the footsteps of German metal band Lord of the Lost and taking a shot a representing their country in Eurovision. The song is fantastic but Eurovision tends to be less than friendly to metal with just the odd slip in that. This is the band's official video, which has Dag from the German techno/EDM act SDP joining in. SDP were on the German TV series Sing Meinen Song in the same season as Floor Jansen of Nightwish and did a wonderful techno cover of Nightwish's "Amaranth" with a bit of help from Floor.

 
Big day in Canadian metal as multiple Grammy and Juno nominee Spiritbox launches their second album (they have kind of alternated between EPs and LPs). Tsunami Sea is the title and early singles have been uniformly excellent. The band plays a mix of styles rooted in metalcore so it is a bit hard to pin them down. "Metal" is about as specific as you can get for some of their work. They are now headed out on tour to support the album (like a lot of indie metal bands, Spiritbox seem to be almost perpetually on tour). Junos are March 30 in Vancouver and they are up for Heavy/Hard Rock Album of the Year and (yay!) Group of the Year. Hoping to see them win the former but the latter seems to be a longshot given other nominees (e.g. Sum 41) and the general disdain for metal, esp. extreme metal, that still seems to persist in the mainsteam music community.

From the new album, here's "Fata Morgana"

 
Had I known this video was coming, I would have posted another song above. This is the live debut of Fata Morgana by Spiritbox. Nice look at the band in action on stage. I have watched several live videos of them, both pro and fan shot, and they give a terrific show.

 
While Epica is one of the poster children for symphonic metal, they stand out on a number of fronts. One of the biggest is their frequent use of death metal-style growling. Band founder, rhythm guitarist, and co-writer Mark Jansen has been doing harsh vocals since his days in the band After Forever. After Forever actually started out to be a death metal act until they landed a then-teenaged Floor Jansen as their clean vocalist, at which point recognition of her prodigious vocal talent made the band shift gears to symphonic metal. Here, as he often does, Mark plays off Simone Simons' beautiful mezzo, an approach he has used since his days working alongside Floor.


T.I.M.E. is, by the way, spelled as an acronym because it is. Per Mark Jansen in the video description, "T.I.M.E. stands for 'Transformation, Integration, Metamorphosis, Evolution,' and it deals with the art of dying, and more specifically, the death of the ego. It gives us the opportunity for growth and spiritual transformation."
 
At the Grammy Awards this year, there was an amusing incident where journalists mistook Courtney Laplante of Spiritbox for American solo artist Poppy. The two are "cousins" musically, with some definitely similarities in their sound and voices, and have performed together at least once that I know of so it's probably a compliment, if anything. Courtney played along and the whole mix-up became a meme for their fans.

Here is a new "visualizer" video from Poppy's excellent 2024 album Negative Spaces. Compare to the Spiritbox tracks I posted upthread. Poppy treads a fine line between hard-edged pop and outright metal with some capable help from producer Jordan Fish, former keyboardist of British metal band Bring Me The Horizon. This song is one that wobbles right on the line, mixing a fairly bright, melodic song with some heavy backup and carefully targeted screams. Brilliant young artist that I hope we'll be hearing for years to come.

 
Quite a week for metal releases and, as usual, quite a range of metal styles. My two favourites hew to the darker end mood-wise but are also rather different styles of metal.

First up, a band that is destined to be a favourite of mine, Dutch gothic symphonic metal outfit Blackbriar. From their moody string-laden symphonic metal, to their poetic lyrics by vocalist Zora Cock, to the immaculate production by Dutch wizard Joost van den Broek, this band is solid in every respect. New album due this summer (no firm date yet) and this is the latest single.


And from Germany, we have Lord of the Lost. After brightening up a bit for their Eurovision appearance a couple years ago, this is more their usual. Dark and a bit weird but that's how lead singer and principle songwriter Chris Harms swings and it makes for some interesting work.

 
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Can-con (sort of) alert!

One of the biggest Canadian names in metal is Alissa White-Gluz of Montreal, who has been the vocalist of Swedish melodic death metal band Arch Enemy since 2014. Prior to that, Alissa fronted a Canadian metalcore band called The Agonist (who continued after she left but disbanded in 2023). Besides these two regular gigs, she has done some solo work and been a frequent guest vocalist with other bands and artists.

Given her history in metalcore and melodeath, it should come as no surprise that Alissa is one of the finest growlers and screamers in the business. However, Alissa also has a powerful, well-trained clean voice that she often brings out for solo and guest work, more rarely in Arch Enemy. She also has a pretty unique look even for metal, dressing in colourful jumpsuits with her long hair dyed in shades of blue, purple, and pink. Outside of music, Alissa is vegan and an outspoken animal rights and environmental activist. She's released a couple tracks related to her favourite causes that I know of.

Somewhat sadly, being in a foreign band in an "extreme" style of metal means Alissa doesn't get much attention at home outside of metalheads. Too bad, because she is really one of our finest musical exports right now. Hopefully she finally gets her much talked about but never finished solo album out someday, which would make her eligible for the Junos and to be counted as "Can con". Or, you know, join a Canadian band (we do have some extreme metal in this country besides Spiritbox).

Arch Enemy's latest album, Blood Dynasty, dropped today and it's an amazing piece of work. The band are firing on all cylinders and every track is a "banger". Were it not for the possible safety issues, I would have been headbanging in my car as I played it on the way to work today. Alissa is in fine form, as always. She's one of the rare growlers who can actually growl a melody, something I absolutely adore about Alissa. She also does bust out her clean voice now and then on this album, but sparingly.

"Paper Tiger" was the last single/video released.


And another track, "Liars and Thieves"

 
And a couple of her appearances outside Arch Enemy.

Alissa is friends with Dutch metal singer Charlotte Wessels, appearing on her first and third solo albums as well as recording a standalone single for their Patreon patrons that finally got a general release last year. Alissa has guested at some of Charlotte's concerts, too. This is from Charlotte's third solo album, which came out last year.


And "Fool's Parade", the standalone single.

 
Being from Quebec, Alissa is fluently bilingual and I have heard her speak French when addressing the audience at Hellfest, which is held in France. But this is, I think, the first time I have heard her sing in French. It is also a rare power ballad from the band and rare instance of Alissa singing clean with Arch Enemy. Oh, and it is absolutely f-ing gorgeous. One of the my favourite tracks on the album, even if leans more to thrash than death metal. Powerful, powerful stuff.

 
And a banger to kick off the weekend. BabyMetal is a trio of young women from Japan who sing "kawai metal", basically a kind of Japanese pop metal. Poppy is on the bleeding edge of popular metal and metalcore in the West, combining a good pop singing voice with some amazing screams and growls. "from me to u" brings the two together and is the leadoff track from BabyMetal's upcoming album of collaborations. The album also includes a collab with Canadian metal stars Spiritbox (whose lead singer Courtney Laplante was famously mistaken for Poppy at the Grammies this year) and BabyMetal's hit collaboration "Ratatata" with German electronic metal stars Electric Callboy. "Ratatata" was one of my favourite songs of 2024 and I love this one, too, so while I am not generally a big BabyMetal fan, I am eagerly awaiting this album.


And this isn't their first brush with pop metalcore. They have a great duet out with UK band Bring Me The Horizon, who also come from that lineage.
 
Mendalla said:
And a banger to kick off the weekend. BabyMetal is a trio of young women from Japan who sing "kawai metal", basically a kind of Japanese pop metal. Poppy is on the bleeding edge of popular metal and metalcore in the West, combining a good pop singing voice with some amazing screams and growls. "from me to u" brings the two together and is the leadoff track from BabyMetal's upcoming album of collaborations. The album also includes a collab with Canadian metal stars Spiritbox (whose lead singer Courtney Laplante was famously mistaken for Poppy at the Grammies this year) and BabyMetal's hit collaboration "Ratatata" with German electronic metal stars Electric Callboy. "Ratatata" was one of my favourite songs of 2024 and I love this one, too, so while I am not generally a big BabyMetal fan, I am eagerly awaiting this album.


And this isn't their first brush with pop metalcore. They have a great duet out with UK band Bring Me The Horizon, who also come from that lineage.
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I'm not a fan of metal, but this sounds good for the category.
I have to wonder what this does to the vocal chords though.
 
Waterfall said:
I'm not a fan of metal, but this sounds good for the category.
I have to wonder what this does to the vocal chords though.
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Someone asked that before. A vocal coach who does reactions on YouTube is actually doing a research project on harsh vocals. There's some guys and gals in death metal (e.g. Corpsegrinder of Cannibal Corpse) who have been doing it for decades so there must ways to do it without damaging your vocal cords too badly.
 
Mendalla said:
Someone asked that before. A vocal coach who does reactions on YouTube is actually doing a research project on harsh vocals. There's some guys and gals in death metal (e.g. Corpsegrinder of Cannibal Corpse) who have been doing it for decades so there must ways to do it without damaging your vocal cords too badly.
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I hope so...
 
Incidentally, I am not sure of the timeline for that research. Not long after I heard her talk about it, she announced she was pregnant so, yeah, might be delayed a bit. :giggle:
 
Back to music, here's Israeli band Scardust backed by the TLV Orchestra (a mixed Arab and Jewish group from Israel) and Hellscore, the choir founded by lead singer Noa Gruman. Noa sounds fantastic here and the song is a powerful anthemic piece. Prog metal, but heavy on the prog part with some terrific playing by the bands leads and, in one memorable part, the orchestra's principle flautist. Hope to hear more from this potent combo of orchestra and rock band.


According to various sources, though I've never heard it from the women themselves, Noa studied voice under Floor Jansen at one point in her career. That would have been a while since Floor quit teaching after she joined Nightwish. But the Floor influence really shows here, especially the belt that she goes out on.
 
Aspiral, the new album from Dutch symphonic metal titans Epica is coming on Friday and as part of the lead-up, they released this live performance of the title track that lives up to the band's name and then some. From their Symphonic Synergy concerts last year, here is "Aspiral", with the band joined by adult and childrens' choirs and an orchestra. Of course, even with all that music behind her, it's lead singer Simone Simons who shines. The redheaded mezzo is one of the best voices in rock right now and seems to just keep getting better.

 
More from the new Epica. It's a wonderful album, but I would expect no less from this band.


And Swedish spooks Ghost have a new album titled Skeleta due in a couple weeks and here's a new single from it, Lachryma. It's ... Ghost. I like it but I can't say it's my favourite of theirs. Impera, their last album, was fantastic, though, so I still have high hopes for the new one.


And one of the OGs of heavy metal, German band Scorpions, are still hammering away. The band turns 60 this year. Guitarist Rudolf Schenkar has been there the whole time and vocalist Klaus Meine, who packs one of the most distinctive male voices in rock, joined four years in. This performance is from 2022 at Hellfest, a huge metal and rock festival in France. Of the current line up, drummer Mikkey Dee was only 2 when the band started and Polish bassist Paweł Mąciwoda was born after the band started.

 
Dutch soprano Dianne van Giersbergen (no relation to the Anneke van Giersbergen I have talked about) is going the slow and steady route for her first solo album, releasing a couple songs a year until 2026, when the album is finally supposed to drop. With a long career in the metal scene, including a highly regarded stint as lead vocalist of the German band Xandria, Dianne is well-connected and pulls together a different backup band for each track. Dutch keyboardist/producer/writer Joost van den Broek is the one constant besides Dianne herself. The latest, and possibly best so far, came out yesterday.


Hurdy gurdy here is, by the way, German Patty Gurdy, about whom I periodically rave. While hurdy gurdy may seem like an odd instrument for metal, it's actually used a lot in the folk metal genre and Patty is a bit of a metalhead who works with various metal artists quite regularly.
 
Sabaton, the Swedish power metal band where every song is a history lesson, dropped a new single today. Their last album was focused on WWI so they've been doing a lot of modern history of late. However, this goes back to the Middle Ages and is about the destruction of the Knights Templar by Philip IV of France. Good song, too, and the video is about the actual assault on the Templar fortress.

 
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