Metal in all its forms and colours

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Scardust is a band I discovered a few months back. They are an Israeli symphonic metal band with a unique feature: They have their own choir and often use them live on stage instead of recorded choral backing tracks. The founder-lead singer is Noa Gruman, who is also a trained choir director. Noa started and conducts the choir, who have done work for other bands (e.g. Swedish symphonic metal pioneers Therion have used them recently). She packs a fairly good set of pipes and I have heard that she even studied under Floor Jansen when Floor was teaching and coaching earlier in her career.

From 2019, a track from their album The Sands Of Time that uses the choir to great effect. The Nightwish influence is pretty strong on this song.


Noa is friends with German hurdy-gurdy player and singer Patty Gurdy. Hellscore has appeared on at least one of Patty's recordings and here, Patty joins Scardust and Hellscore for what has to be one of Scardust's best originals. Heck, there's even a string quarteton board for good measure.


While Noa's singing may be front and centre, the instrumentalists are all solid players and guitarist Yadin Moyal cranks out some pretty impressive. And current bassist Orr Didi is just such a lively, joyous presence on stage and video. Can't help but love the guy.

As I already mentioned, Nightwish is a clear influence on Scardust. Last New Year's Eve they did an entire concert of Nightwish songs in Tel Aviv, releasing several of the songs over the course of this year. And they are some of the best covers that I have ever heard. Nightwish's repertoire can be pretty complex and challenging, so doing them justice is definitely a gold star for this band.

One of Nightwish's rockingest songs and biggest hits, "Amaranth" with guest vocalist Danny-ly Ziser. I love how Danny-ly has that little quaver you often hear in Middle Eastern singing. It works beautifully in this song.


"Ghost Love Score" is Nightwish's signature song. It's a complex ten-minute epic that has endured through all three of Nightwish's lead singers, with Floor Jansen's 2013 performance at Wacken Open Air in Germany being regarded as definitive by many (including Floor herself). So covering it is daunting to say the least. But Scardust took it on and, while Noa is maybe not quite up Floor's level yet, it's a solid performance with the added delight of hearing it with a live choir (NW have always used backing tracks).

 
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And a couple recent originals, both recorded during the pandemic. You can tell that they were often recording individually in isolation.


 
Crewish is a rather unique band. They are, in fact, Nightwish's road crew. And as such, they do a lot of Nightwish covers. Their new album is called Twice, a riff on the classic Nightwish album Once. And even better, they got original Nightwish lead singer Tarja Turunen on board for this track, a cover of the lead off song on Once. Funnily, Nightwish themselves are still doing the song on their latest tour with current lead Floor Jansen. In fact, Dark Chest of Wonders has been a NW setlist staple for most of the 17 years since it came out.

 
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And a new discovery, once again thanks to the gang over on Floorworld. Illumishade is fairly new Swiss symphonic metal band but the lead singer and guitarist are not new, both having spent time in another Swiss metal band, Eluveite. Fabienne "Fabi" Erni, the lead singer, is yet another solid, powerful female vocalist who can do anything from power ballads to power metal.

From their 2020 debut album ECLYPTIC: Wake of Shadows:


And their latest release:


And the video that first introduced me to the band, a cover of "Into the Unknown" from Disney's Frozen 2:

 
A couple nice new tracks this week.

This morning, German metallers Beyond the Black, led and founded by vocalist Jennifer Haben, dropped the latest single from their upcoming, self-titled fifth album. Terrific song and a good live video from their most recent tour.


And the new edition of Dutch symphonic metal band Delain continues to impress, dropping another new single this week. That album is due in March, IIRC.


And I remain unclear as to why the founder cleaned house and started over with a new lineup. This doesn't sound that different, really. A bit heavier perhaps. Heard via the grapevine that the album even includes a track with Finnish vocalist/bassist Marko Hietala, who was a frequent collaborator when Charlotte Wessels was lead singer.
 
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Much as I love Dutch metaller Floor Jansen of Nightwish, the band's original lead singer Tarja Turunen (who goes by just her first name in her solo career) is also a fantastic, powerful female voice. Her operatic vocals are unique in the rock world. Fortunately, her departure from Nighwish in 2005, while handled rather badly by the band, opened the door for a solo career. And she recently released Best Of : Living the Dream, a retrospective of her solo work. Along with it comes a Blu-ray of 2020 concert in Bucharest, Romania entitled Circus Life. Here is one of her best solo tracks in the performance from that Blu-Ray.

 
Beauty & The Beat, featuring Tarja and drummer Mike Terrana in concert backed by an orchestra and choir, is a spectacular performance even if not strictly metal. It shows off her voice in everything from classical music to classic rock to songs from Tarja's career both solo and in Nightwish. This beautiful song written by Nightwish songwriter Tuomas Holopainen first appeared on the band's second album and remains as powerful today as it did back then.


And singing a song by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. I have never quite figured out how Tarja ended up in metal instead of on an operatic stage, but I think the music world has actually been the better for it. She brought a quality of singing to metal that it had never really heard before and that successors like Floor and Simone Simons have sought to maintain.

 
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I know I have posted Floor Jansen singing Ghost Love Score before, but it actually first appeared on Tarja's last Nightwish album. From End Of An Era, the album of Tarja's final tour with the band, here she is singing this magnificent piece of truly symphonic metal.

 
Okay, I love this. A metal string quartet. And this track teams them with the magnificent voice of Swiss vocalist Melissa Bonny (look upthread, I've raved about Melissa a few times) and a trio of rock musicians. Powerful song, too, that has Melissa using both her clean and harsh voices.

 
More strings. This time, there's no traditional metal instruments. Just a quartet of cellos with a drummer behind them. The group is called Apocalyptica and, for this performance, they brought the wonderful mezzo voice of Simone Simons from Epica on board (Apocalyptica and Epica are touring together next year). What a powerful song and performance.

 
It is 2023 and there's lot of metal rocking out there.

Kicking off, we have power metal band Kamelot, whose history stretches back to 1987. While the band started in Tampa, Florida, after many lineup changes over the years they are now a multinational band with Swede Tommy Karevik as lead singer since 2012 and German Oliver Palotai (husband of Dutch singer Simone Simons from the post above) on keys alongside founder Tommy Youngblood on guitar, bassist Sean Tibbetts, and drummer Alex Landenburg. Their new single "One More Flag In The Ground" rocks hard and is the harbinger of The Awakening, a new album due out on March 17 of this year.


And Ad Infinitum, already discussed a few times, dropped yet another single from Chapter III, their next album also due in March.


And Delain, whose first album with their new lineup and lead singer is coming up fast on February 10, released this a week and a bit ago.


I was disappointed when Charlotte Wessels left Delain a couple years ago but know what? New lead singer Diana Leah is proving to be a solid frontwoman for the band and Charlotte's excellent solo albums (Tales from Six Feet Under Vol. I & II) show that maybe it was time for her to strike out on her own.
 
And this one gets its own post because I love this band beyond all reason. Visions of Atlantis' album Pirates is almost a year old now but they dropped another single and video while I was sojourning on a cruise ship. It is one of my favorite songs from the album, with terrific work by the band, especially leads Clementine Delauney and Michele Guaitoli. Clocks and fast and rhythmic but has a lighter touch, as is often the case with this band. While they use metal instrumentation and tropes, their music tends to be very melodic, even singable, and less "heavy" than some of their peers.

 
Looking back, I see I never posted this marvelous live performance of a song from the upcoming Ad Infinitum album. Driving, melodic metal with some terrific singing, both clean and harsh, from Melissa.

 
Metal's fascination with fantasy is a longstanding trope, but some go further with it than others. Angus McSix is a new project from Thomas Winkler, a Swiss vocalist previous involved in the band Gloryhammer. Pulling together a group of other musicians with previous credentials in other bands (Rhapsody of Fire, Frozen Crown), he has spun a riff on the old He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, with himself as "He-Man" and a mysterious skull-faced villain pretty clearly based on Skeletor. Fun stuff and the song rocks pretty hard.

 
Metal and hard rock legend Alice Cooper turns 75 tomorrow. Alice has been in the music industry since before the era of music television, before I even knew what "heavy metal" and "hard rock" were. German power metal band Powerwolf are fans and are celebrating with a cover of an Alice Cooper hit from the eighties.


And here's the man himself,

 
Dutch metal band Delain basically broke up a couple years ago, with all members but founder and keyboardist Martijn Westerholt leaving. The most important loss was vocalist Charlotte Wessels, a highly regarded singer in the world of symphonic member and lead vocalist of Delain for most of the band's history. Westerholt proceeded to pull together a new lineup for the band, getting a couple other founding members to return on drums and guitar while getting new faces in for bass and vocals. Singles from the new lineup started dropping last Fall and they have been doing some touring already, but today is D-day: the first album in almost twenty years without vocalist Wessels, who is now pursuing a solo career.

And, well, it sounds rather like ... Delain. Diana Leah, the Romanian who had to fill Wessels big shoes, is a solid singer and even sounds like Wessels at times. The instrumentalists are all in good form. And guest vocalists Paolo Ribaldini and Marko Hietala (who had frequently guested with Wessels as well) on male clean vocals are a welcome addition in their appearances.

This was the final pre-release single, just dropped yesterday:

 
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Dianne van Giersbergen is someone I have listened to a bit but need to listen to more. She is the founder and lead singer of the band Ex Libris and also fronted Xandria (who I have posted about elsewhere in the thread) for two albums. Now Dianne has decided to go solo under her first name. And the first release is a beauty, highlighting her operatic voice with a band of experienced musicians drawn from bands like Epica and Blind Guardian backing her. Her co-writer and producer is Joost van den Broek, whose work behind the scenes appears on many metal albums from Western Europe these days.

 
Round-up of recent metal releases.

We kick off with Feuerschwanz. This German band is a bit of a parody band but actually puts out some pretty listenable metal. Their latest video was shot on the 70,000 Ton of Metal cruise in January so you get the spectacle of guys in medieval garb frolicking on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.


And if you watch closely in that video, you get some glimpses of Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum. While neither of her current bands was on the cruise, she is a regular guest with Feuerschwanz and was on board to appear with them apparently. With less than a month to go until her next album with Ad Infinitum, they have dropped another single from it.


And German power metal band Powerwolf has a pretty good new track out with a rather dark video.

 
Germany has, somewhat surprisingly I am given to understand, chosen a metal band to represent them at Eurovision this year. The band is Lord of the Lost and the song is "Blood and Glitter".

Here's their performance from the final.

 
Earlier, I posted a video of Epica vocalist Simone Simons performing with the metal cello trio Apocalyptica. That was a version of an Apocalyptica song. The two bands have been touring together of late and Epica put out this live performance of one a song from their last studio album, here featuring both bands. It's a stunning performance by Simone and the use of just the cellos and Epica keyboardist Coen Janssen to back her for much of it really lets her vocals soar. Like her friend Floor Jansen, Simone seems to be at the peak of her power and prowess these days.

 
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