Metal in all its forms and colours

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That's a new one on me. The Chinese traditional rock performer I've been following is Nini Music from Taiwan, who is definitely a metalhead even if she hits other genres, too. Here's her take on an Ozzy classic, complete with Randy Rhoads' classic guitar solo.

 
I talked about Sabaton's penchant for basing their songs on historical events and figures. Last week they dropped Father, about the contradictory achievements of German chemist Fritz Haber, who worked on both chemical weapons for the Germans in WWI and the Haber-Bosch process which is used to this day for making ammonia-based fertilizers. So mass killing and feeding the world all in one brilliant scientific package. It's a contradiction we see time and again in modern science (e.g. nuclear technology, which keeps our lights on with no CO2 emissions but can also annihilate millions at the push of a button).


And from their side channel Sabaton History, where they actually do mini-documentaries about the subjects of their songs.


So heavy metal can deal with serious issues and problems just as much as any genre of music. And that goes all the way back to seminal metal band Black Sabbath's protest song "War Pigs" in 1970.
 
And some more new metal from the past week or so.

I think I have mentioned Therion before but not played them. This Swedish symphonic metal band predates symphonic metal giants like Within Temptation and Nightwish by a decade (1987) and is still going strong. Though founder Christofer Johnsson is the only member who has been with the band the whole time, playing guitars, keyboards, Hammond organ, doing orchestral arrangements and even doing a stint on vocals. The female vocalist, by the way, is American soprano Lori Lewis.


Finnish power metal act Stratovarius is another long-running band, dating to 1985. As tends to be the case with these older metal bands, the lineup has changed quite a bit over the years, and their alumni frequently pop up in other bands.


Warkings, by contrast, is a fairly new power metal band that started up in 2018. They have a kind of historical fantasy vibe with the members dressing as, well, war kings from various periods of history. In fact, their lineup is simply listed as "The Spartan", "The Crusader", etc. They often have a female guest or two as well, with Turkish singer Lacri (real name Secil Sen) joining on both clean and harsh vocals on the latest album. This track does not have her on it though.

 
And in metal-adjacent pop, Floor Jansen took to the TV studios in The Netherlands to pump her new single and talk about her career, which hits 25 years in the industry and 10 with Nightwish this year.

From her appearance on Humberto NL, with the interview segment nicely subtitled.


The band is the one that will back her when she finally does a full solo tour in The Netherlands and Germany next year.

This softer, jazzier sound is a shift from even her first couple solo singles, which were more in the vein of pop anthems, and it is growing on me. She has been working away on her solo album during a break from touring with Nightwish (they scheduled two months off between the end of festival season and resuming their world tour) and I am getting eager to hear it when it comes out next Spring.
 
And to get us back to metal, here is Floor with Revamp. Revamp was her own band, formed after the Dutch metal band After Forever, with which she launched her career, folded in 2009. The project kind of fizzled out due to a combination of Floor suffering burnout and then getting the invite to join Nightwish while recovering. Wild Card, their second album which contains this song, actually came out after she joined Nightwish. In 2016, Floor finally announced she was winding down Revamp. It's too bad in some ways. She did some fantastic work with the band and a couple of the songs from that era still show up in her solo setlists.

 
New metal today. Ad Infinitum is the personal project of Swiss-born vocalist Melissa Bonny. She's one of those singers in metal who moves almost seamlessly between clean and harsh singing, and is a star in both. This is the first single from Chapter III - Downfall, the band's third album which is due for release next March. The albums have been following a pattern of being "Chapters", hence the title.

 
For those of us who remember "Satanic Panic", Christian heavy metal probably still seems like a bit of an oxymoron. But Stryper rose to the challenge back in the mid-eighties and is still rockin' out today. Solid instrumentals and lead singer Michael Sweet still packs a classic heavy metal voice after nearly forty years. Their new single dropped this morning with The Final Battle, their new album, coming in two weeks. And I saw these guys live at a Christian rock festival that was held in Kitchener in the late eighties, probably the only live heavy metal performance I have actually been to.

 
And not really new, but Nightwish released a new "Tour Edition" of their album Human : || : Nature today and with it comes a performance of the song "Noise" taken from the virtual show they did in May 2021 when the pandemic was still preventing touring. A BluRay of the show accompanies the 2-CD album in the new edition. This has been their concert opener this year and it is perfect for the role. It's the heaviest track on the album, packing a solid punch, and really puts vocalist Floor Jansen through her paces, even going into her operatic range at one point. And the lyrics address the problems of life in the age of smartphones and social media, making it a very relevant track as well.


Incidentally, this was also the first appearance of bassist Jukka Koskinen, now a permanent member, with Nightwish.
 
Every week Metal Hammer puts out their top ten list of what they consider to be the best new metal releases of the past week. Then their readers get to vote on which is their favorite of the list. This week there are actually three songs that I have listened to and enjoy. None of them is doing terribly well in the voting, but as often happens, one song is sucking up a big majority of the votes so I kind of shrug and am happy the songs are like are on there. So here we go.

Avantasia's A Paranormal Evening With The Moonflower Society, the latest album from the pet project of German musician Tobias Sammets, came out yesterday and with it a fifth video-single. This one features (once again) current Nightwish lead singer Floor Jansen as the guest vocalist with Tobias. It's a heavier tune than her other track on the album, which was more of a power ballad.


Floor's friend, and one of her predecessors in Nightwish, Tarja Turunen (who performs solo under just her given name Tarja) announced a Best Of compilation of her post-Nightwish solo career and released a single from it, a previously unreleased song.


And finally, Dutch vocalist Charlotte Wessels pairs up with Montreal-born singer Alissa White-Gluz for the latest single from Wessels' Tales From Six Feet Under, Vol. II. Alissa is the lead singer of melodic death metal band Arch Enemy so does harsh vocals a lot, but it is always a treat to hear her excellent clean voice, as in this track. She is also hard to miss with that shock of blue hair.


Last I checked, Avantasia and Tarja were 4 and 3 in the voting respectively but, somewhat to my dismay, Charlotte & Alissa were at the bottom. The song is really not typical metal (as is true of many tracks in Charlotte's solo work), even if both are well-known metal vocalists, so it making the list at all was quite a feat and probably due as much to the singers' reps as the song itself.
 
And one that did not make the list but was a pleasant surprise. Rage of Light is a Swiss band that performs trance metal and melodic death metal. Current lead singer Martyna Halas had big shoes to fill when she joined last year after the departure of the marvelous Swiss singer Melissa Bonny, but is filling them extremely well. She is a fan of the Netflix series Stranger Things so when Kate Bush's 1985 classic Running Up That Hill was featured in the latest season of that show, she convinced the other members of the band that they should do a metal cover of it. It's not perfect (I am not sold on her use of harsh vocals in this particular song), but her clean voice is actually surprisingly close to Kate's at times and the instrumentals, as always with this power trio, are solid.

 
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And a Rage of Light original from the first album to feature Martyna on vocals.

 
For comparison, here they are with original lead singer Melissa Bonny on both harsh and clean vocals, along with some harsh vocals from band founder and keyboardist Jonathan Pellet. If her name sounds familiar, pop back up to post 46 about her current project, Ad Infinitum.

 
Waterfall said:
Does that make you a groupie?
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I guess if I was also going to their concerts and hitting on Martyna it might. As it is, it's just a delightful moment of my life on social media.

And some metal. This is an unofficial video for "Blood of Bannockburn" by Sabaton. In keeping with their usual focus on history, this song is about the famous Battle of Bannockburn between Robert the Bruce's Scottish forces and English forces under King Edward II. The battle scenes are lifted from the Netflix film "Outlaw King", a biopic about Robert.

 
Guitarist Nita Strauss is already a legend at 36. Women who can shred with the best of 'em are still rare, especially when you get into hard rock and metal. But Strauss has been there since quitting school to pursue a music career, including 8 years as the guitarist for shock rock legend Alice Cooper (who is old enough to be her father, having started his career while I was still in elementary school). Recently, she blew a lot of minds by signing on to the tour band of pop star Demi Lovato, which is a bit of a change from Nita's usual to say the least. Besides her work in various bands and her own recordings, Nita has done work for videogames and sporting events, including WWE (pro wrestling).

This new Nita Strauss solo track teams her up with Canadian vocalist Alissa White-Gluz. Alissa is great on this too, using both her harsh and clean voices to great effect. And her trademark colourful hair makes a great windmill near the end.

 
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And Alissa in her regular gig as lead singer of Swedish death metal band Arch-Enemy. The song "First Day in Hell" is apparently inspired by her grandparents who are concentration camp survivors. This being death metal, she mostly growls in Arch-Enemy, saving her powerful clean voice for other projects.

 
Some new metal to finish off the week

Dutch symphonic band Epica are releasing a new EP of collaborations as part of their 20th anniversary as a band. Here, they team with Charlotte Wessels (discussed a few times already) and Danish band/artist Myrkur. I have heard Charlotte and Epica lead Simone Simons together before and they are a great team. Adding the third just takes it up another notch.


Warkings are a band that perpetually treads the line between serious power metal and parody. They dress as "war kings" from different periods of history and often have a female harsh vocalist along for the ride. Their new album Morgana delves into Arthurian lore, with their female guest singer Secil Sen performing as "Morgana Le Fay".


Xandria is one of the seminal bands of symphonic metal but the current incarnation is almost a new band, with only one member remaining now from previous incarnations (band founder Marco Heibaum). The current vocalist is half-Greek half-French German resident (metal knows no borders it seems) Ambre Vourvahis, who packs a terrific set of pipes. And she has to, as the latest of 8 vocalists to front the band. It's quite a legacy to live up to.

 
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And a bonus track. Amberian Dawn are another symphonic metal band from metal nation Finland sporting yet another big-voiced female lead in Päivi "Capri" Virkkunen, who has been with them since 2012. One of the band's influences is (seriously) ABBA and they are soon releasing a metal tribute to ABBA. I have heard them cover the Swedish pop titans before, and this is one of their best metalized ABBA songs.

 
After much trepidation and worry on the part of Nightwish fans as lead singer Floor Jansen underwent breast cancer surgery two weeks ago, fans are breathing easier and even celebrating. The surgery was a success, the cancer has not spread, and the European leg of the band's tour is ready to roll on Sunday with Floor safely and happily on board the bus.

And what better way to celebrate than with a Nightwish song that has Floor giving it her all. "Last Ride of the Day" actually debuted over a decade ago under previous lead singer Anette Olzon, but it remains a setlist staple to this day and Floor has very much made it hers. This performance is from May 2021, when the band did a 2 night virtual show as a way to give fans pining for them to tour again at least something.

 
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