New Year, New Music

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My body is in Canada, but my heart is in Gdansk, Poland today. Huge concert with a stellar lineup. Headliner is Swedish power metal act Sabaton, the guys who give a history lesson in every song. Supporting are three acts with connections to Sabaton.

This recent Sabaton piece is about renowned Chinese general Lu Bu, a major figure at the end of the Han Dynasty and into the Three Kingdoms period.


And then there's Dutch rocker Floor Jansen who should need no introduction here. Connection to Sabaton? She's married to their drummer and has provided additional vocals for them on occasion. This will be her first show of 2026 as she's been focussed on getting a new album out so far this year (which is still "coming" but we fans are patient).


Majestica is lead by Swedish guitarist and singer Tommy Johansson, who also played guitar in Sabaton for several years.


And finally Israeli prog metal act Scardust, whose vocalist Noa Grumman conducted (yes, really, she's a trained choral conductor with her own choir that she uses with Scardust and also hires out to other artists) the orchestra and choir on Sabaton's fall tour of Europe. Noa is also a former student of Floor from a period in Floor's career when she did voice lessons and coaching.

 
Xandria are one of the originals of symphonic metal, first appearing in an earlier form in 1994 and then as the current band in 1999. Like many bands, they've had a revolving door lineup, with the only constant being founder Marco Heubaum (who has played rhythm guitar, keys, and bass at various times and even sang for a period). The highlight of the current lineup is vocalist Ambre Vourvahis, a powerful soprano who is only two years older than the band itself. New album is coming August 7 and this is one of the tracks.


If you're wondering about Ambre's name, she's mixed French and Greek.
 
Oo, look what I found on YouTube last night. New Sara Bareilles single with an album due in August. :giggle: It's her first new studio album in 7 years, though I think she's written music for some soundtracks during that time.

 
Long regarded as one of the key bands of nu metal, Evanesence really has a more symphonic sound. They just got lumped in with the likes of Linkin Park for marketing reasons. Vocalist and songwriter Amy Lee packs one of the best sets of metal pipes on this side of the Atlantic,with opera-trained European powerhouses like Tarja, Floor Jansen, and Simone Simons being her closest counterparts. And Evanesence and Amy are back with a new album out today.

 
John Williams "retirement" proved to be short-lived. He's back working with Steven Spielberg again on Disclosure Day. First track out is a beauty, too. Vintage Williams. He turned 94 in March. To be able to turn out something like this in your 90s must be wonderful.


Early reviews for the film are quite positive, by the way. Steven still got it at 79 (turns 80 in December).
 
Mendalla said:
Oo, look what I found on YouTube last night. New Sara Bareilles single with an album due in August. :giggle: It's her first new studio album in 7 years, though I think she's written music for some soundtracks during that time.
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And now there's a video for "Home", the first single from the upcoming album Good Grief.

 
And the powerful anthem that hooked me on Sara many years ago now. This version is from a concert at the Hollywood Bowl and features her castmates from the TV show Girls5eva

 
And from the same concert, the beautiful, bittersweet "She Used to Be Mine" which Sara wrote for the musical Waitress. Waitress was the first musical where all the key creative roles were taken by women, including Sara as songwriter. Sara also played the lead for several stretches during the show's run on Broadway.

 
My album of the weekend was Frisson Noir, the latest from Finnish metal singer Tarja. From the time she joined symphonic metal greats Nightwish as their original vocalist, Tarja has been a fixture in symphonic metal. And she pulls out all the stops here, with a big, powerful collection of epic tunes piling classical piano, orchestra, choirs on top of her top notch backing band. The centerpiece "At Sea" is a 10 minute epic with just about all of those in play. There is even a guest appearance by her former Nightwish bandmate Marko Hietala, payback presumably for her appearance on his last solo album. The two reunited and reconciled (her departure was handled badly by the band, including him, so there was some bad blood out there) maybe three years ago and have toured and recorded together on and off since. Other guests include Finnish metal cello trio Apocalyptica and extreme metal singer Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth.

 
Ottawa ... the city of politicians, bureaucrats, tech geeks and ... PROGRESSIVE DEATH METAL!!!

Dissentient was recommended by a couple metal podcasters I follow so I gave them a whirl, as I often do when a new Canadian band comes my way. They play a fantastic blend of prog and death metal, if heavy on the latter. I've listened to two of their albums including their just released third and wow. Just wow. They really should be up for the next Juno Awards for Heavy/Hard Rock Album of the Year. Unlike their Grammy counterpart, the Junos don't shy away from extreme metal and Anciients, this year's winner (their second Juno in a row) from Vancouver, are also prog metal.

 
Good day on the music front overall. Here's a sampling.

Poppy began as a pop singer and still has a very pop singer look. However, she has shifted musical gears into metalcore, blasting out lyrics with a scream that is one of the best in the modern metalcore genre. Doesn't stop old school metalcore fans from complaining about modern metalcore being too "pop" but songs like this suggest to me they are just being grumpy. And then you have the grumps from the pop side who get all huffy about a pretty pop star screaming out metalcore. Bottom line for me is that in this track, Poppy is fantastic and the music is as heavy as it gets in the genre.


Crossing the Atlantic, we have Finnish melodic death metal act Insomnium. They turn 30 next year and continue to put some pretty solid metal mixing some seriously heavy riffs and growls with lighter moments of clean vocals and instrumental solos. Classic melodeath, in other words.


More Finnish melodeath, this time from the wonderful Bloodred Hourglass. They are a newer band than Insomnium but put out some of the best melodic death metal in the game. Their 2025 album We Should Be Buried Like This was on a lot of top album lists for the year and they followed it up this year with an EP. This live performance from Helsinki is the title track from their previous album, 2023's How's The Heart? (which, oddly, is also the title of a very different song from another Finnish band, Nightwish).


And finally, something a bit quieter and lighter from the 30th anniversary concert by Dutch supergroup Ayreon. This gorgeous track features lead vocals from Anneke van Giersbergen. Piano is by Joost van den Broek, backing vocals are Marcela Bovio and Irene Jansen, cellist is Jurriaan Westerveld.

 
And to finish, here's Marcela Bovio again, this time accompanying herself on guitar for a lovely French ballad. She's Mexican and lives in the Netherlands so French is definitely not one of her languages, but she sounds pretty good nonetheless.

 
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