Come Cover Me: Elvenking Does Belinda Carlisle...?

And now for something completely different.  Thanks to one of my colleagues at Black Wind Metal, I just found this very...interesting cover of Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth" done by power metal outfit, Elvenking.

Who says you can't take an 80s pop song into a piece of power metal?

Elvenking hails from Italy.  Check out their FB page here.

Here is Belinda Carlisle's original:

Here is Elvenking's version:

What do you think?  I'm a little stunned...

Come Cover Me: Evenoire does Within Temptation's "Somewhere"

Evenoire is one of the many fantastic Italian bands I've been talking about recently here, and today they posted a YT video of a live version of their cover of Within Temptation's "Somewhere."  It's a lovely duet (not sure who the other singer is, but Lisy, Evenoire's vocalist, is the first singer you hear) accompanied only by the acoustic guitar.

Here is the original, by WT.

And here is Evenoire's version.  Enjoy!

Move Over Finland

It's been approximately one year or so since I started reviewing for two metal web zines, Sonic Cathedral and Black Wind Metal.  The promo materials are ridiculous.  I haven't had to buy or download as much as I used to, which is great.  One of the big surprises for  me in the past year is the shear amount of metal coming out of that country mainly known for Lacuna Coil, Italy.  Italy is, I think, the new powerhouse of metal.  Here is a list of bands I've discovered in the past year that  have come from there.

1. Crysalys

2. Dama

3. Setanera

4. Evenoire

5. Ancient Bards

6. SinHeresY

7. Pursuing the End

8. Sound Storm

9. Armonight (not exactly total metal, but still good hard rock)

10. Regardless of Me

11. Synful Ira

12. MasterCastle

13. Silent Opera (there is a French band with the same name)

14. Maledia

That's 14 freaking bands I alone have come across - and there will be more, I guarantee you!  This is by no means a complete list of Italian bands.  I'm only trying to demonstrate how many I have discovered myself in one year alone.

If you have any recommendations for me, leave them in the comments!

Lacuna Coil's New Song, "Kill the Light"

This just hit the interwebs today.  It's OK.  I like Cristina's slightly more aggressive side in this, and the lyrics are all right.  It's kinda bouncy.  I think I like it better than "Trip the Darkness."

See for yourself!

Lacuna Coil's "Dark Adrenaline"

Lacuna Coil announced the release dates, track listing and cover artwork for its 6th studio album "Dark Adrenaline".

The album will be out on January 23th in Europe, January 24th in North America and January 27th in Australia & NZ. You can listen to the first single "Trip the Darkness" below.

Track listing:

1. Trip The Darkness
2. Against You
3. Kill the Light
4. Give Me Something More
5. Upsidedown
6. End of Time
7. I Don't Believe in Tomorrow
8. Intoxicated
9. The Army Inside
10. Losing My Religion
11. Fire
12. My Spirit

Few words by Cristina Scabbia regarding new album can be found here.

Crysalys Review Up

My review of Crysalys's debut album, The Awakening of Gaia, is now appearing on Sonic Cathedral's web zine here, if you are interested in hearing my thoughts about this promising new band.

Rhapsody of Fire splits up

Today RoF announced on their official site split up. Alex Staropoli and Luca Turilli decided to proceed to a friendly split.

“10 albums released and the end of the saga represent, musically and lyrically, an important artistic goal finally reached, underlined by the success of our last release “From Chaos To Eternity”, for which we want to thank our wonderful fans once again. Now it came the time when new artistic stimulations need to be found, in respect of both parts’ visions and perspectives and of our longtime friendship”

Due to the latest legal agreements actually in force, Alex Staropoli will go on with RHAPSODY OF FIRE having, between the others, Fabio Lione as singer, Tom Hess as guitar player and Alex Holzwarth as drummer. For the same agreements and the original name’s common ownership, Luca Turilli will release his future works with a new RHAPSODY band, including the faithful band members Dominique Leurquin, Patrice Guers and Alex Holzwarth. 

Ballads Away: "Rainy Roads" by Dama

I am addicted to Dama!  I have moved on from playing their cover of "Live to Tell" over and over again and have switched to this supremely excellent ballad, "Rainy Roads."  I have played this countless times today on my MP3 player during my travels. It's simple, but it's so beautiful and so emotional.

The lyrics are lovely, too.

Then the light and hunger between us
A surrendered moment
Take it if you like
Then a step
As a mark between us
I'll be your own velevet
If you'll give to me
That bright new age


As I walk I breathe you in
Through rainy roads
An invisible line
I follow
In darkness
Your sweet perfume
Set myself free


Then comes pain
Too much thirst between us
Echoes of a sigh
That will never die
Then your look
As wet drops between us
I'll be shiny velvet
If you'll lay
Upon this age of mine


Hands of greed
That run after each other
To the core of the existence within
You're the only one place in which I can live
Will you ever love me?

They're really evocative and I love that line in the chorus "As I walk I breathe you in through rainy roads."

Here is the song, which, incidentally has an Italian version called "Ombre."  This CD is released in North America August 9 and I'm fucking buying it.

New Find/Come Cover Me: Dama

Thanks to my new colleagues over at the Sonic Cathedral Zine, I'm on the path to discovering all kinds of great new music, something that always gives me immeasurable pleasure.  It's especially pleasurable when, after downloading a whole bunch of new music, the first new CD you play is just killer.  Such is the case with Italy's Dama, which was recommended in a review of their CD, Eirwen, by my colleague Doctor T.

Dama is, to my ear, a symphonic rock-symphonic metal cross-over band and I have been listening to Eirwen all afternoon.  I love it!  The singer, Barbara Schera Vanoli, is fantastic, and Dama's music is just beautiful.  Not super heavy, but heavy enough, and very vocal and keyboard-centred, with great symphonic elements to boot.  They are tagged on Last.fm as "Gothic" but I disagree with that.  They are not gloomy or dark enough to warrant such a label and their sound is lighter.

One song on the album, which is their first, that really stuck out for me is a remake of Madonna's "Live to Tell."  It's fucking spectacular and I have been playing it over and over again (probably driving my neighbours up the wall).  This cover is fresh and keeps the songs integrity while making it more interesting than the original.  And I liked the original; it's one of my favourite Madonna songs.  But this is better, in my opinion, than hers.

Here it is:



Dama also has a single out in Italian called "Regina d'Inverno" which they have translated as "Your Winter."  There is an English version of this song, too, but here is the Italian, which is quite lovely.



What do you think?

You can find Dama at these fine locations:

Last. fm
Dama's official web site
MySpace
Facebook

Audio samples "From Chaos to Eternity" by Rhapsody of Fire

New Rhapsody of Fire album was released in June. Alex Staropoli said about the album: "This album has two hearts: in the first 8 titles we let the guitars blast stronger again, putting emphasis rather on basic heavy metal... but with the last song we defined once again the cinematic impact of our music for the grand finale of Rhapsody’s tale".





"From Chaos to Eternity" is their final fantasy based album that follows the chronicles of Algalord. The album  contains nine tracks, one of which, "Heroes of the Waterfalls' Kingdom", is almost twenty minutes long and is split into 5 parts.

Fabio Lione talks about Kamelot & new CD of Rhapsody of Fire

Rhapsody of Fire's singer and current singer of Kamelot talks in an interview for Austrian Heavyzine about the new RoF album From Chaos to Eternity and touring with Kamelot. Fabio also revealed that he would be more than happy to join the band permanently if they aked him to do so.

New Find: Crysalys

Eve's Apple is, according to their official Facebook page, "is a worldwide community of professional female singers, designed to be a platform that informs about women's work in the world of music, supports new female fronted bands, and offers advice for navigating the music business world." It's members include Lisa Middlehauve (ex-Xandria), Sharon den Adel, Heidi Parviainen (Amberian Dawn), and Charlotte Wessels (Delain), amongst many others. Their FB promotes quite a few new bands, and one I recently came across was Crysalys, fronted by Chiara Malvestiti.

Crysalys hails from Italy, and this is the description that appears on their web site and Facebook page: "Surrounded by a magnificent modern metal scenery, a theatrical soprano goes back to the roots of Italian Opera Lirica and leads us through this wonderful Post-Opera masterpiece."

As for Chiara herself, it sounds like she has had some impressive training, studying with opera singers like mezzo-soprano Isabella Conti and Italian-Brasilian soprano Patrizia Morandini. Currently she is at the Italian music school, studying classical singing with tenor Nazareno Antinori.

Crysalys will release a debut album entitled The Awakening of Gaia in September, and involves some impressive credits including mastering done by Mika Jussila at Finnvox studios.

The band has an official video for their single "The Awakening of Gaia", and here it is!



When it was initially posed on FB, one of the comments was, "Intense." And, yes, I think that pretty much sums it up. But I think this is promising. I'm glad the lyrics appear below the video, because I can't understand a word she's singing.

I'm curious about the whole album.

In the meantime, you can find Crysalys at these fine locations:

YouTube
MySpace
Official Site
Facebook
Last.fm

Crysalys is:

Chiara Malvestiti - VOCALS
Alessandro Camela - DRUMS
Fabio Amurri - KEYBOARD
Giuseppe Cardinali - BASS
Janos Murri - GUITARS

CD Review: Solisia's "Ordinary Fate"

Here is another band I've seen a lot of buzz about on the interwebs lately and thought they were worth looking into. Hailing from Italy, Solisia's Ordinary Fate is their first full-length release after a shorter demo came out in 2007. Most commonly labeled as progressive power metal, Solisia is a female-fronted band with a ballsy lead vocalist, Marilena Stigliano, who belts out in a decent alto-ish range.

How important is labeling? The eternal question. When it's done right, it's not an issue. When it's not, it becomes an issue. Solisia is definitely not symphonic power metal, and if you listen to it thinking it is symphonic PM, then you are going to be disappointed. There really are no symphonic elements in here to speak of. Perhaps this is why Arno Callen, who reviewed this CD over at Black Wind Metal, might not have liked the album so much.

I personally though it was very good and very promising. It has all the trappings of good melodic metal: it's fast, bombastic, heavy on the keyboards, has strong guitar work, and altogether has an amazing PM feel to it. However, had Solisia gone with a classical soprano and some of the more traditional symphonic sounding keyboard elements, I would probably have agreed with Arno because those would have made this band sound a bit cheesy and cliche. As it is, though, Marilena's vocals are a definite rock-style in a lower range and the keyboard elements have an 80s synth sound to them that sounded pretty cool and pretty different for the genre. These two elements alone make Solisia a bit of a stand-out to me. Marilena is does not have a "sweet" tonality to her voice, which makes it not poppy, but rather she is quite powerful and at times she reminded me of Coronatus's original rock alto Lisa Lasch and Silentium's Riina Rinkinen.

Standout songs for me were the title track, "Ordinary Fate" which starts the album off with a terrific bombastic intro and with the backing vocals reminded me a lot of Edenbridge, and the final track, "Unrevealed Words", which has a pretty epic feel to it. There is one ballad, "I'll Take You With Me" that I enjoyed, and there was a really cool instrumental piece entitled "Overlude" that was also very well done.

So, in the end, I enjoyed this and think it's a promising start for Solisia. Horns up! \m/

Here is "Ordinary Fate."