CD Review: Damnation Angels' - The Valiant Fire

So I get promos from various record labels as part of my work with Sonic Cathedral, and one such label is Massacre Records.  A while ago, I received a promo for this band I'd never ever heard of called Damnation Angels, who were based in the UK, but who have a familiar vocalist at the helm: PelleK, who hails from Norway.

PelleK is well known for his covers of various metal songs, Nightwish included, and he often gets a bad wrap for being "cheesy" sounding, which I happen not to agree with.  I kinda like his covers and think he's got some serious singing capability.  So when I found out he was the lead vocalist for Damnation Angels, I made sure to give the album a good listen - or many.  I do, after all, enjoy listening to the dudes of metal, I just don't have as many opportunities as Sonic Cathedral specializes in female-fronted bands.  So this was a nice treat, and it was an especially nice treat as it really sort of knocked my socks off.

The Valiant Fire dropped in Europe March 23, and it comes to North America June 23.  It contains 9 songs and over an hour of music, and the music is good.  I can't say how impressed I was with this album, which is both epic and progressive, and somewhat reminiscent of Kamelot if you had to draw any kind of comparison with a more well-known band.

The opener, "Finding Requiem" is a catchy, bombastic piece of full-on symphonic metal, and it's a great song to start of the album with as it sets up the tone and sound of the band is going for.  And it just keeps getting better.

"Icarus Syndrome", track two, continues on in a similar vein, and "This is Who We Are" is the shortest song on the album, at just over 5:30 minutes, but it's a pounding anthem of a song.  The longest song on the CD, at nearly nine and a half minutes is "The Frontiersman", starts off slowly and you might expect a long-assed ballad, but before long it's galloping along at a great clip, and then towards the end, it slows down again for an emotional ending.  It's one of the best songs on the album in terms of structure.

Another favourite of mine on The Valiant Fire is "The Passing."  The song is about a man on his death bed, taking a look back on his life, and it's a beautiful, powerful piece of music with a lovely melody and a fantastic guitar solo. PelleK pulls of slow, emotional, and sensitive as well as he pulls off the faster stuff.

All in all, I don't think there's a weak song on this album.  All of them are well-composed and very well-executed, with all the great trappings of the genre, but with a bit of progressiveness that elevates the music up a notch to another level.

The speed and musical alacrity of this band kind of blew me away.  The guitar work and the drumming are amazing, and combined with PelleK's vocals, Damnation Angels definitely have something special going on here.  The Valiant Fire is their second album, following up 2012's Bringer of Light and an EP from 2009 called Shadow Symphony.  I don't know why they are not better known, though they do have over 9000 likes on Facebook, so perhaps I've been too immersed in female-fronted stuff to notice them.

Alas, the band announced on May 19, just a few days ago, that PelleK has left the band, and auditions are currently underway to find a suitable replacement.  Interestingly, they are looking at men and women, so there could be the possibility of a female-fronted Damnation Angels in the future.

I already have a draft list of favourite albums from female fronted bands for the first half of the year, but this album, along with the latest Kamelot release, are going to be up there for my general (i.e. male vocalists included) top 10 of 2015.

Tarja's single "Falling Awake" now streaming on Youtube (video avaliable)

For those who have been waiting, Tarja's first single "Falling Awake" from her new album What Lies Beneath is out now and can be heard on Youtube:



Enjoy and rock on! \m/

Rocking 30-Something (and one 40-something) Metal Chicks

In less than two weeks, I will be having a birthday myself. I'll be 36. At this time of my life, I'm doing a lot of reflecting, and I do this with a sense of amazement because for me, life has just started to really take off in so many ways. I look at what I have now, what I have accomplished, and I feel so full of gratitude. I really feel this past year that I have grown younger, not older.

I thought I'd write a post about metal women around my age who totally rock, both in celebration of being immensely cool in your mid to late 30s, but also in response to those people on MFF who have particularly agist attitudes towards a certain female vocalist. The target of this agism recently turned 39, but even before this, she was accused of being "middle aged" and "a granny" and the rounding up of her age to 40 was done with derision, as if 40 is a bad age. I find this extremely offensive, to say the least. Mind you, most of these nay-sayers are in their 20s, so yeah, a woman in her late 30s might seem so dreadfully old, but fuck, people, you have a lot to learn.

So here is my list of 30-something women who are still rocking, and still as metal as hell.

1. Liv Kristine. Born February 14, 1976. Age: 34. Lead singer of Leaves' Eyes and killer solo artist in her own right. I love this woman. She is so ethereally beautiful it almost makes me want to cry, and she is sexy and talented as hell. Will she be granny-ish in a few years? I think not.

2. Cristina Scabbia. Born June 6 1972. Age: 38. Lead singer of Lacuna Coil. This is no "middle aged granny" let me tell you.

3. Sharon den Adel. Born July 12, 1974. So, she will be 36 tomorrow. Lead singer of Within Temptation. God, I love this woman. She has two little children, a wicked partner, a wicked career, does a lot of her own costume designs, which I love, and is a wicked talented woman. And she is ridiculously gorgeous. Even in 3 years, she will be no "middle-aged granny." She is just getting better and better, as far as I'm concerned.

4. Anneke van Giersbergen. Born March 8, 1973. Age: 37. Ex-The Gathering, now of Agua de Annique. I will always remember her headbanging away on stage with The Gathering, with that amazing long hair she used to have. She rocks!





5. Stephanie Luzie. Born April 6, 1974. Age: 36. Lead singer of Atargatis and Darkwell. Talk about amazing hair! I have hair envy when ti comes to Stephanie! Fucking gorgeous, fucking amazing singer, fucking amazing on stage, and pretty fucking decent lyricist. I think she is fucking awesome.

6. Sandra Schleret. Born June 26, 1976. Age: 34. Lead singer of Elis. Now, I don't know all the details, but it is well known that Sandra had a very severe illness that almost killed her at one point, but she survived with gusto, so you go and ask her how granny-like she is feeling these days!

7. And how about Doro? Born June 3, 1964. The Queen of Metal is 46. She is the only officially middle-aged woman on this list (because, over here in my culture, middle age starts around the mid to late 40s), but is she granny-like? I think not! She still looks and sounds amazing, and she still fucking rocks.

I'm sure there are others I could mention, but these are the ones I came up with on the fly. Let me know of any others you know of!

Happy May Day

While people protested all over the world today, this "day of the labourer," I spent some time feeling grateful that one of my jobs is unionized, pays well, and I don't have to go in too often to make it work for me. We don't have any big May Day traditions in Canada, so it's kind of a non-event here. Lots of European countries celebrate this as Walpurgis Night, with all sorts of community celebrations happening. On the Celtic calendar, however today is Beltane. For the Celts, this was the official start to summer, when the livestock were let loose for summer grazing, and bonfires were lit for various reasons - cleansing rituals and to represent the light heralding the longer days back to the land, to name two. It's a day for feasting and community, and like the other sabbats, a day that recognizes the powerful aspects of the natural world.

Bearing in mind this day's connection to nature, it is an interesting coincidence that today also saw the giant oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico reach the shores of Louisiana. The devastation will be unspeakable. Here we have the ultimate power struggle: Mother Nature versus Man.

I will always root for Mother Nature, even though we seem so intent on continually kicking her ass.

Thanks to Sharon den Adel of Within Temptation, I now envision Mother Earth as a headbanging metal mamma!

So, in celebration of all things natural and powerful, and in celebration of the coming of summer, the warmth, the longer days, and all the other stuff this season brings, and to show my support and passion for Mother Nature's fight against Man, her nemesis, here is Within Temptation's "Mother Earth."

Underrated Metal Bands #1: Tarot

Okay, this marks my first entry in a series in which I discuss metal bands that do not get the recognition they deserve and bands that need to be known. And no other band deserves this than the Finnish heavy metal band Tarot.

Tarot has been around for quite some time dating back to the early 80s, then being called "Purgatory". They were formed by Zachary (guitars) and Marco Hietala (vocals and bass), who are still currently in the band. Eventually, the band changed their name to Tarot because the record label wanted them to change their name for some unknown reason.

Tarot plays traditional heavy metal music following to the likes of Iron Maiden, Dio, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and so forth. Since their beginnings, they have always stuck to this style despite the changing of musical trends in the early 90's and have never seriously altered their style over the years. Eventually, they would pick up on some of the modern power metal elements of today. Even so, you know it's Tarot as soon as you hear their explosive riffing and Marco's excellent voice.

Speaking of Marco, he is perhaps the most underrated vocalist metal has to offer! How this man NEVER gets talked about is beyond me! He takes the influence of metal legends like Rob Halford and Ronnie James Dio and from that is able to create his own unique and distinctive metal voice. He also has great bass sound and his skills are good in that respect too! Marco also sings and performs in many other bands/projects as well such as Nightwish, ex-Sinergy, Northern Kings, and so on. The man not only has a set of godly pipes, but is able to perform in multiple bands too. A very talented person indeed!

His brother, Zachery, is another person worth mentioning. His guitar skills are very underrated and undermined too. While not the most technical guitarist ever, he still is able to pull off some creative sounds on his guitar and some very excellent sounding leads! He also plays guitar in the Finnish symphonic metal band, Marenne.

Janne Tolsa is the keyboardist for Tarot who first appeared on their third album, "To Live Forever". While replacing their other guitarist, Mako, Janne brought a new sound to Tarot and with this gave them more distinctiveness as a group. He also plays keyboard for the Finnish symphonic death metal band Eternal Tears of Sorrow and for symphonic metal band Marenne with fellow band mate Zachary Hietala.

Their sampler/vocalist Tommi Salmela also has an important role in Tarot. Since his arrival in 1996, he has been important for their sound and has even taken over the role for vocals when needed for Marco. On their albums, he sounds great in unison with Marco. He sounds amazing live as well if you watch Tarot's live DVD "Live Undead".

Pecu Cinnari, who has been with the band since their first album, "Spell of Iron", is their drummer and even he can compete with the best of them too in metal. His influences go back to the old days of metal to drummers like Cozy Powell (Rainbow), Randy Castillo (Ozzy Osbourne), and Alex Van Halen (Van Halen).

If you have not heard Tarot yet, you need to listen for yourself their own brand of heavy metal music! They are seriously one of the most underrated bands of all time and if it weren't for Nightwish, I would have had no idea who they were! Tarot is one the biggest pioneers of Finnish metal for many years to come and deserve more recognition for what they do. Their eighth studio album, "Gravity of Light", is going to be released this year and we Tarot fans are very excited! For anyone who is into traditional heavy metal done with style, then Tarot is for you!

Tarot's homepage: http://www.wingsofdarkness.net/

Tarot's last.fm page: http://www.last.fm/music/Tarot

Rock on! \m/

Bad Album Art in Metal

Okay, here are some examples of bad album art in metal (in my opinion):


This is the image for the 2000 re-release of In Flames' first album, "Lunar Strain". Honestly, this is a great melodic death metal record, but yeah I am not too thrilled about this image though. I mean, this is a dead bird!!! There should have been more creativity here with the image for the re-release of their first album! The original album art was much better.

This is the album art for Almora's "1945". Okay, this is just putrid! What is this suppose to be??? It looks like some fantasy Asian looking world with a fairy??!?!?! What does this have to do with 1945? Well, I like Almora and the music of this album, but this image just looks ridiculous!

This is the album art for Atargatis' first full length album "Wasteland". I understand that this is a concept album, but what the hell!? This just looks really silly! I don't know what to say about this. The music is nice, but this looks too strange to me! It looks like a cover to a really bad B movie!

And finally, this album art by the Finnish band Kivimetsan Druidi for their new album "Betrayal, Justice, Revenge" has to be the grand mother of bad album art in general. Their music is decent on this album, but this looks like the cover of a cliche middle ages video game! Seriously, you really cannot get much worse than this for album art!

Note that I am not insulting any of the bands here. In fact, I like the music of all of these bands, but in my opinion the album art is not up to par with the music on these albums. So yeah, no need to think that I am insulting anyone here, just the artwork! ;) And this is just a fun blog post and I think this is something that isn't meant to take seriously! :D

My Heavy Metal Experience

Okay, well this is officially my first post on this blog! I think it will be fitting to start out by saying that I am excited to start blogging about something I deeply enjoy, which is heavy metal music! And this blog is created for anyone who loves and cherishes the most deep genre in the world today. And I would like to share my experience with heavy metal and how it has changed my life.

To start off, I would like to say that in the beginning, I started listening to bands like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Slayer, and so forth. Those were the bands that I listened to when I was introduced to metal sometime when I was in high school. It changed my life forever and to think that I was never exposed to this music before just blew my mind. Most of the kids I went to school with did not listen to heavy metal at all, but rather mainstream music that people heard on the radio. After that, people were worried that I was being "evil" because of the cliche that metal is "Satan's music" or whatever the hell it means.

But that did not stop me at all. Later into my twenties, I have stumbled upon some more modern heavy metal music from the Scandinavian countries which gave me a whole new perspective on metal and my musical experience. Many of these bands would never see the light of day in the mainstream market here in America and sometimes finding their albums in locals stores are very rare too. But this is where, in my opinion, the best metal is coming from in the world today. And of course as we build this blog up more, we will be discussing more about these bands and what you can find for music over in Europe.

Despite getting some mixed reactions from my peers, I have finally found my true passion and my favorite music genre that I have been searching for my whole life! With this also brought a desire to take up guitar and learn it so I can play my favorite songs. With that, I started creating music myself and also a new passion and hobby which I find very enjoyable. So yes, heavy metal has had a huge impact in my life. That is all from me. I look forward to hearing more!

Rock on! \m/