New Finds – XII
I keep saying that I want to post at least two posts in this series each year and at least I seem to be posting the first one before the end of the year’s first half. Interestingly, last year’s first one was also on the first Sunday of June, though that meant the 4th then. But that one only included the usual five bands, while this time I’m hoping to get to eight, which would be the most included in such a post so far, if you don’t include those I just happened to mention in passing in a paragraph about one of those I did actually mean to include. This will also give me a chance to get to that goal of 15 bands included in such posts in a year even if I won’t add a third, assuming I’ll somehow add seven in a second. But I never managed 15 in a year so far, so definitely don’t count on that.
Before getting to the bands though, I want to mention another YouTube channel, Metal Bands with Female Voices II, which has full albums. It probably won’t last long, the original one having already been deleted for copyright violations, but at the moment you can have a look. I won’t be linking to anything from there though, sticking to official uploads, and to the usual rule of two songs, preferably from different albums if possible, per band. The bands won’t really be new finds though, since I rather avoided looking lately, not even paying much attention to what I happened to see posted, so I started from one I wanted to include due to being rather stuck, on and off, on a song posted in April, then continued with a Romanian one I also wanted to add, but after that it was a matter of looking through names, searching for countries that I happened to think of, and picking what ended up as being six others. However, it just so happens that two of them have just released new albums, two others released new albums earlier this year, and one is about to release a video, even if for an older song.
That first band I wanted to include is Temperance, and the song I got rather stuck on at various times since it was posted is Broken Promises. As for a pick from an older album, I guess I’ll go with Me, Myself & I, after just going through the few uploaded by that annoying label that makes their bands delete their accounts on sites like Bandcamp, ReverbNation or SoundCloud and the proper songs posted on their YouTube accounts, adding what they want on their own accounts instead. But to go back to the band itself, it’s not actually a new find either, as I seem to remember first stumbling into them years ago, but what I heard at the time made me dismiss them. Definitely changed my opinion now…
The Romanian band I mentioned above is Lion’s Roar, which so far only seems visible at the Romanian Eurovision selection. Their first appearance was last year, with I Set You Free, while this year… You know, I think I’ll go with Nothing in Between, even if people didn’t actually get to hear it, since they had apparently submitted two songs and this one was rejected in the preselection. And I do hope they’ll release some more material and try to make themselves heard again before next year’s Eurovision selection, because they sound quite nice, and while it was a good strategy to make themselves heard the first time, it’s not like they had any success in that selection anyway.
Getting back to Italy, I think it’s been a few years since I first stumbled into Desdæmona, but the name caught my attention again now and I see that they seem about to release a video for Invisible Thread, so I’ll go with that as the first pick, while for the second… Let’s say Shipwreck. Quite an interesting voice there. Probably not something I could get stuck on, but it made me remember them after quite some time. Admittedly, didn’t know why I remembered them, realizing that this was the reason once I started listening, but that should be good enough too, right?
While at some point I seem to have stumbled into another, which has since split up, The Loudest Silence seems to be the only band from Bosnia and Herzegovina that caught my attention at some point and is still active, and Friday they just released their first album. Not much uploaded at the moment, but can definitely recommend listening to The Loudest Silence, even if it does strike me as odd to have a song with the same name as the band when they managed to find a different name for the album. The second pick will have to be Wood Nymph, but I hope there are better songs on that album. Didn’t listen to anything other than what they posted so far, but what I can say is that they seem to have some potential with a certain kind of sound, yet it doesn’t work so well if they try other things.
A band that really seems to be the only one from its country that caught my attention so far is Dream Ocean, from Turkey. That seems somewhat odd, as the music scene should be rich enough over there, but there’s the question of how many sing in English and, either way, I guess I just didn’t happen to stumble into any others that I’d find interesting. So I’ll just look at this one band I know of and pick from the few songs they uploaded, since that’s all I listened to. Guess I’ll go with Forever and Everstorm, as parts of that other one bother me, so wondering which of the sounds is more present on the album in general. Nice voice, so I’d say they should focus more on that and leave out those heavier instrumental parts I noticed there.
The remaining three bands are from Hungary and all of them have been around for quite a while, but while Ideas is well over a decade older than the other two, it may be the one I most recently heard of, close to the end of last year. It seems that they just recently changed their vocalist, and since that happened after releasing their most recent album, what I can listen to and pick from may not quite reflect how they’ll sound now, but I see that they have had other changes in the past as well, albeit long ago, and they only have what they released since the previous change of vocalist on their YouTube channel. Then again, that also means what they released since YouTube was created, and it’s hard enough to pick anyway, so have a look if you’re interested in more. But I’ll stick to the usual rule and, more or less randomly, pick Just Call Me from that most recent album and Hide Your Heart as an older song. And yes, they do have the songs in both Hungarian and English, which seems like quite a lot of work, but I’m obviously only listening to the English versions.
Then there’s Obsidian Shell, which I believe I heard of a few years ago. They also went through a few different vocalists, but I’ll just try to pick one song from their most recent album, released a little more than a week ago, and one more from one of the others. As such, I’ll go with Land of Wonders and Endsequence, but those are songs I preferred after rushing through what’s available and they are a bit different from most others, so feel free to listen to whatever and wherever you want. Not sure how much I like that they have something that sounds like the soundtrack of an old game in their songs, but it does make it interesting. Definitely don’t like the harsh male vocals on what I understand to be the first album with their current vocalist, however, and I’m pleased that they gave up on that idea.
Finally, Dharma is a band I recall adding with mixed feelings, most of what I heard being of a different genre, but I’m quite sure that Dive Deeper is the reason why I ended up adding them after all, so that has to be my first pick. Otherwise, they don’t seem to have uploaded anything from their latest album, and I’m just going through what they have on their YouTube channel, because otherwise it’d be too much again and I’m not sure how much it’d help anyway. To have the second pick from a different album as well, I’ll have to go with One By One. But, again, this is something for those who prefer a genre that’s different from what I’d usually listen to.
For quite a while I didn’t think I was going to finish this post today, and initially posted it with only the first five bands, to be sure I’ll have something here in case there will be any problems, possibly due to the storm that seemed to be coming, then updated it after adding Ideas and Dharma, and then added Obsidian Shell as well, since there was a lot to go through, even while rushing, in order to pick which songs to link to. But now it’s all done, with quite some time to spare before midnight, and I may really have a chance to get to 15 bands included in such posts this year. But, again, not promising anything.
