New Finds – I
Some time ago I started to notice that my playlists were getting shorter and more restrictive, an obvious sign of getting bored of most of the music I had. So I decided to start looking for something new instead of trying to see if the bands I already have released something new or try to fill in some blanks as I’ve been doing in the past. And by “new” I really mean new for me, thought it was a good time to look only for bands I had never heard of before.
Now that I think about it, I guess stumbling upon the lead singer of a new band on OkCupid had something to do with this desire to descover new things. (In case you’re wondering, the band is Crimfall and the growling sent me scampering away, but I think her voice is great.)
Either way, YouTube was the starting point, getting a few band names that showed up as related, then I searched for those on DC, looked through what else those who had those bands had and got some more names. Of course I got overloaded, ending up with a list and even some downloads that I’m unlikely to go through too soon, but I found a few interesting ones before that happened. I’d say this just proves how this so-called piracy should be seen as free advertising instead of as a problem.
The first find was Demether (I’d link to their official site but it says the domain name has expired, which makes me wonder if they still exist). Never listened to a Serbian band before… It seems you need to dig quite a bit to find something by them, but I did manage to get their first album, Within the Mirror, and it’s an interesting symphonic-power-gothic mix. They have a video for Silence and that’s what got my attention initially, like that “deep” sound, but Diving is the one that got stuck in my mind the most after listening to the whole album. Her voice seems really good and they often make decent use of their growler, coming in alongside her to emphasize certain lines and often keeping his voice soft enough not to bother me even when he has parts just for himself. Their other vocalist (also keyboardist and songwriter) seems to need some more work because I like the tone a lot but he seems to falter at times. As for the instrumental part, they have a thing for guitar solos towards the end of songs and I frown at those, but overall that’s also quite good in my opinion.
The other band I stopped at so far is Atargatis. They’re not easy to find either, though not as hard as Demether from what I’ve seen. Managed to find both their full-length albums eventually and the first, Wasteland, is quite impressive. Her voice is memorable, to me at least, a tone I haven’t often heard so far, and any male vocals stop short of growling, though sometimes they seem to break up the song. But excepting those moments the songs are very well put together (I’m not the only one impressed by it). The title song burned itself into my mind after the first listening, though the lyrics have something to do with that as well. The second album, Nova, didn’t have much of an impact on me, however. Might need to listen to it again and see if that changes, but it lacks the “strength” of the first one and her voice is also softer, which isn’t a good thing in their case because what makes the first one memorable is the way her voice sounds.
There are a few others I have already listened to that caught my interest and quite a lot I might be looking into, but so far I know I’m going to keep those two. Of course, any opinion is my own and even other fans of the genre might hate what I like… This feels strange anyway, since it’s the first time I write such a post (there was the one about Nightwish, but that’s different)…
