Cav's Place

This is going slowly. If I find something good I get stuck on it for a while, if I find something bad I get jaded and it’d be a bad idea to listen to something else too soon… But I am finding interesting things.

I’d like to start with the changes since the previous post. I have since found the second Demether album, Beautiful. I’m wondering if it’s the same band I liked after the first one, because they seem to have lost all their drive. My favorite Atargatis song has also changed, it’s Through the Mists of Oblivion now, mainly due to the part where their voices mix.

Moving on to the actual new finds, I’d like to start with one that’s certainly not so new for plenty of people, but was new for me: Delain. I’ll have to admit that what first caught my attention was recognizing Marco Hietala‘s voice. After I started paying more attention, it didn’t take long for Charlotte‘s voice to impress me, especially since it seems to be better suited for another genre and the result is quite interesting. The fact that you can actually hear the bass distinctly is another plus. According to the poll on their site, most fans seem to like The Gathering best, followed by Frozen. I think those are both really good, but if I’d have to pick a favorite it’d probably be Shattered right now. Their acoustic performances are also notable, check out Frozen and, especially, See Me in Shadow.
The next find would be a Romanian band called Tiarra. They probably caught my attention mainly because I was surprised by such a solid sound and good production from a band of this genre from here, especially on a demo, since their demo, Drama Per Musica, is what I found. It seems to be extremely hard to find anything to post here as links since the only properly recorded (as in not live) song posted on YouTube has just been taken down for copyright violation. You should be able to listen to the demo versions of Requiem pentru un Erou and Everything for Her (which is the one that really caught my attention) on Imeem. You could also go to their MySpace page, where they have the intro and five full songs from their first actual album, Post Scriptum, released earlier this month, but let’s just say that if I’d have heard that instead of the demo I wouldn’t have even listened to half of it before deleting! It sounds like, well, shit, and the new versions of Requiem pentru un Erou and Everything for Her bother me the most since I know they can sound much better! I’m used to being disappointed by my new finds’ second albums, but it’s strange to say the same thing about the first (and only)! Still, that demo sounds pretty nice, despite rather harsh male vocals (but certainly not as bad as on the actual album).
After a band that only interests me because of their demo, here’s one that doesn’t have anything but demos: Once There Was. If you go to their download page (or her download page, since Jessica is pretty much the band, the rest just lend a helping hand now and then) you’ll find everything I listened to. Good luck finding anything else anywhere, unless you’d buy the demos directly from her that is. I should note that all the songs from the first album are only samples and Nights is incomplete. The rest seem full versions, though. Awesome voice and not a bad skill with the keyboards either, but I guess she’ll have a hard time actually getting anywhere with this band when it’s not an actual band and couldn’t really perform anywhere. As a fun fact, Jessica does the Swedish translations for the Nightwish site.
And now for something even more obscure: Soulslide. They total eight songs on three demos. You can watch a video for Into Despair on YouTube and download Soldiers of Reality, their latest song, from their site. That latest song is with a new vocalist, after Sandra joined Elis and left them, and not so good in my opinion. What really caught my attention was their first demo, Dreamshade, and especially The Dreamer. Listen to it if you can find it anywhere… That said, I guess I’ll have to look for Sandra’s other bands, Siegfried and Dreams of Sanity and hope there aren’t a noticeable amount of growls to cancel her nice voice.
Finally, for anyone interested, one (former) band that did initially get my attention but proved to have a too “weak” sound to hold it for any amount of time: Chalice. The songs that made me interested in the first place were As Power Turns to Dust, Interlunar Dreams, The Amber Twilight and Memorial Embers. Sounds nice, but I know I won’t listen to a band again unless at least one song gets firmly stuck in my mind the first time around, so it was pointless to keep their songs around.

This would be it for now, sorry for not being able to post links to some better samples… I guess I’ll keep looking now and then, though of course my interest in the search diminishes each time I find something I like. One specific thing I’m looking for and can’t find is a certain kind of folk metal that I can’t seem to find anywhere. I’d like the “folk” part to be very noticeable, but not make the song sound too “happy”. This coming on top of my usual “requirements” when it comes to music, namely that I strongly prefer female vocals, any male vocals that do exist should be clear and that (almost) all songs should be in English so I’ll clearly understand what it’s all about. All of this seems to rule out everything of the kind that I’ve listened to so far…