Cav's Place

I guess I am trying to add another post to this series, so quickly after the previous one. It’d be great if the need for non-personal posts will make me actually manage to write more of them, but we’ll see what happens. At this point, despite the fact that it actually will include five bands this time, this one doesn’t even change the number of bands not included in such posts, since last night I went through what had been posted on the Power of Female Fronted Metal group since I wrote that previous post and added four bands, and then checked again before starting to write it today and added one more. Should also note that the last band included in the post isn’t one of those added, since one of those added just had one song uploaded, so I couldn’t make the usual two picks, but while I normally just ignore songs from bands I had heard of before ever since the group became so active, for some reason last night I decided to update the links for one such band, so I added that as the fifth one now.

To start with the band added today, that’s Hamen. Since I wasn’t rushing nearly as much as last night, I actually listened to most of their one full album on their Deezer page and there may be better choices there, but since that site requires signing up and logging on in order to listen to full songs, I don’t link to songs posted there and will just go with the song that was posted on the group, My True Freedom, as first pick. As for the older song for the second pick, let’s say Winter. Still those lengthy instrumental bridges in the second part of songs that are so awfully common and keep bothering me, and the low production value, particularly notable on the older songs, hurts them, but they have something interesting as well.

Moving on to the bands added last night and going through them alphabetically, the first is Everfall and, with three videos posted and one of them being for a song in Spanish, my two picks were not a matter of choice. But that’s definitely not a problem, as both Revenge and Damned Eternity are good songs, I’d say the latter in particular. They may be better composed than performed and recorded, and could quite clearly use a more powerful voice, or perhaps a male voice in addition to the female one, but even so Everfall may well be the best actual new find in this post, at least at such a quick glance and based entirely on my subjective opinion and preferences, of course. They even managed to make those bridges somewhat interesting, which is an achievement in itself. And they’re also the first band from Bolivia to catch my attention so far.

Next would be Golden Jubilee, a name which hardly fits a metal band but which makes far more sense when you see that they apparently had many blues influences early on, and some things are still noticeable. Whether that’s good or bad depends on each person’s preferences, of course, but it clearly makes for songs that are generally softer and slower, and rely less on the instruments and sounds usually associated with metal. The self-titled song and Heal Me may be the worst examples of those differences out of the songs I listened to from them, and the latter also features two other artists, but I am choosing them as my picks just because they sound much better to me. The production and even the voices themselves also seem better, which is odd, especially in case of the production, since the others are from the same album. But when you have a song with the same name as the band and another that features other artists, I guess it’s only normal to put more effort, and possibly also resources, into them.

Hypersonic comes next, and no, I have no idea what the name has to do with the Christian theme I see in their songs. Raising my eyebrows at those lyrics to say the least, and some sounds seem to belong more in electronic songs, or something of that sort, plus that those instrumental bridges are here as well and they’re not doing anything interesting with them either, but they do have a good, solid sound overall, and a powerful voice. Prayer in the Dark is clearly the best example of that out of the songs I listened to. I’ll go with a much older song as my second pick though, Wings of Life, to show where they started from, even if that’s a somewhat different song, more of a ballad, and also the only one from their first EP that apparently wasn’t also on their first full album. Not sure why that was, but to me it sounds clearly better than the other three on that EP.

As for the fifth band, the one I had heard of before, that’s Dialith and they’re the reason why I said above that Everfall may well be the best actual new find in this post and not simply the best band in this post. They have everything on Bandcamp, so you can go there if you’re interested, but I’ll take the easy way for the picks for this post, sticking to their YouTube channel and therefore, at this point, to The Sound of Your Voice and Libra. Despite having just released their first full album in August, what I’m hearing is solid, powerful, confident, well produced, professional… And the fact that the theme has to do with the sixth mass extinction, currently being caused by humans, is definitely also a plus. You may say that the overall sound is rather typical, but there are some exceptions there as well and, either way, what’s more important is the quality, and Dialith are clearly among those who not only do things well, but they do them well pretty much from the beginning too, which is even rarer.