noekk is a progressive rock / doom metal band from germany. they use a wide range of instruments, combined with vocals sung in an opera voice, to create a complex stream of music.

the first song, strange mountain, is from their debut album the water sprite.

the next song is from their second album, the grimalkin. consisting only of three songs, none of them shorter than 10 minutes, one even reaching 20 minutes, this album was the first one of noekk i listened to. personally, this is my favourite album.

the last song is from their latest album, the minstrel’s curse. that album goes a bit further in the metal direction, and the guitars are featured more prominently.

today i want to present dark suns, a progressive metal band from leipzig, germany. they started with playing very melodic, progressive doom metal for their album swanlike, then changed over to a more emotional, less doomy style without death growls for their album existence, while finally changing to a emotional progressive metal style for their latest album grave human genuine. their second album, existence, is one of my most favourite albums.

let me start with a song from their first album, swanlike. a slow, doomy song, yet so beautiful, melodic. parts with death growls, parts with clean vocals. a wonderful mix.

the second song is the last song from swanlike. starting almost ambient, the song is divided into two parts. the first four minutes are rather calm, while the second half is more heavy, similar to the sun beyond your eden. the end, again, is calm, like the beginning. a song full of beauty.

the next three songs are from their second album, existence. no death growls to be found here. the first song is called the euphoric sense.

the second song is anemone, one of my favourite songs from that album.

the third song is patterns of oblivion, featuring a variety of styles.

the existence album is really one of the best albums i know of. the last song i want to present is from their latest album, grave human genuine, called the chameleon defect. the whole album is different from the previous two; i personally prefer the first two albums. this song is a mixture between many calm parts and some heavy, fast parts. it also comes with a video, called the chameleon conflict. the video reminds me of certain david lynch movies…

today i want to write about the norwegian symphonic gothic metal band tristania. at least, about its beginning. tristania, founded 1996, combined melodic death metal with keyboards and choirs, creating a highly complex, wonderful gothicesque soundscape. later, the complexity of the songs reduced, and i stopped listening to them.

the first song i want to present already appeared on their demo, called tristania, and was also contained on their debut album, widow’s weeds.

the second song is from their album beyond the veil, called heretique. a beautiful, complex and highly melodic mixture. never boring, always carrying the listener along.

the third song is from the same album and is called opus relinque. an interesting soundscape, and similar to heretique, never boring. i think beyond the veil is probably the best tristania album ever.

the last song is from their 2001 world of glass album, called the shining path. before this album, morton veland left the band and founded sirenia, who continued the “old” tristania sound, while tristania started to change their sound.

tiamat is a rather versatile swedish band. starting as a death/black metal band, they evolved to a gothic/doom rock/metal band with heavy progressive and/or psychedelic influences, producing a wide range of music which is sometimes not even near to metal anymore.

let me start with two wonderful instrumental, experimental tracks. the first is planets from their famous album wildhoney, from which i already presented gaia on spielwiese:

the second is sumer by night from their album judas christ:

while often playing with such instrumental, almost psychedelic parts, they also play various types of metal. a very easy going song is brighter than the sun from their album skeleton skeletron, which is almost a bit like popular music, wouldn’t it be so dark, so black:

any color you like as long as it’s black
you could have anything if you just give it back

two other songs i like a lot are cain and ten thousand tentacles, next to each other on the album prey. they are best listened to one after another, as ten thousand tentacles is an instrumental continuation of the ending of cain. a very fascinating piece of music.

another song from the same album, the pentagram, with lyrics taken from a poem by aleister crowly, is a very calm song. it’s pretty long, and contains many beautiful instrumental soundscapes.

finally, here’s a track from tiamat‘s newest album, anathemes, called katarraktis apo aima (greek for a waterfall of blood).

this is part ii of my sentenced post, presenting the more gothic side of later sentenced. i want to start with a song from their 1996 album down, the first one with their new singer ville laihiala. it’s the song sun won’t shine, about love and sorrow.

the sun won’t shine on me without your love …don’t you know
the cold wind kills the flame in my heart …by its blow

the second song is from their fifth album, frozen. my most favourite of their albums. and this song is also my most favourite sentenced song. a song about the end of fall, the beginning of winter. its name is dead leaves.

the wintry frost comes crawling,
freezing all life that’s on its way.
the first dead leaves come falling,
hovering in the air with the rain.

the third song is from their sixth album, crimson. more in the him style. yet another song about death, and about (the end of) love. yet another very sad song.

the fourth song is from their seventh album, the cold white light. again, a song on love and death, one of the constant themes of sentenced albums since the love & death ep. “may death again us unite…”

my heart went down with you
at your funeral I was buried, too
my life … it ended with yours
and i… exist no more

another very beautiful and very sad song from that album is no one there, which i already presented on spielwiese.

the final song is from sentenced‘s last album, the funeral album. in 2005, sentenced announced that they want to disband and never again reunite. this album was their good-bye present, their headstone. resulting in a last final tour, which i unfortunately missed (so i have never seen them live), with a dvd recording of their final concert in oulu, finland. the dvd was released under the fitting name buried alive.

i do not just want to present a song, but a music video. i make this distinction because i (and many others) think that another song from the album fits much better to this video. in fact, you can play the video muted, and play along that song, and it fits perfectly. the video is called ever-frost, named after the song from funeral album. it is an aggressive song filled with hatred (read the lyrics here), similar to the style of most of their final album. the song is probably aimed at their enemies, at their critics, maybe as retribution for the hideous accusations following their release of the song routasydän (see here for more information).

the song fitting better to this video is end of the road, the last song from the funeral album.

here we are, now lay the burden down
we’re coming to the end of our road
sorrowful yet glorious somehow
to be humming this one last ode
so calm and still… it wasn’t all that bad, or was it now?
fulfilled… it doesn’t only hurt to end it now

the video itself is rather self-ironic, depicting one of the reasons why sentenced said they won’t rejoin, combining with a ritual funeral of the band, held by themselves. a fantastic video.

i want to end this double post with mentioning that miika tenkula, sentenced‘s lead guitarist and main songwriter, passed away in 2009. this makes the disbanding definite, forever. miika, rest in peace.