sirenia is a norwegian gothic/symphonic metal band founded by morten veland after leaving tristania. i do only know the first two albums of sirenia, so i will just write about these.

sirenia continues the style of early tristania: combining gothic and symphonic metal, with elements from death metal, into an easy digestable, but nonetheless beautiful stream of music. a good example is sister nightfall from their 2002 debut album at sixes and sevens:

two more excellent songs from the same album are on the wane and sixes and sevens. the former is, similar to sister nightfall, fast and catching:

the third song, at sixes and sevens, is more on the symphonic side.

the last song i want to present is seven sirens and a silver tear from their second album, an elixir for existence. a purely instrumental song, mostly piano. a wonderful piece…

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.

the first post in this new project features the italian gothic metal band lacuna coil, featuring the two vocalists cristina scabbia and andrea ferro. most of their songs are very melodic, often powerful, featuring a beautiful mix of female and male vocals. the first song i want to present is fragments of faith from their 2008 album karmacode, my favourite lacuna coil album. a powerful song with a beautiful melody:

as a contrast, here’s a slower, also very beautiful piece from the 1999 album in a reverie. this is one of the songs which really fascinated me and caught my interest in the band:

finally, here’s a music video for the karmacode album song within me, which has a more typical tempo for lacuna coil songs:

note that their style changed a bit over the years, as for so many bands. while i really like the development leading to karmacode, i don’t like their newest album shallow life that much, though it’s still very good.