the black league is a finnish band founded by the ex-sentenced singer taneli jarva. they started as a doom metal act, and shifted more and more in the direction of a mixture of metal and rock’n'roll.
their first album, ichor, is the the black league album i like most – probably because it’s their doomiest one, and it contains my most favourite song: ozymandias, a song dedicated to the poem ozymandias by percy bysshe shelley (his wife wrote frankenstein):

i met a traveller from an antique land
who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert. near them, on the sand,
half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
tell that its sculptor well those passions read
which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
and on the pedestal these words appear:
‘my name is ozymandias, king of kings:
look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
nothing beside remains. round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
the lone and level sands stretch far away.

the song is slow, dark, most of it being rather calm, while the recitation of the spoken words is heavy, powerful:

another song from that album i like a lot is night on earth (not related to the movie of the same name by jim jarmusch, which i also like a lot).

a third song from the album is winter wind sings, a dark balad encompanied with a strange video… “when you cry winter winds sing straight to my heart…”

finally, here’s a newer piece of the band, featured on their homepage at some point. it’s a somewhat ironic video about a concert which is not the biggest success. see for yourself:

an act i really like a lot is the finnish cello metal band apocalyptica. they started as a group of four cellists, plugging their cellos into an amplifier, covering metallica songs. after some time they started composing own songs, and later they added drums to their songs and had more and more songs with vocals. (i prefer the ones without vocals though, in most cases, and sometimes the drums also are annoying. but well…) so, as a good start, here’s a live version of harmageddon, the first song composed by apocalyptica themselves:

one of my most favourite songs is path. since i already presented it on spielwiese, let me present a version with vocals by sandra nasić (the singer of the guano apes) here. it’s also a video, so if you want to see it, please click the title or into the window to have it in a larger window:

i personally prefer the version without vocals, and also the video of that version is very cool. watch it on spielwiese if you’re interested. another nice video is a live version of hall of the mountain king, a classical “piece of norwegian black metal”, originally composed by edvard grieg.

the first album featuring drums was reflection. here’s a live version of the track toreador ii from that album. i wanted to include a studio version, but i didn’t found one at youtube which was available here:

finally, here’s a song from their newest album, 7th symphony:

annihilator is a canadian thrash metal band being around since 1984, led by jeff waters, the only member still left from the original line-up. i think they were one of the first metal bands i knew, after someone copied me their king of the kill album a long time ago. one very fascinating, and also rather non-standard song from that album was its opener, the box. the song is rather critical on television.

on the album, this song is followed by the powerful king of the kill, a song about lions. definitely worth listening. the next song i want to present you is from their debut album, alice in hell. it’s the song allison hell, about a girl going insane.

the third song is a calm, accoustic one, called only be lonely.

finally, a midtempo song called carnival diablos from the album carnival diablos.

if you want to listen more, you can download a free album called total annihilation here, you just need to provide your email address.

the finnish band finntroll is a more popular choice than most bands i presented so far, except lacuna coil. finntroll‘s lyrics are troll-centered. not internet trolls or fantasy trolls though, but the skandinavian ones. for that reason, they also sing in swedish, because it sounds more trollish than finnish or english. they tell tales about trolls, including their wars against christian missionaries. the music comes from the melodic black metal genre, with some humppa (sometimes described as finnish polka) influcences. most of them feature fast melodic heavy music with screamed/growled lyrics. the band also makes use of orchestric parts and is well suited as party music or to dance to it (well, i guess it depends on what you mean by dancing). one good example is vindfärd/människopesten from their 2003 album nadfödd:

another example is from their newest album, nifelvind:

a third song i want to present is relatively calm, compared to the above two. it’s from their ur jordens djup album, and very danceable:

finally, here’s a rather different piece from their 2003 album visor om slutet, an album i already raved about on spielwiese (in fact, that was my first post there after the obligatory hello world post). the album is purely accoustic and often also instrumental. this is a nice piece with vocals:

in case you like something atmospheric, folkish, try that album. it’s not typical for finntroll, but nonetheless great!

mar de grises is another one of the bands i found out about in my favourite record store. they are a chilenian band producing intense and melodic death/doom/post metal tunes. by intense, i mean: not just powerful and heavy, but also interesting. the first piece i want to present is from their second album, draining the waterheart. it’s one of my favourite songs, heavy, but beautiful:

the second song i want to present is from the same album, but a slower, less brutal song, having only clean vocals:

the third song is the opener of their debut album, the tatterdemalion express. again, a more powerful, heavy song, also having many slower, calm parts:

the last song is from their newest album, streams inwards: