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posts about metal. (page 3.)

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:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

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.

my most favourite (metal) band ever are sentenced. founded in muhos, finland, they started as a death metal band in 1989, and continued their journey through various styles of metal before reaching their end in 2005 with the release of their funeral album. i decided to write two posts on sentenced, beginning with their early work. if you prefer gothic metal and don’t like death metal, better wait for part ii which i will probably finish tomorrow.

the first song i want to present is from their first album, shadows of the past. descending curtain of death is a midtempo melodic death metal piece.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

their second album is north from here, from which i want to present the song northern lights. another piece of melodic death metal, including very beautiful and slow parts as well as aggressive, fast parts. something i still have to do is to travel to northern finland during winter, sit down into the snow during night, watch northern lights dancing at the sky, and listen to this song.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the third song is from their album amok, the last full album with their singer taneli jarva, who left the band and later founded the black league. the song nepenthe, a melodic balad, also resulted in a music video, in fact the first one by sentenced. here it is:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

after the release of amok, sentenced produced an ep called love & death, the last result featuring taneli. from this ep i want to present the song love and death, one of my favourite sentenced songs. fast paced, it is a beautiful, yet sad song about two main themes of sentenced, namely suicide and love. “love and death… go hand in hand once more.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s an interesting death metal piece which was only released in 2008, though it was recorded already in 1994, but not taken onto amok.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

today i want to write about the 3rd and the mortal. well, at least about their beginning, since i don’t really know their work after kari rueslåtten left. their early music is rather doomy, while mostly very calm, and with folk influences. well. i guess i won’t write that much, as their music expresses more than 10.000 words. all the following songs are from their first album, tears laid in earth, and one from its preceeding ep, sorrow. these are their only two releases kari was involved in.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s an unofficial, but nice video:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the album tears laid on earth is one of the very few which i deliberately bought a second time without a specific reason, to keep it until i can give it to someone worth it. that moment came one a half years ago.

a metal band i learned about a long time ago is nightwish. until their recent lineup change, one of their characteristics was their singer tarja turunen, who contributed her opera voice to the symphonic power metal composed by tuomas holopainen. let me start with elvenpath, the powerful opener of their first album, angels fall first:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the next song i want to present is lappi, also from their first album. on the album, it is split up into four pieces, but this video contains all of them. lappi, naming the finnish part of lapland, is a beautiful, calm audio journey through the vast lapland. the lyrics can be read here.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the third song is from their second album oceanborn. it’s a fast, instrumental folk song, perfect for dancing to it. i really love it.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, the last piece is from their last album with tarja, once. its a nice mix of orchestra and symphonic power metal. it is, as the name indicates, a love song.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

these songs are not exactly typical for nightwish, except the frist ones for their first two albums maybe. doesn’t mean the others are bad, but you can also listen to them on the radio, so i’d rather present some more (in my opinion) interesting pieces.