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.

today i want to cover parts of the gathering‘s musical history, stretching from their breakthrough album mandylion to the release if_then_else. i used the title “a noise severe” since this is also the name of one of their live dvds, featuring their heavier side.
the first song of the gathering which caught my attention was leaves, which i already presented on spielwiese. it appeared on the mandylion album, which was the first the gathering release with their new singer anneke van giersbergen. leaves is my favourite song from that album (even from all their albums). the album contains many great songs, so it was not easy to decide for another one. in the end, i choose two. the first is sand & mercury, a more heavy tune:

the second is mandylion, an instrumental tune:

their next release was nighttime birds, of which the title track on most surfaces is my favourite piece. its style is similar to the heavier side of the mandylion album.

the next album was very different to the albums released before. very experimental, very progressive, much less metal. it came on two cds, the title track how to measure a planet? filling up 28 minutes of the second cd. a more catchy tune from that album is liberty bell, which comes with a music video:

the last two songs i want to present are from the if_then_else album, released 2000. the first is beautiful war, a nice instrumental track featuring trumpets instead of the usual keyboard.

the last song is saturnine, about someone being left alone. this song made me buy the album; in fact, it was the second i knew after mandylion.

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).