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posts about symphonic metal.

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:

[[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 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:

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

[[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 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…

[[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 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.

[[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 album beyond the veil, called heretique. a beautiful, complex and highly melodic mixture. never boring, always carrying the listener along.

[[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 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.

[[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 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.

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

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.

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:

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

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:

[[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 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:

[[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 song from their newest album, 7th symphony:

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