Band of the Week thread.

This is a thread in which you can talk about a new or recently discovered band and share it with your fellow forumers, regardless of what kind of music it is. This isn't like the Music Appreciation thread, it's not for album reviews, just discuss what band has recently caught your attention, how you first heard of them, submitting a new one every week or something, and fellow forumers can post their thoughts on the band/artist and reccomend similar artists, share experiences with the band/artist, link to (perfectly legal) mp3's/videos/song samples of the band's work, etc.

Seriously, this forum is totally dead. We need more participation here, don't let this thread die.

Immolation
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/194_photo.jpg

I've recently gotten into a band from New York called Immolation. As you might've guessed, Immolation are a death metal band. But not just in the instrumental aspects, their approach to writing music is just what real (oldschool)DM stands for: complete liberty over musical composition. Death metal usually doesn't follow a lot of traditional music rules. I've known of them for quite some time, but haven't really listened to a lot of their stuff until now.

Immolation have been around since the late 80's, like most of today's well-recognized death metal bands like Deicide, Vader, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel. The awesome thing is that none of these bands sound alike and yet they still receive the death metal label.

I've only listened to the new Immolation material, songs from their new album "Harnessing Ruin". What caught my attention was their (only) video for the title track, the muddy muffled and mysterious tone of their guitars, unusually understandable lyrics, and this eerie intruiging feel to their music. Their music almost feels like if you were thrust into a world in ruins after some big-ass nuclear war, a very decadent atmosphere. But it's not blistering fast and heavy war-like music like Vader play, their stuff has some fast parts and slow spooky parts to their songs. It almost has an alternative rock feel to it at times, though it's still %100 metal.


The drummer plays in a very weird fashion, it almost sounds like he's in a different time signature but it goes with the guitars and singing very well. In the rythmic department, they keep it pretty traditional, so maybe even non-deathmetal nuts won't be turned off by it.

Compared to all of the other bands that I listen to, they aren't anything really heavy, but I think they're still great. They might sound really heavy to the average listener, but they have plenty of subtle melodies making it more pleasing to the ear. Not happy melodies, though...

I highly reccomend the song "Harnessing Ruin". I'm sure they have some sampler at their site, perhaps the video. If not, I suggest you find that song elsewhere, as it's great for a first taste of the band. The video will probably make it more interesting too. Anyone else like Immolation?

Can't say I'm an Immolation fan, but this is indeed a great thread, Soeru. I think I can do these long reviews once a week. :P



Mithril

http://www.mithril.hu/hun/pics/members.jpg

Mithril are a young fresh 6-piece band from Hungary. They play what you could call gothic metal, cracked with female vocals, keyboards and all, but their sound is closer to traditional metal more than anything, and they even reach progressive at times, despite what their genre says. Mithril rely heavily on melody and Nori's vocals, which are okay save for the annoying accent. It's obvious she's struggling to get the pronunciation right, and she fails miserably at that. But truth be told, she has an impressive range. She sounds different on every song on the demo. They also have male backing vocals on a number of songs. His voice is pretty limited, but that doesn't matter, since his role is too.

Mithril know their shit. "Illusion", the opener to the first and only demo had a totally unexpected shift in tempo and playing style. Melody, which is a driving base for every song on the demo is handled wonderfully. "Illusion" has the guitars driving it, "Together" has the keyboards in piano mode driving it and "Highlander" has Nori's angelic voice taking the front. See, every instrument in the band takes turns creating the melody. Their guitarist's solos are worthy of note as well. Just listen to Highlnader's and War of Senses' solo.

I stumbled upon Mithril absolutely by chance. I came across their keyboardist on GamingForce Forums (a VGM forum originally, of all places), and we got to talking about metal and shit, and then he introduced to his band. He's a nice fellow, and excellent musician at that. I heard his piano arrangements outside of Mithril and they're just as good, slightly better even. You can obtain their full demo legally at their official website, if you're interested. All the songs are great, but Illusion, Highlander and War of Senses stand above the rest.

http://www.mithril.hu/hun/mp3.php