Aki's Blog

I was born in 1992, and if I could choose I wouldn’t change it for a second. Sure, I was only four when Therion released Theli, considered one of the earliest symphonic metal albums, and I was only six when Nightwish released Oceanborn in 1998, but I have lived to witness the release of many great albums since the mid-2000’s.

This is what I concider the golden age of symphonic metal. Right here, right now. It is a genre that develop well on its own as well as into other genres – Leaves’ Eyes blend it perfectly with folk music (Njord of 2009 for example) and Sonata Arctica earlier this fall released The Days of Grays which was the first album that really showed a mixture of power, prog and symphonic metal without one taking the overly control.

A certain cliff in the history of symphonic metal was released only a month ago… Epica’s Design Your Universe is the album I will speak of today.

This phenomenal, epic, melodic, bombastic album kicks of with their best instrumental yet, the intro song Samadhi ~ Prelude ~, before entering Resign to Surrender ~ A New Age Dawns – part IV ~. DYU is the first album to continue the A New Age Dawns saga, first started on the 2005 album Consign to Oblivion. The first three parts told of the collapse of the Mayan civilization, and this 2009 release show the next three parts. To me, Resign to Surrender sounds like an amazing intro song, the perfect way to reawaken the saga in. It builds up perfectly, before finishing and leaving the scene for the next song (and the first video for the album), Unleashed. Unleashed is far from the best song of the album, but I understand they used it as a video. It is a real catchy song, and Simone sounds amazing in it. I can’t see why it’s their most popular on Last.fm, but still a great track.

The fourth song on the album is Martyr of the Free Word, and here I must speak my mind. Why, oh why, couldn’t this be the third song? I would much prefer it to be ahead of Unleashed, simply because Unleashed is a bit too grande and bombastic, whilst Martyr is more of a metal song. Resign to Surrender followed by Unleashed just doesn’t sound as good as followed by Martyr of the Free Word. This aside, it’s a really cool track, one of the more special on the album, with influences from oriental music in the vocal lines. Mark Jansen’s grunts right after the chorus really is an amazing part that does the song.

The next song is another more bombastic one – Our Destiny. I’m sad to say this is one of the weaker songs on the album, if I have to choose one. It is a great song, but compared to the rest of the album it’s kind of dull. The thing is that it’s too long… it’s only 6 minutes, not much to Epica standards, but I feel it’s a little too much. If it were to be cut down into at least 4:40, 5, it would be much higher in my ratings.

Kingdom of Heaven ~ A New Age Dawns – part V ~ is the fifth chapter of the A New Age Dawns saga, and the longest song on the album at 13:35. It is an awesome track, especially the first eight minutes, but it’s still a disappointment to me. Maybe I had too high hopes – before I heard it I saw an interview with Mark Jansen explaining how he had worked on the song for three years, and how he considered it their best by far. To me it’s pretty low on the list of top tracks on DYU, after the title track, Martyr of the Free Word, Burn to a Cinder, and Resign to Surrender. As with Our Destiny, maybe this song would be much better if it were to be cut down, maybe with as much as three or four minutes. Another remark is the spoken parts in the second half of the song… I don’t mind cheese, in fact I order a triple cheese sandwich listening to Stratovarius and Rhapsody of Fire, but these spoken parts really shift the song from epic to humorous, not a completely reparable damage I’m afraid.

After an epic song like Kingdom of Heaven, it’s often tough to hear another song right away. Many bands solve this problem with either putting an easier rock song right after (Nightwish’s The Poet and the Pendulum was followed by Bye Bye Beautiful), or the epic song is the final track on the album. The dilemma here is how there are two epic songs, Kingdom of Heaven as well as the title track, which is put as the final song (a perfect choice, more of that later). So the choice was to have an interlude as the seventh track, entitled The Price of Freedom ~ Interlude ~, a clip of people speaking of the price of freedom being death and orchestral music in the background resembling of many horror pictures from the 1920’s.

The interlude leads elegantly into Burn to a Cinder, one of my favorites on the album. It is one of the more melodic songs, going back to the power metal territories of Consign to Oblivion and The Phantom Agony. The song ends with an epic moment leading into deep sorrow (“Why can’t I bleed with you?”) followed by the album’s first ballad, the moving Tides of Time.

To me, both Deconstruct and Semblance of Liberty are pretty standard symph metal songs – no big surprises, catchy choruses, nothing really special except for the speaking part in Semblance of Liberty (“Read… my… lips”).

The second ballad of the album is also the weakest song Epica has ever made. I was glad when they announced that Tony Kakko of Sonata Arctica would guest feature on the song White Waters, but this doesn’t feel like Tony at all. All Tony touches turns to gold, but this is as far from gold as you could get. White Waters is not beautiful, it is boring and weird, and the only thing that saves it is that Semblance of Liberty leading into the final track of the album would be very weird. And the final track is gold.

Design Your Universe ~ A New Age Dawns – part VI ~ is the best song Epica has ever written, and that’s final. It is just perfect, from it’s epic chorus (“We can’t undo what we have done, so show us now what we’ve become”) to its final, heartbreaking, whispering verse that always makes me weep.

This is Epica’s best release to date, and I’m really excited if they will ever top it, because let’s face it…. this is the latest chapter in the history of awesome music.

(this review is completely ignorant to the bonus symphonic CD or the bonus tracks. It’s just the 12 original tracks)

To me, Sonata Arctica has always been the power metal band. They were, together with Nightwish and Within Temptation, what brought me into both heavy metal music and classical music in circa 2005 – 2006. Since then, I have heard literary hundreds, if not thousands, of bands. Among these are Stratovarius and Helloween, two of the first power metal bands in the 1980’s and onwards. When I first heard Stratovarius, I though “oh – so that’s where it comes from”. And yes, it is obvious – Sonata’s 1999 debut Ecliptica was more or less a tribute to Stratovarius. There is basically no orginiality, although there are some really good tracks (including “FullMoon”, “Letter to Dana” and “Kingdom For a Heart”).

Both Silence (2001) and Winterheart’s Guild (2003) were MUCH more original, with several truly unique songs. The band, though, started to get bored with this style that more or less was a big tribute to the 1980’s power metal band. All this resulted in the more progressive Reckoning Night of 2004, an album that I’ve never really been that fond to. There is a lot of “purer” heavy metal – “Misplaced”, “Ain’t Your Fairytale”, “Wildfire” – and a lot of freakish let’s-have-fun-and-play-our-asses-of in “The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet”. This latter new angle was also a great part of their next album, 2007’s Unia. Unia was their first album to take a completely different direction, away from the general power metal and into a field of… can I call it progressive metal? I don’t think I can. It is a type of melodic metal, with influences from classical music, power metal, thrash metal, progressive metal, classical rock, psychedelic rock… It was something I had never heard before. At first I didn’t really like Unia, but I listened it through a few times… and it’s incredible.

The Days of Grays was the successor of Unia, and I was really worried. What could this lead to? Would it be another great turn, maybe into thrash or doom? Would it follow Unia closely – maybe too closely? Or would it be a turn back into the power metal field? It turned out I was wrong altogether.

The album kicks off with an instrumental intro – something I am a big fan of as long as it is good and not just something thrown in. And that’s absolutely not Everything Fades to Gray (Instrumental), which leads perfectly into the album’s epic, the wonderful Deathaura. This eight-minute track is a bit disappointed to me, actually, since Sonata usually has so great epics (“The Power of One”, “The End of This Chapter”, “Caleb”, “White Pearl, Black Oceans”), but I suppose I’m just constantly annoyed by the same thing; it is too fast. I would not mind at all if it was mixed into being played for a total of 15 och 20 minutes… Because as it is it’s just too fast, too much reminding of Wildfire. It’s okay for a minute at the time, but going fast as hell in eight minutes?

The second track is also the first single – The Last Amazing Grays – and is a beautiful semi-ballad about dying proud and with dignity. I actually cried the first time I heard it (when the single was leaked), although it’s now quite overplayed (I think it’s about 80 plays according to Last.fm, the single edit included).

Flag in the Ground is the third track and the second single. If you prefer the old school Sonata, this is the song you’ll like on Days of Grays. The song is a remake of the unreleased song “BlackOut” from the band’s early demos. It’s a really catchy tune with an epic bridge and finale - “I put the flag in the ground / Screaming and shouting, I’ve never been so proud, love / I make my way into the great unknown / Land by the river and a newbuilt home / Every night when I’m looking at the fullmoon rising / I hold you and know that we are free.”

My favorite songs on the album are probably “Juliet” and “The Truth is Out There“. Juliet is both a big allusion to the famous Shakespeare play / the Italian legend of Romeo and Juliet, as well as the fourth and (I think) last episode in the Caleb tale (“Don’t Say a Word”; “The End of This Chapter”; “Caleb”). And it’s wonderful! It’s so beautiful, so sad, so epic! “These are my final lines, I used all my nine lives / My soul reason to die; there’s no life without you”. And The Truth is Out There… what can I say? So incredibly original and… well… strange but great at the same time. I really love it’s atmosphere, and it’s lyrics linked constantly with the great TV series The X Files.

What I missed on Unia was the ballads. On the earlier albums, there were lots of wonderful guitar-based ballads such as Letter to Dana and Shamandalie, but this sort of dropped out with Unia. With Days of Grays, it’s a bit different; there ARE two ballads, if not quite different to the original type. Breathing is actually one of my new favorite songs with Sonata. It is very melancholic and epic, and reminds me of Draw Me. As if the World Wasn’t Ending is different, it is a bit more… well… I don’t know. It is not a bad song, but it’s not excellent either. It is somewhere in the middle, just your standard ballad.

What can I say about The Days of Grays as a conclusion? It is great! Go buy it! At this point, it is honestly my favorite Sonata Arctica album, very original, melodic, sad, epic… It is just wonderful. Try it out, but be careful not to judge it too early; I didn’t like it at all until the third or fourth listen.

Today, Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish released their third single from their Dark Passion Play album, “Bye Bye Beautiful” (preceded by “Eva” in May 2007 and “Amaranth” in August). This is clearly the best single of the album, and one of the best songs, together with for example “The Poet and the Pendulum”, “Sahara” and “7 Days to the Wolves”.

The standard version of the singel features this tracklisting:
1. Bye Bye Beautiful
2. The Poet And The Pendulum (demo version)
3. Escapist
4. Bye Bye Beautiful (DJ Orkidea remix)

Except “Bye Bye Beautiful”, this features “Escapist”, a bonus track for Dark Passion Play’s Japanese version, as well as two unreleased versions of two songs; a remix of “Bye Bye Beautiful” and a demo version of “The Poet and the Pendulum” where Marco Hietala performs all the vocals, with changed lyrics at some points. Frankly, DJ Orkidea’s remix sucks big time. But also, I’ve never really liked techno music. The demo version is ofcourse a demo version, and ofcourse it’s silly to believe Marco can sing the parts of a boy soprano. White Lands of Sympathica, which is a sad part, really makes me laugh on the demo version. I like the lyrics in “The Pacific” part of TPTP though, that got banned from being published. :)

For My Pain… is a Finnish gothic metal band which I got to hear of mainly because their keyboardist is Nightwish’s lead member Tuomas Holopainen. They released their debut album, the masterpiece “Fallen”, in 2003, and they released a following single with three new songs, called “Killing Romance”, in 2004, but since then, they haven’t released anything. A shame, that’s what it is.

The album opener is “My Wound is Deeper Than Yours”, and according to me the song doesn’t quite work as an opener. It’s too boring. You simply can’t make someone understand the potential of Fallen by a song like this one. Sorry, but frankly… fail.

Something I like loads about For My Pain… is that they combine so many different music genres and styles. They can play sad, depressive songs, hard, heavy songs, and happy songs. An example of the latter is the second track, “Dancer in the Dark”. It’s a soooo good feel-good song. Wohoo!

“Queen Misery” is one of the greatest highlights of the album. It’s like good FMP songs are, it’s sad and happy at the same time, depending on how you see it, what you listen for. That’s cool. And you just HAVE to love that chorus.

“Sea of Emotions” is not very high up on my plays, yet it is a good song. I think, though, that it’s too predictable. I like the whispering before the chorus, and the keyboard in the chorus. It’s a very experimental song, I’d say.

The fifth track, entitled “Rapture of Lust” has a really cool guitar intro and chorus (it’s about the same notes on vocals instead). I also like the vocals on this song, very experimental (like all their music, heh). This is another song that can be both sad and happy. Me like. The guitar solo at about three minutes is… really cool.

“Broken Days” is probably my favorite of the album, and every time I listen to it I really recognize my life story among the lyrics… Sad, isn’t it?

According to me, “Dear Carniwhore” is the worse song of the album, way worse than the other songs. I guess every album needs a really heavy song though, and that’s good. It makes me think of some Metallica song, can’t recall which one. Maybe the end of the chorus of Enter Sandman?

“Bed of Dead Leaves”… there’s nothing wrong about the song… it has never succeeded to get through to me though. I can’t understand why. I guess I would count it as neutral. A five if I had to grade it 1-10. I can at least say I like the drums on this track, they’re cool, especially at around 3:30 where it’s a short drum solo.

Okay, I’m going to be honest now. I downloaded the next song (“Autumn Harmony”) at first an hour ago, so I really don’t want to review it yet. Okay? Sorry. :/

At first, “Tomorrow is a Closed Gate (Dead For So Long)” was my favorite track off the album, but now I don’t know. Maybe I played it too much. I’ve started to get annoyed with it. The chorus is good, though, and the lyrics reminds me of Kamelot’s “Don’t You Cry”. It’s a good finale.

That’s all, folks. Thanks for the time.

On June 5, 2007, American power metal band Kamelot released their eight studio album entitled “Ghost Opera”. I downloaded (I am ashamed, please forgive me) the album the same summer.

Since I first heard Kamelot (with first loves like “The Haunting (Somewhere in Time)” and “The Black Halo”) in the summer of 2006, I’ve loved the band. There is something special with their ability to combine some of my favorite genres in metal: symphonic, progressive, power and (on later albums) gothic. My love for the band is nothing that changes with this album, not at all. As a first comment on it… I love the title and art work… I will buy it as soon as I get some money, I promise. However, I more want to buy their “One Cold Winter’s Night” DVD. It seems cool.

Over to the review.

The album kicks off with a one minute instrumental entitled “Solitaire”, that really feels like a waste of time, or an excuse to have eleven tracks on the album, cause it sounds much better than eleven…. A solo violin playing the most boring notes, where’s the KAMELOT? Just skip the track… I do.

“Rule the World”, the second track, is one of those songs that has nothing special that sticks out, but that it’s nothing wrong with. I like the raise of Roy Khan’s voice in the chorus, and it’s quite speedy. It doesn’t really touch me otherwise, but it’s really an okay song.

The main track has an eponymous title with the album. “Ghost Opera” is a speedy, interesting breaking-border song. And GOD that video’s fabulous! It’s quite boring in a way, though… I can refer to Sonata Arctica’s song “Wolf & Raven”; the song seems to have a great potential but everything fades when it sounds the same without grande changes. It’s not catchy enough.

“The Human Stain” is the fourth track of the album. It is a cynic’s view of the world: everything bad, human kind’s selfishness (“No one really wants to die to save the world”), and the wish to be an innocent child again. It is a good, cool and catchy song, that is sad and interesting with gothic metal-similarities such as the keyboard playing throughout the song.

“Blücher” is based on the sinking of the the German cruiser of the same name in World War II. It’s a bit like “Rule the World” but better; it’s quite neutral, nothing good nor bad about it… It’s cool with the intro as well as some parts of the background that’s just filled with sounds of the war; screaming, shooting etcetera.

And here comes what I would presume is my favorite track of the album. “Love You to Death” is a beautiful story about a couple where the girl is dying, and this is his speech to her about how he will stay by her forever, love her to death… It’s the longest song off the album (5:13) and for that I’m glad. It has a cool intro and a catchy chorus… Me like.

“Up Through the Ashes” is what I would call one of the heaviest song of the album. It’s quite angry. I like it.

“Mourning Star” is quite neutral. I’ve got nothing against it, despite it’s not one of my favorite. Guess I miss some kind of turn that never shows up.

Vocalist Roy Khan tries lots of new vocal methods in the song “Silence of the Darkness”. It also holds a great guitar solo that has a cool, outstanding sound. I guess I’ll try it as soon as I have the powers. This is one of the songs that seems really cool live (I might go to their Stockholm concert in May, 2008, wih).

Kamelot is really good on slow, sad songs, and they usually have at least one per album. On Ghost Opera, “Anthem” is the one. It is a sad piano song with a fascinating chorus and beautiful yet sad lyrics. I keep listening for the introduction of sudden drums in the end, by “I’ll be the best I can”. That would sound great… WHY NOT?

The final song of the album is “EdenEcho” which is another song that would be lovely live. It doesn’t really make it unto my mind, so I cannot count it as one of my favorites. Yet it has a cool chorus.

Tracklisting:

1. “Solitaire” – 1:00
2. “Rule the World” – 3:40
3. “Ghost Opera” – 4:06
4. “The Human Stain” – 4:01
5. “Blücher” – 4:03
6. “Love You to Death” – 5:13
7. “Up Through the Ashes” – 4:59
8. “Mourning Star” – 4:37
9. “Silence of the Darkness” – 3:43
10. “Anthem” – 4:24
11. “EdenEcho” – 4:13

The album also features two bonus tracks (“The Pendulous Fall” and “Season’s End”), both which I haven’t heard.

On September 28th this year, Finnish symphonic power metal group Nightwish produced their sixth and latest studio album, featuring their brand new vocalist Anette Olzon, Dark Passion Play. An album which in my opinion is their greatest ever, even though some songs would have been much better with Tarja Turunen (Nightwish’s last vocalist from 1996 to 2005). Anette does her part really well, though, singing parts much better than Tarja ever would have. Though, one thing I miss on the songs is guitar. Ofcourse we have this fully acoustic song, The Islander, that features quite a lot guitar (all the time) but there are several songs that barely have any guitar at all, or at least real boring riffs, such as For the Heart I Once Had and Amaranth.

Okay, that’s enough talking. Over to the review.

1. The Poet and the Pendulum (13:53)

Clearly the best track on the album. Lovely lyrics throughout the song, truly lovely. “The Poet and the Pendulum” (the name derives from a classic Edgar Allan Poe novella, “The Pit and the Pendulum”) is the epic song that’s the centre of the whole album – for a long time the album was supposed to be called this instead of Dark Passion Play. The length ofcourse makes it stick out from the other songs, but exactly like even longer songs by Dream Theatre, it feels like rather about five minutes. It holds several chapters, just like another long Nightwish song, “Beauty of the Beast” from their Century Child album. In this case, the chapters are:

• White Lands of Empathica
• Home
• The Pacific
• Dark Passion Play
• Mother and Father

As noticed, one of the parts are called “Dark Passion Play”, another sign for this song being the center of the album. I love the entire song, but the last half – especially “Dark Passion Play” – is the best. “Mother and Father” is probably the saddest piece of music that Tuomas Holopainen – keyboardist and songwriter – has written for a long time. “White Lands of Empathica” and “Home” truly are boring, but God, that chorus is mind-blowing.

2. Bye Bye Beautiful (4:16)

This song is really simple, and so is the chorus. Perhaps that’s why it got to be the third (and at the moment next, after “Eva” on May 30 and “Amaranth” on August 22) single of the album. I like the lyrics, they’re really progressive, and I like some lines very much, such as “it’s not the tree that forsakes the flower, it’s the flower that forsakes the tree”. “Bye Bye Beautiful” is written about Tarja Turunen, the last vocalist, who was kicked out of the band in an open letter in October 2005.

3. Amaranth (3:59)

The second single, after “Eva”. Even though I like the intro and the verses, I hate the chorus. Sounds like anything but metal to me. Truly poor music video as well. I liked the song when it was released, though.

4. Cadence of Her Last Breath (4:17)

Beautiful music, beautiful lyrics, but really nothing special about it that catches me. Don’t know why. I like the heavy breathing throughout the song, though.

5. Master Passion Greed (6:04)

At first I hated it, but I like it more and more every time I listen to it. Like the choir voices singing “Master passion greed” in the chorus, as well as the fact that Holopainen didn’t let Anette sing it; it is one thing doing a personal offence through a song like this (the song is about Tarja Turunen’s husband, Marcelo, who according to Holopainen was the one who forced them to drop Tarja), but it is another one to make someone who’s not involved sing it. I don´t like the intro, it’s too much alike the intro to both “Whoever Brings the Night” and “The Kinslayer”. It is nice to hear Nightwish trying something heavier and more progressive once in a while, such as this song, “The Kinslayer” (from the Wishmaster album) and “Slaying the Dreamer” (from Century Child).

6. Eva (4:26)

The first single. I wrote a quite long review on this song when it was released, go there instead.

7. Sahara (5:49)

As Holopainen said himself, such a cliche with a heavy metal band making a song about ancient Egypt. The lyrics are real boring, but the music is really good, especially the intro (before 1:16 in length). The choir’s real good as well.

8. Whoever Brings the Night (4:19)

One of my favorite tracks on the album, together with “The Poet and the Pendulum” and “7 Days to the Wolves”. I didn’t like it at all (just like “Master Passion Greed”). Though, after my brother Tim told me that it was one of his favorites, I gave it another try. And I liked it. Just like “Master Passion Greed”, it is very agressive, and I love Anette’s style of singing. I like the lyrics as well, but I think it’s a bit short with to much chorus and too few verses.

9. For the Heart I Once Had (3:58)

This track used to be one of my favorites of the album, but now I think the music is too simple, too boring, with not enough change in the verses. I love the lyrics, and I love the power in the first chorus, but compared with several other songs, it’s quite poor. But God, I’m close to crying when I hear that intro.

10. The Islander (5:08)

Dark Passion Play truly is an album on which Nightwish varies a lot. It has their most epic and longest song so far (“The Poet and the Pendulum”), they have the most agressive song (“Master Passion Greed”), they have a brand new singer for the first time in ten years, and they have this. An acoustic ballad about an old lonely lighthouse keeper with their bass player on second guitar. It’s really beautiful, and at last Marco Hietala (bass and male vocalist) can show off his singing skills in other ways then screaming, as he rather did earlier. This was as well shown on “While Your Lips Are Still Red”, that’s featured on the “Amaranth” single. I love it.

11. Last of the Wilds (5:42)

Nightwish haven’t done an instrumental song since “Moondance” on their 1998 album Oceanborn, but here it is, “Last of the Wilds”. And I really like it. It reminds a lot of “Moondance” indeed, and is a very joyful melody that really cheers you up. It has real cool instruments as well, such as the banjo.

12. 7 Days to the Wolves (7:05)

This song is so awesome. Especially the last few minutes are probably the greatest minutes of the whole history of Nightwish (excepting “The Poet and the Pendulum”, heh). Great lyrics as well, and I like the way Anette and Marco shares the singing, and the whispers that are mixed in. It sounds real cool.

13. Meadows of Heaven (7:10)

Even though it’s not one of my favorites, “Meadows of Heaven” is great to finish the whole album (there is one more track, but it’s only a Japanese bonus track so it barely counts). It’s really beautiful, and got a perfect length to get you in a great mode. Good for relaxing. I hate the ending with the choir voices though. The last minute or so. HATE IT. Skip it from there every time I play it…

14. The Escapist (4:57)

As I heard someone else say, this is the song that’s most like the “old Nightwish”, i.e. how Nightwish sounded before Tarja quit. That’s probably why it wasn’t decided to be on the album, but only as a Japanese bonus track. I really wish it was on the album, since it’s great. I love especially the chorus, even though it sounds a bit like pop (just like “Amaranth”). I love the text as well, feels like it’s covering Nightwish’s whole discography. For example it begins with “Who’s there knocking at my window? The Owl and the Dead Boy“, the Owl referring to the owl on the cover of Oceanborn and the Dead Boy referring to a character mentioned in several songs, such as “Dead Boy’s Poem” (Wishmaster) and “For the Heart I Once Had” (Dark Passion Play). The song is about Holopainen’s wish to escape from the dull reality, and face the adventorous fantasy world, exactly as “Wanderlust” (from Wishmaster) is.

Just heard “The Escapist” by Finnish metal band Nightwish on YouTube. It will be included on their “Bye Bye Beautiful” single released later this year. It’s great!

• The Escapist at YouTube

Hellsongs is a Swedish lounge metal band, with Lounge being their debut EP.

I crashed into the band as I was going on a concert with a friend of mine (Eavie) in Stockholm on December 1, 2006. The band we were looking for were Navid Modiri & Gudarna, a quite unknown Swedish reggae group.

There were two bands playing before Navid started, a feministic singer only singing about how all men stinks, and HELLSONGS. The band didn’t seem that good until they started playing; Harriet Ohlsson, the lead singer doesn’t seem to be as good as she actually is. And they started. The idea of Hellsongs is playing classical heavy metal songs in another adaption; the songs are made calmer, resulting in the genre calm cover metal / lounge metal. And even though I wasn’t much of a heavy metal freak by that time (I’m not so sure anymore…), I recognized all the six songs, especially – ofcourse – their fan favorite, a cover of Iron Maiden’s song Run to the Hills. Ofcourse, this song is now as well my favorite with the band…

Hellsongs played six songs on the concert, the very same and in the very same order as they were listed in the EP (Lounge) that I bought signed right after the show. The track listing is Seek & Destroy, Paranoid, Breaking the Law, Run to the Hills, Jump and Orgasmatron. I’m truly waiting for their next release.