Thanks to Pandora: Intro II
Rubbing The Magic Lamp
Rubbing The Magic Lamp
The Early Bookmarks
I had bite marks. It was the Symphonic Metal Bug biting me in my ass. I felt like I had walked into a fantasy world in which all the things that I hated and sucked about the music I had drowning in had been magically turned into all things that are awesome and good. So yes I had rubbed the fabled genie lamp and all my wishes were bestowed upon me. Instead of the huge process I was going through (discussion boards, lists on Last.fm, youtube or myspace (yes a myspace reference in 2011)) and then hoping- just hoping the songs were pleasant enough to my ears to want to add them to my bookmarks. Instead of all that- I just click on my Pandora Player. It digs through the genres for me. Rub the Lamp. Click Thumbs-up. Listen the song for 2 years and decide it's so good I need to write about it in this blog. The best thing in this chronicle, is the time-line. Since I eliminate the abandoned links, the just-ok moments get weeded out and the result is a time-line that just continues to get better and better. Hoping that you follow with me this discovery, allows me to reflect back on each song in its moment of relativity to my whole search thus far.
In my time-line I am currently just about 1 year and half behind. In 2010 I began to thumbs-up songs in my first official "station" on Pandora. The tracks I thumbed up are dated automatically in my list which makes it a precise time-line. Some of this does overlap with my blog Season 1 so some of what I had found on Pandora did influence me to find more on my own. Now that I am writing this blog, I must recognize what my pandora player means to me and this search.
What is really great about Pandora is its one-click seamless usability and overall on-target user profiling. But there are minuses. It is by no means a complete collection. The majority of artists with long careers are usually only represented by a portion of their content. The genre-specifics at times are way off. Which really tends to piss off people like myself who are really looking for genre-driven content. So its a little irritating when you see bands that you know well be linked to bands that have nothing to do with them. Some of these labels and associations have been cleaned up but its obviously not Pandora players main concern and use the terms 'other bands like ___" very loosely.
Having said that, My station of EpicAfterHIM (see link on side panel) was bringing me fantastic, wild, bombastic, some generic and some off-the wall recommends. My player though was in cruise control. The Lamp was rubbed, the Genie was blowing smoke of awesomeness and making my wishes come true. I just had to not forget to Thumbs-up this stuff as it came along.
This next set are more songs from (now familiar) bands to my bookmarks. Not the A-typical selections neither, which proved to me my plan was working. Pandora was let out of her box, a little chaos ensues and after all the smoke and fire... just burnt timbers of awesome left behind.
Epica - Force of the Shore (NL, 2005 Symphonic Metal)
From their second release, Consign to Oblivion, this song is such a perfect primer to the genre, that someone who is not familiar with Symphonic Metal would get a good idea rather quickly what its all about. The opening, for example, does a good job of making this song stand out. Even today, years later when this song does come up on my play-lists, it catches me instantly. Yes the choirs, yes the strings, and the divine near-perfect vocals of Simone Simons, all in place, But most just hear this blissful union, along with the death-metal growls (when paired together, is called Beauty&Beast vocals)- but Epica is deeper than just that (see previous posting: Epic Songs from Epica)
This song, as are most from their catalogs, is drawn in a world of parallel, in symbolism, in perspective. That world allows you, the listener to take from it what you wish. In this case, its the Force of the Shore. I hear awesomeness. The story, the narrative, is just a bonus.
Apocalyptica- Fisheye (Finland, 2005 Symphonic Metal)
An absolute stand out. 1000% recommended. It's a full listen. It's a complete experience. The Finnish quartet playing only cellos in an original composition along with a drummer, some slick production and songwriting that which can only be described as imaginative and uncommon. No lyrics here. No hot Dutch Female vocalist to steal the scene. Only long-haired prodigal virtuosic Finnish rockstars thrashing- destroying it on their cellos. As if it's done that way- everywhere. No, No it's NOT. This is NOT the real world. In the real world I have to deal with people considering Katy Perry and Lady Gaga as pioneers. This is my fairy-world I reside within, when I breathe the smoke from the awesome Genie. When my Pandora player throws something at me that simply defies that which is expected.
Right from the beginning, this song cranks right in, the intro feeds the first melody, which crescendos into a near death-metal heavy thrashing as drifting melodies are carrying upward. The song quietly breaks for another reprise of this melody; almost like a bassline section would do. But it's the breakdown that knocks this into a scoring position. Another crescendo and a unifying feel of tension as the drums do fountain-fall rolls after roll... you know already this wont end nicely. The last few breaths of this song makes the home-run a grand slam. Thank God for those longhair Finnish guys.
Octavia Sperati- Icebound (NL, 2005 Gothic Metal, Doom)
OS; I have featured them here so often I need to refer to them as abbreviations. I'll never forget the first time I heard OS. It was a song called Moonlit. (see previous posting: The First Batch) It was one of those moments that opened my eyes to this fairy-world of where everything is awesome. It took me one passage of the groove, in the first 40 seconds I knew I was onto something good. So when my Pandora player played a song from OS- I practically went into shock. There wasn't a whole lot of songs on youtube from them, most of the links I found were gone and this song completely eluded me once I thumbs-up it. Only recently the link I share here, found it's way to me, one day looking for other songs from OS and boom I said yea I remember this one. Sure enough, it was on my thumbs-up list (along with others I will share here for sure, there's so much I love from them)
This one comes from the 1st full-length CD Winter Enclosure. Doomy, dark and very Sabbath but very melodic along with the drudgery, multi-layers of Silje's beautiful vocals, almost whispery as her accents flow against the grain and the song simply bursts into a solid heavy stream of bombardment. It's a fairy-world, yes. But not always a perfectly beautiful one. It has dark corners. Disturbingly enough though, is how the song ends. No warning, almost as it began.
A feeling of "what happened?" comes over and it's perfectly done. The answer of what happened is my pandora player scores again. It didn't just bring up the most common song from OS, nor from Apocolyptica, nor even the heavyweights of Epica, it selected these songs as if to say, "Wait to you hear this one!" It's as if it knew already that I would thumbs-up these. The Genie was working, all I had to do was click play.
Side note: All 3 from 2005.
Next Update: After Forever, Therion, and The Gathering, Pandora brings out the big guns.
