Epica - The holographic principle

After the nuisance that their previous album turned out to be, I was determined to stay away from this band. However, I made the mistake or reading and most of all trusting the reviews and gave it a try. I lost an hour of my life, I gained some laughs... I suppose it’s a decent trade in the end. I won’t be repeating the experience any time soon, though, as it seems that Epica fans have a short memory and keep saying that the current album is the best of their career, where they show maturity and creativity and some other stuff they’ve never actually shown, on this album or anywhere else. I expect the next one will also be praised as the peak of their career, just like this one and the previous and the one before that, and it will still be the same pretentious crap that they always put out. Heh...

Sirenia - Dim days of dolor

After Morten discovered (or better said rediscovered) his talent on the previous album and I noticed that since they have a good songwriter now, all they need is a good singer, it seems like decided to fully upgrade themselves and replaced Ailyn with someone who actually knows how to sing. The result? An honourable album that makes me glad I didn’t give up on this band.

Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

I’m not generally a fan of melodic death metal, nor of genres that rely almost exclusively on harsh vocals, so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t come off as the most knowledgeable person in this matter. However, Dark Tranquillity is one of the few bands of this genre that managed to get me hooked, as it doesn’t display any of the traits that usually put me off it. It’s a special brand of melo-death, a more mellow and atmospheric one, with less aggressiveness and more melody and emotion.

Sonata Arctica - The ninth hour

Sonata Arctica is a band I have a rather complicated relationship with. I love a lot of power metal bands, but all of them are the ones that somehow break the boundaries of this genre and also use symphonic or progressive elements. At the opposite poles are the artists that rely on the same tractored riff, ridiculously long and artificial guitar solos and have this rather dumb (or shallow, to put it more mildly) musical positivity on top of lyrics that usually refer to dramatic themes. Sonata Arctica is both of those bands, depending on how the Sun shines on Jupiter or something, because one moment it can bore me to tears and the next it's so nice and lovely. And then it has Tony...

Doom over Bucharest II, Club Quantic, 26.11.16

After not catching on quick enough that the first doom-themed festival in Bucharest will be sold out weeks before the show, this time we decided to buy tickets so far back that we weren’t even sure who was playing. We saw A dream of Poe there and it was enough.