Epica: The Phantom Agony

The first of the symphonic metal bands I discovered was Epica, which was founded by Mark Jansen, who has previously been in one the first symphonic metal bands, After Forever. As it happened, he was dating Simone Simons at the time, who could sing, so he invited her to front the band. And damn can she sing! (Check out her performance, with Floor Jansen, of "Stabat Mater" on Retrospect.)

I'm working my way through their catalog. Having started my own listening with some more recent stuff, I've gone back to the beginning.

The first album, released in 2002, was The Phantom Agony. It opens with a statement of intent, the choral piece "Adyta", sliding smoothly into a pretty typical sort of Epica piece in "Sensorium". But things really get going with the third song, "Cry For the Moon", which seems to remain a favorite with a lot of Epicans (as fans are known). It's very much symphonic metal, with symphonic elements but a driving metal beat, Simons's gorgeous vocals backed by a choir (though her voice may be overdubbed as part of that, too). 

That song is a continuation of a song cycle, "The Embrace That Smothers" that Jansen had begun with After Forever. Wikipedia describes it as being about 'the dangers of organized religion', which would be putting it kindly. Two more parts appear hear, the rest being on The Divine Conspiracy. I mean at some point to listen to all nine parts of it together.

Much of the rest of the album has a similar theme. Indeed, the whole thing feels like a concept album, organized around a person's search for meaning and struggle with religion.

It's not a mature effort. Jansen and Simons and the others are clearly still learning to harness their compositional talents. But the highlights here are fantastic, such as title track, especially.

Symphonic Metal

A couple months ago, I saw John Petrucci, from Dream Theater, touring in support of his solo album Terminal Velocity. It was a great show. Opening was Meanstreak, whom I'd not heard of before. As it turns out, they were one of the first all-woman metal bands, though they've been inactive for many years. (And, as it also happens, three of the women in the band would eventually marry members of Dream Theater.)

After the show, I did a lot of reading about women in metal, my curiosity piqued. I'm not, generally speaking, a big metal-head, but I have enjoyed some music of that kind. I really like Mastodon's albums Blood Mountain and, especially, Crack the Skye, and of course King Crimson, one of my all-time favorite bands, inspired a lot of metal, especially on the more progressive end.

Eventually, I stumbled upon 'symphonic' metal: These bands are often fronted by women. If you haven't heard this stuff, it may sound almost impossible. And it's easy to imagine how mixing metal with symphonic elements could go horribly wrong (as, indeed, it sometimes does). But the best bands in this tradition are just amazing, and I've been blown away by Epica and Nightwish, especially, and frantically started collecting their albums on vinyl. As it happened, Epica was playing up in Boston (opening for Sabaton) just a couple weeks after I saw Petrucci, so my partner and I were able to see them.

There are a lot of other bands in this tradition, and I'm going to use the blog to record some thoughts about some of them.