Stratovarius Community

Doesn't it bother you sometimes when you know bands or musicians that in your opinion do not get the exposure or credit they deserve? What about those musicians that you like not only because of their skills but also because of their personality (e.g. low profile, you relate to them, etc.).
This is the topic to tell the (stratoforum)world about those bands and musicians. Feel free to post names, links, and videos. I would advise against posting youtube videos directly because the page becomes painfully slow. It's better to just post the links to the videos.

Here's my preliminary list:

- Galneryus (Japan). I love Syu (the guitar player) and Yuhki (the keyboard player). They are very melodic virtuosos.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=19417

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FobMoVbdB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjnNOkjnLVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfBI_kmDlNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzAfatAMOQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIBIjXtQzs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HcB4RYQ_b8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuILAx-5BoE

- Ark Storm (Japan). Again, love the guitar player, Katsu Ohta. Yuhki plays keyboards in this band as well.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=15945

Some songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V2YQVjyaww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1TJ0iFoZA8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAEEytKTlU

- Amberian Dawn (Finland). Love Heidi Parviainen's voice. This band sounds like a continuation of what Nightwish could have been. Much better than the "new" Nightwish if you ask me.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=102093

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IrlUb2QSIo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40cLOS9Lr5k
Beautiful ballad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3324FgqvrQ

- Concerto Moon (Japan). Norifumi Shima (guitar) and Toshiyuki Koike (keyboards) are awesome.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=2039

Videos:
With former singer Takao Ozaki (better) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfpkOz9A6t8
With current singer Takashi Inoue (crappier) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WQHUIzQETs

- Delain (Holland). Love Charlotte Wessels' voice.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=10897

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_elY-8pZOA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn4ZUr-d05o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhN4T4uhIWE

- Edenbridge (Austria). Sabine Edelsbacher has a very sweet voice.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=1843
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOKUBS-uOtQ

- Forgotten Tales (Canada). Very melodic songs. Sonia Pineault has a powerful voice. I love how the bass does not always follow the guitar.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=1073
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQDloF-36o

- Wonderland (Italy). Well... I just like it.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=2835

After watching the video, I have a slight feeling that the singer is gay, but I may be wrong (not that it matters btw; I'm just mentioning it out of curiosity).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7zAMaduvxc

Other musicians: Göran Edman (he's always been kind of low profile and I think he deserves a permanent place in a top band), Michele Luppi, Richard Andersson, Mikko Härkin, Carlos Cantatore, Frank Andiver (from Wonderland), Mattia Stancioiu, Junichi Sato, etc.

You forgot one. Guitarist Timo Tolkki...

Stratowarius wrote: You forgot one. Guitarist Timo Tolkki...

He's not exactly underrated and he has had lots of exposure. The whole point of this topic is to talk about slightly lesser-known bands and/or musicians.
This is not the appropriate place to mention bands and people like Malmsteen, Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica, Blind Guardian, etc. That would defeat the purpose, since most people are somewhat familiar with them.

You don't say..


You underrated me.

Stratowarius wrote: You don't say..


You underrated me.

Yeah yeah, I got it. But just to be safe... It wouldn't surprise me to see people "introducing" Gamma Ray, Michael Kiske or Kamelot, for example.

Btw, I thought you could underestimate other people...

Galneryus really have some great melodies. My friend really likes them.

Personally I prefer a band I haven't even found on YouTube, likely because they don't do that many gigs. Oh, and there are a certain novel and a famous song of the same name, too, that'll make it more difficult to found from the internet as well.

Wuthering Heights.

The best band, by far, I have discovered in the last two years or so. By far. Their album Far from the Madding Crowd just blows your mind. It's flawless. It is one of the best albums I've ever heard. They are a Danish group that do some folk/prog/power metal and are extremely heavy and ballsy. Patrik Johansson (also Astral Doors and Lion's Share) is on the vocals, far more multidimensional and better than ever. And their guitarist and main force behind it, Erik Ravn, in my opinion is the best power metal composer of the 21st century so far. Also a very talented band as usual.

Since it's hard to find their videos on YouTube, I still recommend you to listen to the band anyway possible. It will instantly come to you that their music is just unbelievable. Listen to many new bands nowadays? Too many? That they're all the same, some are better and some worse, but none of them get to the league of your old favorites? Well, this band does. It's a fact. Like Ensiferum and Blind Guardian, worship WH. ^^

Stealth wrote:

Stratowarius wrote: You don't say..


You underrated me.

Yeah yeah, I got it. But just to be safe... It wouldn't surprise me to see people "introducing" Gamma Ray, Michael Kiske or Kamelot, for example.

Btw, I thought you could underestimate other people...

You are so right. Underestimate is a great hobby of mine. It gives me a lot of fun and some hate from the underestimated who often can be a bit agitated. I remember a guitar-player (no names this utmost of days)that asked me in a very angry tone to do mankind a service by flushing myself down the toilet. That was really fun.

PowerWolf

Beyond Twilight

This great Scandinavian progressive heavy metal band is in my opinion totally underrated. However, Section X is an awesome concept album made of pure madness. For the Love of Art and the Making is also an amazing album, complicated and still showing the madness and genius of the band's leader, Finn Zierler.

If you like prog heavy metal and are not afraid to dive into pure insanity, you surely will like this band.

eagledreamr wrote:Beyond Twilight

This great Scandinavian progressive heavy metal band is in my opinion totally underrated. However, Section X is an awesome concept album made of pure madness. For the Love of Art and the Making is also an amazing album, complicated and still showing the madness and genius of the band's leader, Finn Zierler.

If you like prog heavy metal and are not afraid to dive into pure insanity, you surely will like this band.

Don't forget about their first album with Jorn Lande The Devil's Hall of Famem. My Favourit of all 3.

There are some bands I know, I'd be glad to add on this list:

Wingdom, actually their first and only album was released by Kotipelto's label High 'n Loud in 2005. The band does not exist anymore, but there were musicians such as Harkin (Cain's Offering, ex-Sonata Arctica), Lotta (ex-Rhapsody) and so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CC_pexZkyw

Axenstar, maybe not the most original band of all times (in my case I don't care about this anyways), but their melodies and hooks are great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6g36TUGZBI

Zonata and Labirynth, in general they are not as good (according to my taste) as the ones I posted above but still they both released two great albums:
Return To Heaven Denied (Labirynth)
Reality (Zonata)

And the last one, the most unknown and underrated band ever, and one of my favourites.... ROYAL HUNT.
I didn't like their last albums, but since 1992 until 1998 they were great, in my opinion.
During that time they released 4 excellent albums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BRTAL9U ... re=related

Intiaani wrote:Wuthering Heights.

The best band, by far, I have discovered in the last two years or so. By far. Their album Far from the Madding Crowd just blows your mind.

Wuthering Heights is awesome. I have their four albums, and I agree, my favourite by far is Far from the Madding Crowd. The songs Longing for the Woods (all three parts), The Bollard, Land of Olden Glory, and The Road Goes Ever On are the best. I have to say though, I don't typically like rough voices like Patrik Johansson's. I prefer cleaner and more expressive vocals, but still, this band is great.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=2230

Here's the song "Longing for the Woods Part 1 - The Wild Children"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTmzhwAQv0o
"The Bollard" (folk ballad)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFBoXG1ark

@ Mehida: You are right, Axenstar is not the most original band, but they do their job well.
I have the three albums by Zonata (the band has split up) and I agree, Reality is the best one.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=1184
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQcGaEE1xWY

Labÿrinth is freaking awesome! They are one of those bands that fall in the middle; not a top band but far from being completely unknown. Fabio Lione sang on the first album, "No Limits". The best albums in my opinion are "Return to Heaven Denied" and "Labÿrinth". The drummer, Mattia Stancioiu, is amazing.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=1068

From "Return to Heaven Denied"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9T764qIvho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408vLIvzFWU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5YBxQFCDA
Ballad (the scenes are obviously from a movie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9raQQjahXk8

From "Labÿrinth" (newer album and more powerful sound)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFMNqvFg8ew (couldn't find a HQ version)

Video clip from their latest album. The singer is now also the bass player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBpNBJJObJ4

Live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sybi8EVduAQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHclO01j ... re=related

And of course Royal Hunt is a fucking awesome band, but I think they are FAR better known than the bands we've been talking about. At least IMO, they classify as a top band. Too bad their new singer is Mark Boals. He's not bad, but I think he doesn't fit the band's style. John West and D.C. Cooper were much better.

Ragehead91 wrote:

eagledreamr wrote:Beyond Twilight

This great Scandinavian progressive heavy metal band is in my opinion totally underrated. However, Section X is an awesome concept album made of pure madness. For the Love of Art and the Making is also an amazing album, complicated and still showing the madness and genius of the band's leader, Finn Zierler.

If you like prog heavy metal and are not afraid to dive into pure insanity, you surely will like this band.

Don't forget about their first album with Jorn Lande The Devil's Hall of Famem. My Favourit of all 3.

You're right!

But I personnaly was stunded by the way Section X was written and recorded, I thought it was a great example of Zierler's personnality.

eagledreamr wrote:

Ragehead91 wrote:

eagledreamr wrote:Beyond Twilight

This great Scandinavian progressive heavy metal band is in my opinion totally underrated. However, Section X is an awesome concept album made of pure madness. For the Love of Art and the Making is also an amazing album, complicated and still showing the madness and genius of the band's leader, Finn Zierler.

If you like prog heavy metal and are not afraid to dive into pure insanity, you surely will like this band.

Don't forget about their first album with Jorn Lande The Devil's Hall of Famem. My Favourit of all 3.

You're right!

But I personnaly was stunded by the way Section X was written and recorded, I thought it was a great example of Zierler's personnality.

I dunno how it was recorded. But I don't really like it. This is mainly due to Kelly Sundown Carpenter. I can't stand that guy. When rumors came up that he might replace Jorn after he was fired by masterplan and after Mike DiMeo was kicked I got the creeps just by thinking he might could join the band.

Awesome that you guys like galneryus. They can play a lot of different styles and have great melodies. Syu is a very good guitarist; his style kinda reminds me of marty friedman's in a way. I like that they are mostly power metal with a touch of progressiveness.

A band I'd like to add is Adagio. Stephen forte must be a master at music for being able to compose all of the instruments to those songs. The music is a bit more keyboard driven than symphony x, but pretty much in that same style. Some of the vocal lines from
sanctus ignis and underworld are flat out beautiful.

I don't really like Galenyus. Mainly due to their singer.

Another Band worth checking out is Dark Moor.

Burning Reflection wrote:
A band I'd like to add is Adagio. Stephen forte must be a master at music for being able to compose all of the instruments to those songs. The music is a bit more keyboard driven than symphony x, but pretty much in that same style. Some of the vocal lines from
sanctus ignis and underworld are flat out beautiful.

It's great to see that they are appreciated here. Stéphane Forté is an awesome composer and guitar player. Kevin Codfer (not sure about the spelling though) is one of the best keyboard players today (after Jens and Jordan Rudess, but not far behind!).

I saw them once live, it was really cool.

I love Syu, but I wouldn't say his style reminds me of Friedman. IMO, Syu's style is a lot closer to Malmsteen and Norifumi Shima.

- Ulytau (Kazakhstan)
http://www.ulytau.ru/eng_index.mhtml

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebUKYQKL9bA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u72zMzLJ7e4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4_4bSeMY9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRjLIoR9Rn4

Chris Poland!
Unique style & beautiful tone

From his instrumental solo album Return to Metalopolis, somehow this reminds me of Blade Runner :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF0tZsXjFFc

Just some awesome shredding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PsJEYU1n08

Some beautiful phrases, talking about live co-operation with bandmates (OHM):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzE7fpStErc

He did also some incredible stuff during his time in Megadeth. He played on the albums

Killing is My Business... And Business Is Good! (1985)
Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? (1986)
The System Has Failed (2004)

After listening to the new album I have to say it again:
Do yourself a favour and listen to PowerWolf! This band is awesome! Their singer is a trained Opera Singer and sounds like the guy from Sabaton, just 100 times better! They do some awesome stuff! Just don't take their lyrics to seriously.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/inauFoUMt6Y&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/inauFoUMt6Y&hl ... 2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Don't like PowerWolf. I don't like the singer. I'm not saying that technically he is not good, but as I have already mentioned, I don't like rough vocals.
And I can put up with some religious lyrics to some extent, but this band goes too far... It's more religious than I can withstand.

Ragehead91, please remember to post links to youtube instead of posting videos directly. If I would have posted all the videos directly, the page would take forever to load and at least in my case, it could freeze for a while. Posting links keeps the page a lot lighter and avoids problems.

Read my post. Don't take the lyrics seriously. Don't do that. They have other songs like "Catholic in the Morning, Satanist at Night" or "Resurrection By Errection". Do you really think they want to be taken seriously? They're neither Strapers nor Narnia. They're just fucking around with those topics.

And I don't see what's so bad about Attila. The guy is just amazing. Especially because he is a trained opera singer. And I don't see where his vocals are rough. Growling is rough. Singing like Chris Boltendahl of Grave Digger, Udo Dirkschneider from U.D.O. and Ex-Accept or Schmier of Destruction are rough. This isn't what I would call rough.

And about the speed thing. Back then when I still had ISDN. It took me relatively long to get DSL. I was in a lot of forums and boards and nobody gave a shit about my connection and that it would take hours to load pages because of all their youtube links and their signatures and so on.. So why should I care? Your problem, not mine.

It doesn't take growling for a voice to be rough. This guy's voice is slightly rough. It's not completely clean like John West, Roy Khan, Kiske, Kotipelto, etc. He's ok, not great. I usually like singers with vibrato. John West, for example, is an excellent singer. The fact that someone is a trained opera singer doesn't make him/her automatically good. At school, I've been trained in math, and I suck at it.

Oh so you are like one of those resented, bullied kids or something? You had a problem in the past because some people in a forum didn't care much about your connection and now you just think fuck everyone because some other people (not the people here) were not nice to me? Wtf does people in other forum not caring have to do with you not caring about people in this forum?? Btw, I never said anything about DSL or dial-up. It's not about internet speed. I've had DSL for years, the problem is that a video overload can fuck up the page, freeze it for a while, and make it almost impossible to navigate. It's about use of cpu resources and graphic memory, not internet speed.

But you have to addmit that Attila is good at what he does. He is a good singer.

And I don't care why it makes your web browser freeze. May it be internet speed, cpu resources, graphic memory or whatever. I don't give a flying fuck. Your problem, not mine.

I like this thread!

There's this progpower band called Bride Adorned, I think they recorded one single and an one album and then disappeared. It's a very solid album, though. I love this song called Ivory Towers Fall, but I could only find one of their songs in JewTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSYXpt0RRHI

The audio quality is not very good in the video, though...

Ragehead91 wrote:But you have to addmit that Attila is good at what he does.

No I don't.

I simply suggested nicely that it would be better to post links. You came out with your "why should I care? Your problem, not mine". Do you have social issues or something? Maybe you think you are a bad-ass and actually like to be seen as such? Is loneliness taking a toll on you? Or are you just a half-chimp who can't disagree with people in a nice way? Whatever it is, relax, ok Sparky?

I just found Bride Adorned's MySpace profile, where you guys can check out better quality clips:

http://www.myspace.com/brideadorned

There's also Rafael Bittencourt's solo project, Project Bittencourt:

http://www.myspace.com/bittencourtproject

Bride Adorned sounds good. Will have to listen to it more.

I didn't know Bittencourt had a solo band. And I certainly didn't know he could sing!

Speaking of Angra-related people, you guys should check out Edu Falaschi's Almah. His second album sounds great.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=70973

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t-mzKkxpqk
Video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ABUh5UjIc

Ragehead91 wrote: And I don't care why it makes your web browser freeze. May it be internet speed, cpu resources, graphic memory or whatever. I don't give a flying fuck. Your problem, not mine.

Ok buddy, what song is it this time? Invisible Man? Eagle Fly Free? A Little Time? Mrs. God? :rotflmao1:

This band will not be appreciated by a lot of people here. The band is 27 years old and their newest album is perhaps their best. Pretty rare.

http://www.deezer.com/en/#music/new-mod ... high-47808

Tracks 5 and 8 are gems.