Category: Jam Session
Damien Rice is a singer from Ireland, and his album is called 'o' He is amazing, and a great songwriter. Howie Day is also a singer-songwriter whom I got to see live...his album is called Australia.
Well, Damien Rice is getting known among the pop community, so he's not that unknown. Here's a metal band that's only known and very popular among the undergrounders who listen to real metal and not pop like Slipknot or Linkin Park. The name of the band is Blind Guardian. They've been around for nearly 20 years now as the two founders met up in college in Krefeld, Germany in 1984. The first band name they came to a decision on was Lucifer's Heritage. Under that name, they recorded two demos in 1985 and 1986 called Symphonies of Doom and Battalions of Fear. After that, they changed their name to Blind Guardian and have since recorded 8 studio albums, 2 live albums, and 5 singles. The band line-up is as follows:
Hansi Kürsch: vocals and bass on everything before Nightfall In Middle-Earth
André Olbrich: lead guitar
Marcus "Magnus" Siepen: rhythm guitars
Thomen Stauch: drums
Guests include Oliver Holzwarth on bass on everything after Nightfall In Middle-Earth and a 4-member choir company on their recent two albums whose names escape me at the moment.
If you like metal in the vein of Queen and early Metallica and read books like Lord of the Rings and Dragonlance, you'll love these bards for sure!
a singer you all should check out is Joss Stone. she is a 16 year old soul singer from England. she is incredible!!!! people are caling her the next Aretha. I don't know about that, but I know she's amazing. her cd is called "the soul sessions" and her first single is "the chokin' kind."
canadian diva
DeadX!!! They're a local hard rock band from Texas, and they were at the first concert I've ever seen (E.SO, Driver, and Deadx or One Witness back then). I've seen them so many times now with my dad that we're friends with 'em! For sighties, go to http://www.deadxband.com/ or http://www.purevolume.com/deadx. Blinkies, the first link won't work for you if you're total; it's Macro Media. Thank God I have a magnifier program, LOL. Well, anyway, spread the word about DeadX!!! They rule!!! :)
I agree with Canadian Diva, Joss is amazing. I haven't heard her debut album but I have her second cd MIND BODY AND SOUL, it's great.
Damien Rice is unbelievable, I've seen him live and I have his album and they're just phenominal works of art. :)
I could name lots of bands, but I'll only name a few.
the Din Pedals (a Radiohead ish band from LA, they've split up and only released one cd but it's amazing, the singer joined a band called Palo Alto and it's really good), the Detachment Kit is a band from Chicago, sort of Pixies, it's really cool, Ween have been known to the underground community for some time, they are utterly insane and play a little bit of everything, you really get a kick out of listening to them, and my very favorite unknown band is Zuckerbaby from Calgary, Canada. Their debut cd is the best pop cd I've ever heard and I still think so and I've owned it for 5 years, it's hard to find any of their cds outside Canada though, yes, good things can come from Canada.
My band, Queue Minus One, will certainly need some promotions but we sadly need to finish recording our first album before we can start begging people to listen, but as soon as we're ready I'll definitely post and direct people to our web page, it's not up yet but it will be in the summer. I swear those who liked the Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead or the later Chilli Peppers albums won't find us boring, :) but I know we won't please everyone, but we've put an awful lot of effort into song writing, playing and rehearsing and the album will reflect that.
cheers
-B
Another band that's good that mostly us in the metal underground know of is Iced Earth. Before they became Iced Earth, they were known as the group Purgatory back in 1986, but soon changed their name to Iced Earth after a friend of founding member Jon Schaffer was killed in a motercycle axident. In it's early form Iced Earth consisted of Jon Schaffer on guitar, Randal shawver lead guitar, dave abell on bass, Mark Prader sessian drumber along with Gene Adams on vocals. This line-up recorded their first self-titled deybue, but Gene Adams left shortly there after, replaced by Vocalist John Greely, Iced Earth released their second efort Night Of The Stormrider. But John Greely didn't last however, so enters their third vocalist Matt Barlow in 1995, and Iced Earth released their third studio album Burnt Offerings witch contained a sixteen minute epic Dante's inferno. From their Iced earth put out a string of monumental albums with Matt Barlow on vocals including Dark Saga, Days of Purgatory witch consisted of re-recorded versions of songs from the first two iced earth albums, something wicked this way comes, the three disc set Alive In Athens, horrer show, and their last album with Matt Barlow on vocals called Tribute To The Gods, a compilation of metal cover tunes from the likes of Iron Maiden and others. Shortly thereafter Matt Barlow left the band in favor of continuing his schooling to have a career in the justice devision, enter new vocalist Tim Owins x Judas Priest, Iced Earth then went on to record The Glorius Burden, their latest studio album. Well there you have it! a little Iced Earth history!
Also Iced Earth founding member Jon Schaffer has opened a store called spirit of 76 collectables, and that caters to civil war memerabelia, and on the band front, the last I heard that Jon Schaffer and Tim Owins have already begun writing songs for the next Iced Earth full-length.
Paloalto is great. Check out Tyler Hilton at tylerhilton.com
He's awesome...a great songwriter.