Concept albums used to be a fairly common thing in American rock music. That seems to have died out. But they are still being created in the European Heavy Metal scene. Today's song actually comes from the first of two albums that are part of the same concept, from the Symphonic Metal band Epica. The concept started in Consign to Oblivion, and was continued 4 years later with the album Design Your Universe.
Epica is a Symphonic Metal band out The Netherlands. (They sing in English.) The band consisted of lead singer Simone Simons, Mark Jansen playing rhythm guitar and providing harsh vocals, Ad Sluijter playing lead guitar, Yves Huts on bass, Coen Janssen on keyboards, and Jeroen Simons playing drums when this album was recorded.
The lyrics can be found at this link in case anyone is interested. You might want them for at least some of the singing.
This song is "Consign to Oblivion (A New Age Dawns 3)" by Epica from the 2005 album Consign to Oblivion. It is almost 10 minutes, so grab a beverage.
I'm smiling because you said the euros are still doing it but posted a 20 year old song... I don't think of the '00s as being that long ago either. My daughter keeps catching me off guard when she plays something from the 70s. That was 50 years ago! I'd swear I'm not that old, but I remember Steve Dahl's disco demolition and we learned disco and square dancing in my Jr High gym class.
ReplyDeleteSo many great concept albums, Tommy, The Wall, 2112... it's all singles these days, and even worse, cut down snippets for Tiktok...
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OK. Valid point. But there are still concept albums coming out of Europe, some of them are even good. I just really like Epica.
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