angelo

Angelo

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Favorite Metal Artists

Metal Genre Nb. Rated Avg. rating 1 Progressive Metal 2 3.75 2 Non-Metal 1 3.00

Latest Albums Reviews

FEEDFORWARD Barefoot & Naked

Album · 2006 · Progressive Metal

Sometimes quality lives right around the corner In this case almost literally, given that Feedforward is based in Tilburg, some 30 kilometers from where I live. A progressive metal band, with a female vocalist and a lot of potential. On this album the band choose to include 10 quite varied tracks, making it a real show case debut album. A little bit more consistency in style between the selected tracks may appeal to some listeners, for me this variety was more than enjoyable. Straight from the opener Fade Away it is clear that this is not just another Dutch Within Temptation or After Forever clone. Feedforward vocalist Bianca (Biejanka) has a very powerful voice and she knows how to use it against the force her four gang members sometimes throw at her. That power really shows from that same first track. A piece with an 'ear catching' keyboard intro and a three minute instrumental break that (maybe because of the piano) reminded me of Streets era Savatage, while near the end the guitar and keyboards make clear that Dream Theater has been heard of as well. After this strong opener, the listener is treated to the differing sounds of Run the Race - again with Savatage influences, but also an interesting vocal effect experiment, the power metal tracks Crossing the Line and Innocense right to 143. This track, which a real metal opening riff, a male/female vocal dialogue and powerful keyboard and guitar interplay, could very well be the most progressive of the album, and it gets better on every listen. My personal favourite. After this it's time to cool of, with the piano ballad Our Sky (what a voice - the Feedforward guys are lucky The Gathering didn't come after Biejanka when Anneke left). In between this balled and the closing track Stop To Think, the band shows their view on symphonic progressive metal, in three consecutive tracks. Of this trio, Silent is easily my favourite and overall a close second to earlier 143. It beats the very well done instrumental Moving by a hair, even though as a Rush fan I really enjoy the YYZ-like drum fills near the end in that one.

All in all, I like this debut album a lot. Compared to other bands, the band has made a great start, but as with any first effort there's room for improvement. Crossing The Line might have been more powerful if it was a little shorter (less repetitive), the bass could've been a bit more forward in the mix on Stop to Think, and I could list a few other small things. Nothing big though.

As for the scales we apply on this site, this album is not a masterpiece, nor a necessary addition to a random prog metal collection. It's getting close though according to my book, so it gets 3.5 stars. A must listen for any prog metal fan - even if only once.

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FEEDFORWARD Upstream

Album · 2011 · Progressive Metal

Don't look back, feed forward... Not very long after their debut album was released, Feedforward dropped me a note telling me that their singer Biejanka had left the band. She was moving to Finland with her boyfriend and her powerful voice, leaving the band behind looking for a new singer. After looking for a mail singer for a couple of months, the band decided to stick with femal vocals when Patrice auditioned for them. A wonderful choice, it turned out...

Where the first album, Barefoot and Naked, contained a lot of power, show casing the vocals of Biejanka and the musicianship of the individual band members on tracks that would always remind me of another band (Savatage, Dream Theater, Rush), Upstream takes a different approach. The power is still there, and even though Patrice has a quite different voice from Biejanka's, both ladies remind me of Anneke van Giersbergen, the music is much more... well, Feedforward. This means we get powerful riffs, nice guitar and keyboard solos and lots of changes in tempo, rhythm and volume without ever loosing the feeling that we are listening to a single track, or a single album.

This is a metal album of the kind where every instrument is allowed to contribute to the melody - maybe with the exception of the drums, but even Pi tries sometimes. The mid section of the long closing track For Now may be the best example of that. Guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals each go their own way, but stay together at the same time. This track really requires a couple of listens to hear everything.

Similarly, songs like Relevant, Deepest Thoughts and Promises have their own intricacies, where the latter is probably the only track where I really had reflections of another band. Somehow, I have the feeling that guitarist Mario is quite fond of Iron Maiden - the guitar work is on par with what Adrian Smith and Dave Murray did on The Trooper, yet the solo is 100% Feedforward.

After listening to the album on and off for a couple of weeks, I can only conclude that Feedforward has grown in the past 4 years, and hopefully a third album will follow. This band deserves more than a listen from those who enjoy female fronted progressive metal.

Four stars, definitely an excellent addition to any prog metal music collection

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• Posted more than 2 years ago in No more subgenres (on metal-archives.com)
  How about that - Metal-archives.com dropped completely the distinction between subgenres. Everything is metal, the rest is irrelevant. I like the reasoning...No more sub-genre tags, descriptors, influences. No more "technical something/other metal with non-metal fusion influences.""Metal"Lemmy, the God himself, called Motörhead a rock 'n' roll band. They're also considered pioneers of speed metal, a precursor to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and of course a hard rock/rock 'n' roll band. Still, all this focus on the genre detracts from what they really were: badass. Tom G. Warrior once described Celtic Frost as "a rock and roll band, on the heavier side." The band's genre is nearly impossible to pin down, often labeled as a speed/black/thrash metal band in their earlier form when they were freshly evolved from Hellhammer, a black/death/thrash metal band on their debut, creators of avant-garde metal mixed with new wave influence on Into the Pandemonium, glam rock/metal on the poorly received Cold Lake, gothic/doom metal on Vanity/Nemesis, and finally some sort of unholy conjuration which melded black/death/gothic/doom and more on Monotheist. We don't want to waste any more time trying to pin down such complex genre decisions - that's best left to folks who have too much time because they can't take off their serious faces long enough to enjoy Frost's cover of Wall of Voodoo's Mexican Radio. Black Sabbath have been regarded as the progenitors of heavy metal since long before this encyclopaedia existed. They are also hailed as the originators of doom metal, a sub-genre which frequently makes reference to being derived from Tony Iommi's riffs. Their music touches on other genres at times, too, from the blues rock of the B-side of their self-titled album (covers of blues rock bands Crow and The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation) to progressive rock on Volume 4 (Iommi was also briefly in prog rock pioneers Jethro Tull) and an unfortunate crossover with rap on 1995's Forbidden album. It is hard to capture this nuance, but Black Sabbath are *the* metal band. Another hotly-contested genre listing is that of black metal and viking metal pioneers Bathory. Many contemporary sources considered the band's early music to be thrash metal, and the mid-90s albums certainly were. There's even a song on Destroyer of Worlds, "Sudden Death," which is an ode to playoff hockey and sounds like Pantera, the groove metal pioneers who also recorded the Dallas Stars fight song. These are, of course, four of the finest bands in the world, and the real pain of running the site is not in the limited number of good bands, but in handling the frequent requests to re-evaluate the genres of the majority of the 157,000 bands on the site, most of which are not very good or worth our time. This is almost as bad as people telling us that group Between the Buried and Me are a "progressive metal" band every time we make a post on Facebook. They're not. From this day forward, we're calling metal bands what they are - "metal" - and nothing more. No more technicalities on technical x metal. No more post-metal, post-rock or post-hardcore influences, and certainly not post-malone, which we're told is a subgenre of SoundCloud rap which Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne dabbled with on his 2020 album Ordinary Man. Thoughts?
• Posted more than 2 years ago in Interview with Exivious on House of Prog!!!
  Noon PST • 3 PM EST • Noon PST • 9 PM CET • 8 PM UKWed Oct. 19th: A NIGHT WITH EXIVIOUSDj Morgana is pleased to present you the interview with Tymon Kruidenier, guitar player of the prog metal band Exivious, which she has recently discovered and appreciated. In this funny interview Tymon will talk about the new materials they're currently working on, whose details Dj Morgana tried to snatch from his sealed lips :), the underlying concept behind "Exivious" and "Liminal" albums and the joy of setting new challenges. Everyone's invited, make sure not to miss it!BAND LINKS:https://www.facebook.com/Exivioushttp://www.exivious.net/WEDNESDAY @ HOP â–º DJ Morgana's METAL MADHOUSE â—„If Metal is a religion, the Metal Madhouse is its church!To LISTEN > log on @ http://www.houseofprog.com/ [for Chatroom & Players]HOP is also on "tune in" @ http://tunein.com/radio/House-of-Prog-s232964[for mobile listening without the Chatroom].If you're not there for the live show, you can catch up onhttps://www.mixcloud.com/metal_madhouse/where Dj Morgana regularly uploads her kickass playlists. â—„♦♦ â–¬ FACEBOOK PAGE â–¬ ♦♦►https://www.facebook.com/metalmadhouse666/?fref=tsFollow Dj Morgana and House of Prog on Twitter/Tumblrhttps://twitter.com/HoP_Morganahttps://www.mixcloud.com/metal_madhouse/http://djmorgana.tumblr.com/https://twitter.com/House_of_Prog@@@ What the listeners say about the show @@@"It's a madhouse... or so they claim" (Joey Belladonna)"We're all mad here" (a Cat from Cheshire)Please feel free to contact DJ Morgana here if your band is interested in airplay: [email protected]
• Posted more than 2 years ago in Amadeus Awad and Amadeus Awad's Eon
   Perfect, adg211288. And Bosh66: thanks for asking, but I'll be low profile only. Got a lot of reviewing and radio making to do - adding bands and spotting errors as part of that is a limited activity for me ;-)

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