Opeth is a Swedish progressive metal-progressive rock band from Stockholm, formed in 1989. The group has been through several personnel changes, including the replacement of every single original member. Lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's primary driving force since the departure of original vocalist David Isberg in 1992. Opeth has consistently incorporated progressive, folk, blues, classical, and jazz influences into its usually lengthy compositions, as well as strong influences from death metal, especially in their early works. Many songs include acoustic guitar passages and strong dynamic shifts, as well as both death growls and clean vocals. Opeth is also well known for their incorporation of Mellotrons in their work. Opeth rarely made live appearances supporting their first four albums; but since conducting their first world tour after the 2001 release of Blackwater Park, they have led several major world tours.
The Flower Kings are a Swedish progressive rock band formed in 1994 by guitarist and singer-songwriter Roine Stolt. The group began as Stolt's touring band to support his third solo album The Flower King. They continued performing after the tour and have gone on to become one of the most prolific studio recording units in progressive rock, having released nearly twenty hours of music spread across twelve studio albums. Their music is similar to early symphonic progressive rock groups such as Yes, marked by sharp dynamic changes, polyrhythmics, heavy bass, vocal harmonies, abstract and occasionally nonsensical lyrics, and extended song lengths.
Superheist is an Australian metal band, which formed in 1993. They released two EPs, thirteen singles, one compilation/live album and three studio albums, The Prize Recruit (2001) and Identical Remote Controlled Reactions (2002), both albums reached the top 20 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Their comeback album "Ghosts of the Social Dead" (2016) reached #3 on the AIR Charts and remained top 10 for 4 weeks.
Images and Words is the second studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, released on July 7, 1992 through ATCO Records. It is the first Dream Theater release to feature James LaBrie on vocals. Since its release, the album has maintained its position as the band's most commercially successful studio album, and the song "Pull Me Under" has the distinction of being the only Top 10 hit the band has had to date. This particular song has also had more recent success as it has appeared in the 2008 video game Guitar Hero World Tour.
Fates Warning is an American progressive metal band, formed in 1982 by vocalist John Arch, guitarists Jim Matheos and Victor Arduini, bassist Joe DiBiase, and drummer Steve Zimmerman in Hartford, Connecticut.
Tourniquet is a Christian metal band that was formed in 1989 by Ted Kirkpatrick, Guy Ritter and Gary Lenaire in Los Angeles, California, United States. The band primarily performs a mixture of thrash, neoclassical and progressive metal, and is influenced by additional, non-rock forms of music such as classical and world music. It has earned six GMA Dove Award nominations and won multiple recognitions from the readers of HM Magazine, including "Favorite Band of the 1990s" and "Favorite Album of the 1990s" for Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance. It has released seven studio albums, one compilation album, one EP, one acoustic album, five video releases and three DVDs, and sold more than 300,000 albums. In addition to its use of classical music, the band is known for frequently using medical terminology in its album and song titles and lyrics.
Witchcraft is a Swedish doom metal band founded in 2000.
Organasm is the fourth full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band, Alchemist. It was issued in Australia by Chatterbox, with D.W. Norton producing, on 6 March 2000 as their first release with the label. It was supported by a three-month Australian tour alongside the bands, Cryogenic and Psi.Kore. Organasm featured generally shorter songs than the previous Alchemist albums, but was still rated highly by critics.
Austral Alien is the fifth full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band, Alchemist. It was recorded and mixed in only ten days. It was released in 2003 by Chatterbox Records in Australia and worldwide by Relapse Records. Austral Alien is semi-conceptual with a lyrical focus inspired by the Australian environment and the impact of man on the ecology. Promotional music videos for the songs "First Contact", "Solarburn" and "Alpha Capella Nova Vega" were released, with the video for "Solarburn" expressing the album's concept, using imagery from the 2003 Canberra bushfires. The cover art is influenced by Surrealism. Austral Alien featured more keyboards and a mellowing of their previous death metal guitar sound, with even shorter songs than Organasm. Allmusic suggested that "Austral Alien is for Alchemist what, say, Permanent Waves was to Rush : a work of unquestionable merit and maturity that may nevertheless leave older fans yearning just a little for the excesses — both successful and not — of albums past" and noted that this was the band's most commercially accessible release, while still praising Alchemist for their "inspired brand of sci-fi metal".
Eve of the War is a six-track extended play from the Australian progressive metal band, Alchemist. The EP was released by Shock Records through its subsidiary label Thrust in November 1998. The title track, "Eve of the War" is a cover version of the opening piece from the British 1978 album, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The EP has two live songs: "Yoni Kunda" first released on Lunasphere, and "Chinese Whispers" from Spiritech. The other tracks are a remix of "Yoni Kunda", and two re-mastered tracks from Jar of Kingdom. A music video of the title track was provided.
Lunasphere is the second full-length album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist, and the first of their albums to be released by Shock Records through its metal subsidiary Thrust, in 1995. Eduardo Rivadavia of Allmusic described Lunasphere as "Like a doorway into another dimension, the Aussie group's wildly experimental songs often stand on the knife edge between control and chaos, between reason and insanity, and are capable of melding wickedly crushing heavy metal riffing with surprisingly gentle moments of quiet introspection". All of this album's tracks later appeared on the Embryonics compilation, except the instrumental fragment "Luminous". A live version of "Yoni Kunda" was used on the "Eve of the War" EP. An alternate live version of both this track and "Closed Chapter" were also included on Embryonics. "Luminous" and "Garden of Eroticism" were used in the soundtrack to a 2010 episode of the TV show Bondi Rescue.
Jar of Kingdom is the debut album by Australian progressive metal band, Alchemist. The band recorded the album after receiving a record contract in the mail from Austrian label Lethal Records and was released by that company in October 1993. During the recording of the first track "Abstraction", vocalist Adam Agius damaged his voice, thus resulting in the raw vocal sound on the rest of the album. The name "Jar of Kingdom" was inspired by a comment by television personality and entertainer Graham Kennedy during a comedy skit, in which he described a vial of pig semen as a "jar of kingdom". Jar of Kingdom featured early experiments with synthesisers, acoustic guitars and samples: "Whale" includes the sample of a humpback whale song. All tracks from this album except "Wandering and Wondering" and "Whale" later appeared on the Embryonics compilation.
Tripsis is the sixth and final full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. Recorded in 2007, Adam Agius stated that the songwriting focused on a consistently heavy approach. A promotional music video for the song "Wrapped in Guilt" was planned. A music video for "Tongues and Knives" premiered on 8 October 2008.
Australian heavy metal music has its roots in both the Australian hard rock and pub rock tradition of the 1970s and the American and British heavy metal scenes. Since the mid-1980s, Australian heavy metal has been particularly influenced by foreign bands, particularly Swedish death metal, American thrash metal and black metal from Norway. Within Australia heavy metal has always remained part of the underground but since the mid-1990s many Australian metal acts have found widespread acceptance in overseas markets, particularly in Europe.
No Sacrifice, No Victory is the seventh studio album by HammerFall and was released February 20, 2009. It was partly recorded in PAMA Studios in Torsås and partly at King Diamond guitarist, Andy La Rocque's Sonic Train Studios in Varberg. This is the first album featuring the band's new lead guitarist Pontus Norgren and the return of bassist Fredrik Larsson who played bass from 1994 to 1997, as well as the first to have the band tuning all of their guitars in all songs to D tuning as opposed to the E-flat tuning seen on most songs from all previous albums. The album was certified gold in Sweden. The song "My Sharona" was also released as a single, the second single released from this album, and only has one track which has the same name as the song.
Chris Brooks is an Australian author, rock, metal and fusion guitarist most noted for his debut instrumental album The Master Plan and his subsequent work with members of Yngwie Malmsteen, Black Sabbath, Lana Lane, and fellow Australians LORD.
Mizraab is a progressive rock and metal band from Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, formed in 1997. Founded by vocalist, lead guitarist and songwriter, Faraz Anwar, the band's initial line-up was with Faraz Anwar on vocals, Khalid Khan on bass and Akhtar Qayyum on percussions, since then there had been many changes in the line-up the only consistent member being Faraz himself. The band have been influential on many contemporary musical artists, and have gained a large cult following despite garnering little radio or music video airplay.
Richard William "DW" Norton, is a Scottish-born Australian entertainer, songwriter, producer, guitarist and founding mainstay of metallers, Superheist. In 1998 he established Faultline Records – he has worked as the label's in house producer and CEO. He lives with his wife and fellow artist, London Gabraelle-Norton.
