#76 - Circus Maximus

Back to Norway, for prog metal band Circus Maximus, who debuted with The 1st Chapter in 2005.  I picked up this one right away too, although I can't remember how I heard about them.  It was probably Amazon and their deadly accurate recommendation system.  The album is a polished collection of melodic and fairly technical songs; well thought out, played and produced.  The style is pretty much right down the middle of the norm for the genre, featuring ample keyboards, meter changes and capable soaring clean vocals.  They've since released two more albums, and I've only heard the middle one.  It's similar to the first; maybe slightly lighter and catchier.  I prefer the debut for its freshness, but they're both solid releases and well worth checking out.

The opening track, "Sin", is probably the heaviest (but not the prog-iest) on the debut album.  If you've been following me for the past 24 bands, you may have realized that I prefer heavy, so I'm including the song here.  It's a pretty busy song, with loads of meter and feel changes (again right up my alley).  The sound is pretty thick, thanks to the heavily orchestrated keyboards and lots of overlain sound effects and guitar and vocal texturing.  Circus Maximus manages the line between tricky and listenable pretty well in general, and particularly on this song.  Hope you like it as much as I do.

#77 - Blind Guardian

Germany's Blind Guardian is my favorite pure power metal band, although I've got a couple bands higher up my list who owe a lot to the genre.  I first came across them relatively late in their career, when they were already well-established as one of the most pioneering and influential power metal bands around.  It was a genre that I had almost no exposure to at that time in 2001, and my introduction to them opened the door to a whole new spectrum of bands I previously had no idea about.

Jennifer and I had recently moved to Germany and were playing in a joint concert with a regional band from the Trier area.  The musicians in the group were all pretty young, and I hit it off with one of the trombonists who was also a metal enthusiast and just a really nice guy named Timo Becker.  During some rehearsal, I was lamenting the demise of heavy music as I did a lot in those years.  Timo gave me a kind of confused look and politely asked me what the hell I was talking about.  He then launched into a dissertation on the merits of modern metal, paying particular attention to the still-thriving tradition of power metal in Germany.  The next rehearsal, he presented me with a mixed CD of all German metal, and all (at that time) recorded in the previous few years.  The first (and best) on the compilation was Blind Guardian.

I eventually got all of Blind Guardian's albums (I think I'm a few behind now though), and my favorite was the concept album, Nightfall In Middle-Earth, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.  The album is densely orchestrated, with lots of choral backing vocals, as you'll hear below.  After a spoken introduction, "Into the Storm" is the first track on the album.  It was also the first song by Blind Guardian that I ever heard.  What an excellent introduction.

#78 - Redemption

Two L.A. bands in a row!  I first heard Redemption shortly after their first and self-titled album was released in 2003.  I jumped on the bandwagon early mostly due to contributions by Jason Rullo and Michael Romeo of Symphony X, Ray Alder and Mark Zonder of Fates Warning and vocals by Steel Prophet's Rick Mythiasin.  Initially, I thought the band was a prog metal "supergroup" but later learned that, at that stage, it was effectively a session project by a guy I had never heard of named Nick van Dyk.  Eventually, after a couple personnel changes, they grew into an actual band... and a prolific one at that.  In the 10 years since that debut, they've released five studio albums and one live recording.  I managed to keep up for the first three, which are all impressive and enjoyable works, firmly in the standard progressive metal mold.

Here's kind of a fun story.  In researching for this post, I was determined to find out something about Nick's history.  Had he really not been with any other bands?  He seemed altogether too polished and well-connected not to have been.  It's tough to find a lot of information on him, but after much digging I discovered, with a pretty high degree of certainty, that his day job is right here in Burbank with my own employer, The Walt Disney Company.  In fact, his office is about a block from mine, and about a block away on the other side is my house.  Crazy.

"The Suffocating Silence" off of Redemption's third album, The Origins of Ruin, doesn't start off shy, as you can hear below.  The intro in 3 (with a syncopated 2-feel on the snare) leaps off the starting line with an fast arpeggiated guitar riff over a hard-charging rhythm section.  The intro ends with a hold setting up the main riff, which is just wicked and starts out on the guitar alone with some punctuation by the drummer leading into the verse fully accompanied on the same riff.  There are some tricky little rhythmic twists, but it's mostly a fast, heavy and driving feel through the verse.  The chorus (1:55) shifts to a 5-feel, but with the same energetic guitar work.  After the first chorus, there's a nice keyboard solo (2:21), followed by a strong back-and-forth dueling guitars solo (3:00) with a bridge in 7 in between them.  At 3:53 the chorus returns, and after some variation of it, the song really goes bananas with a super twisty, heavy instrumental outro from 4:57 to the end.  All in all, it's a shifty, high-energy song with a lot of complexity... exactly up my alley.  See how you like it below.

#79 - Fishbone

I first heard L.A.'s Fishbone on KROQ in 1985 when their debut single "Party at Ground Zero" got local play.  It was an uptempo, zany, alternative ska tune that, despite the fact that it wasn't really my kind of music, struck a chord with me, and I later picked up that first EP.  It was mostly alternative rock, with a ska slant, but it was fairly varied considering there were only five or so songs on it.  I enjoyed the album and still do, but it was about five years later when I heard them again on an Epic records compilation that they were giving out at an Alice Cooper/Judas Priest concert that I went to called "Operation Rock & Roll" around the time of the first Gulf War.  The song was "Fight the Youth", and I was really surprised at how heavy Fishbone's sound had gotten.  The album it came from was called "The Reality of My Surroundings", and that and their next "Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe" are all over the rock musical map, with funk, punk, ska, metal and soul blended or alone.

"Fight the Youth" is a great example of the eclectic and heavy Fishbone sound of the early 90s.  I really like them at that time, when they played heavy rock but still had a horn section.  There aren't that many bands to do that, and as a former horn player, I sure appreciate those who do it well.

#80 - Rainbow

Straight from the frames of This Is Spinal Tap by way of LA and the UK comes Rainbow, one of the earliest, rockingest, and unintentionally funniest metal bands in my top 100.  The comedy is mostly thanks to prima donna founder Richie Blackmore, who has gone through almost as many wives as he has sidemen in his illustrious career.  To be fair, the rock is mostly thanks to him too, although in their first incarnation, legendary vocalist Ronnie James Dio deserves at least as much credit.  Hint: you will hear more from the late, great Ronnie James Dio in future posts.

Rainbow started in late 1974, when Blackmore left Deep Purple, apparently disgusted with his fellow musicians and recruited pretty much their entire opening act at the time, Elf to support him on a solo album.  Over the years, Rainbow continued as more or less a solo effort, as no one could please or put up with Richie long enough to stick with the band for more than an album or two.  Dio was the exception, hanging with Rainbow for a full three before splitting to remain true to his inner sorcerer.  Those three albums, especially the middle one, Rising, are classics of the genre and still stand up today, 40 years later as gems in the repertoire.

Stargazer was the first song on the second side of the brilliant Rising album, and my favorite on it as well, although the album is enjoyable and impressive throughout.  Stargazer's a majestic piece of music, thanks to Cozy Powell and Jimmy Bain's confident and commanding feel, Ronnie's masterful vocals, Richie's progressive riffing and soloing and the contribution of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.  Enjoy a metal classic.

#81 - The Beyond

The Beyond was a little-known band from England, whose debut album from 1991 was loaded with energy and quirky, jazzy riffs and feels and is one of the most unique (but not in a weird way) and enjoyable albums I know.  They're really a wide-ranging band, with elements of prog, jazz, funk and alternative metal all fused into a sound that, while somewhat unorthodox, never sounds forced, fake or stilted.  Below is the opening track from the opening album, which is representative of the album as a whole.  Give it a listen for a taste of one of the highest ability-to-fame ratio-ed bands around.