Music Monday | Joost van der Beork

Hello!

Even though 2009 is the year that started my journey into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, I would have to mention that the next year was just as important to me. In 2010, as I was failing to comprehended to understand my online class of Music Theory, I was busy dipping my feet into new waters. Once I made the decision of quitting my classes altogether, I dove down deep into the world of symphonic metal.

Now what you need to understand is that I was both heavily depressed and contemplating suicide so the fact that I still remember the origin story of how I got into the starting five bands from mid-2010 to early 2012 is a miracle in itself because everything else is a complete blur to me. I strongly believe music not only kept me alive but also distracted my negative mind. I chose to select a fairly large group of people to be apart of my story.

I didn’t find out about Joost until probably late 2011, which makes sense because by then I had decided to give Disturbed and Slipknot a try after years and years of being absolutely afraid to listen to anything that could activate my inner anxiety. In the same cycle, I had found the band Epica as they were just about to release their concert “Retrospect” concert DVD/CD. Once I started going through the band’s previous albums, I quickly realized that there was a common theme, Joost van der Beork was producing a good chunk of their albums!

After that, I decided to go through his music and found out that he use to be apart of another symphonic metal band called After Forever with Mark Jenson of Epica and Floor Jenson (no, they are not related!) of Nightwish. Once the band broke up, Joost went on to go behind the scenes and produce music instead. He has worked with Epica, ReVamp (Floor’s band), Delain, Leah, MaYaN (Mark’s solo project) and many others. He has a fairly large resume of a lot of bands you might not have heard before, so I think if you have a free minute in the time to look on Spotify or YouTube and check out some of the music he helped put together. Oh, and after going through with this post, I ended up finding out that Joost is actually a current member of a band called Ex Libris, which are very good too!

Have you heard pf any Joost’s work in the past? If you have, what was the first album you listened to and possibly enjoyed the most?

June Playlist

Hello!

Now I know it’s the first day of July, but since I added another week into my regular schedule, I thought posting the monthly playlist now would work out perfectly for me!

Since the death of George Floyd and the beginning of Black Lives Matter protests happening all over the world, a lot of musicians have been taking out their emotions into their music. For the most part, I have actually fallen in love with quite a bit lately. There were two specific tracks that were released earlier in the month. The first being “ROCKSTAR” by DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch. They remixed it for the BLM movement and what I really enjoyed about it was the fact that music wasn’t too loud, so you were forced to hear the lyrics from start to end. Usually, I’m not a huge fan of this but I thought it was just perfect!

The next song is “Love Is Gone” by G-Eazy. This one was a little bit more political forward compared to the other, but like with “ROCKSTAR” the music itself wasn’t as prominent as I would have liked on any other day. Gerald is speaking a lot of truths–actually every single song I listened to, had a lot of truths about our past and present, and whether we in fact deserve peace. I didn’t think he could sing, until about a month ago! When I say, it surprised me, it did. If you listen to his brand new album “Something’s Strange Here” you’ll find out that he has a pretty good singing voice. For those of you who have listened to it, please list your favorites in the comments.

Anyways, those are the only songs I have liked since everything began and I’m sure by the time this post goes live, there will be even more coming out and you know I’ve been adding them into my Spotify playlist.

Here are my Top 20 songs I enjoyed in the month of June!

Take Care Of You by Ella Henderson
Footprints On The Moon by Gabby Barrett
Dust and Bone by Syd Duran
I Love You’s by Hailee Steinfeld
OMG by Camila Cabello featuring Quavo
Martyr Of The Free World by Epica
Sleepwalking by DIAMANTE
Secrets by Written By Wolves
Burning Bridges by Delain
Not That Beautiful by Papa Roach
X by Jonas Brothers featuring KAROL G
Ballad of Terrasen by Victoria Carbol
You Should See Me In A Crown by Halocene
Cut The Cord by Shinedown
Like You’ll Never See Me Again by Alicia Keys
I Take What I Want by Unions
Have You Ever Brandy
I See Fire by Feuerschwanz
Show Stopper by Danity Kane
Revangels by Akoma

Towards the middle of the month, I had a strong urge to get back into one of my favorite genres ever: symphonic metal. The Dutch band Epica are working on their eighth record, and they have been posting short studio vlogs on YouTube. One afternoon I was so bored that I literally watched all five videos and ended up finding a full recording of a concert they did back in 2015, which is after they had released “The Quantum Enigma” and I have to say, it is such a spectacular album and one of my all-time favorite albums. Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping up with the band itself so when I saw they were on album #8, I was a bit shocked but excited at the same time!

After spending an hour and half listening to nothing but Epica, I made another playlist on Spotify for my favorite songs in the genre itself. I included a lot of albums I’ve listened in the past and picked out some tracks from other bands that I loved but didn’t really care for the whole album too! I’m pretty sure the playlist is over 200 songs by now! I’m not sharing it publicly though – it’s my own personal stash of music to enjoy by myself.

Before I go, I want to include Monday’s review of “Petals” by PHARVOS, in case anyone missed it the first round! Here is also the main monthly playlist as well. Hope you enjoy both links!

What were your listening to in June?

EP Review: “The Solace System” by Epica

I love Epica. If you’ve never heard of them, they’re a symphonic metal band hailing from The Netherlands, one of my favorite places to find great music especially in this subgenre! There’s six members of the band: Coen on keys, Ariën on drums, Rob plays bass, Issac plays rhythm guitar while Mark plays lead and does the harsh vocals and Simone is the main vocalist of the band.

They are one of those bands that I have a really hard time getting interested into after so long. I loved their 2014 album The Quantum Enigma and I will even go onto saying that it’s one of my favorite albums of all time! However, this was the only album I’ve managed to like from start to finish. When their recent record The Holographic Principle came out in 2016, I wasn’t able to use my Spotify so there were a lot of albums that came out in that timeline that I never got to listen to.

So let’s start on this…

The first song is the title track “The Solace System” and they have a very interesting music video for this song on their YouTube channel. I was glad that I checked it out because I didn’t even know they were even releasing an EP! I was expecting the songs to be in the same themes as their previous album, they seem a bit outlandish but it’s really not bad. I love the shared parts between Mark and his growl-y voice to the choir in the background in the verses. Simone’s voice seems very tamed in this song but I kind of like it though. It’s very heavy though, you hear the guitars and metal aspect of it a lot stronger than the more symphonic sounds. For any skeptics out there, you could actually convert using this song! Next is “Fight Your Demons” and anytime you have this kind of title, I’m always hoping for a heavier type of track and thankfully you get that, the introduction was enough for me! You know that I don’t always follow the lyrics in the beginning but I really like the meaning in this song.

Third is “Architect Of Light” and I’ve seen a lot of praise for this track. The symphonic metal community is basically in love with it, which makes things more interesting! I really love the title so we’re getting there! I absolutely love the intro, those horns sound so cool! I am a bit speechless. The other songs were metal based whereas this one allows the orchestra to shine. It’s powerful but it still has those gritty moments brought by Mark’s voice. It’s glorious! It’s definitely a favorite but now we have to move on to “Wheel Of Destiny” and we have another very fast paced song, which in a way goes with the title well! I like Simone’s low voice in the verses. I really like it a lot. So there’s another favorite in the making!

The last two songs start with “Immortal Melancholy” and have I said how much I love these titles? They’re so mysterious and I really like not knowing how each song may sound until it actually plays.  It makes things interesting! I’m glad they put a slower song on this, I think their music is pretty brutal but I do love their softer ones just the same because it’s a nice balance to have, plus Simone always does a fantastic job of controlling her voice in the ballads. It’s very beautiful and not what you’d really except from a heavy metal band. Last one is “Decoded Poetry” and once again, brilliant title! We’re back to the normal sound of Epica, and it seems that it’s only Simone on vocals but thankfully towards the end Mark does make an appearance which made me really happy! There’s a small section that is just beautiful, The band stops playing and all you hear is a choir and the orchestra and it’s a beautiful piece and then all of a sudden, the guitars come in harder than ever and I really love these songs! They’re always so fun for the listener because it’s so many elements at once. It’s great!

I really liked this considering I’ve only heard about three songs of their previous album. Now the real question is, am I inspired enough to go back and listen to it? Not yet, but I’ll never really put off my radar forever because I know one day I’ll be in a big Epica mood and will want to discover new songs from their rooster.

What do you think of Epica’s new EP? Have you heard of any new symphonic metal bands lately? Let me know please!

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Currently I’m

I’m pretty bored at the moment. Everybody here is taking a nap and I’m not in a nap kind of frame right now, even though my body says it could just sleep for a few days. Apparently it hasn’t calm down yet from all the fun over the weekend. I went over to my nana’s today while my parents went on a bike ride. I got to try out my new wheelchair over at their house and it sucked. I felt trapped in it and I’m not just saying it because I had a seatbelt on either. When you’re so used to being able to reach the floor without your butt falling out of the chair or say you have the controller at your toes just ready for you to turn it, being in a chair that literally makes you feel like its swallowing you whole and feeling trapped and hopeless is pretty easy. Hopefully my dad can take our neighbor into fixing it to be a little lower and fix the cracking noise it seems to make everytime I make on the seat. There’s a lot of things that just don’t work on it well yet. So I’m doing a “currently” list as a part of my Ketchup With Us by Mel and Michele list theme.

Reading: Hot Ticket by Olivia Cunning – Chapter 27
Trying: To be as quiet as I can be while having on my music on at the same time.
Drinking: Cherry RC
Texting: Nobody at the moment.
Pinning: Other DIY stuff for shirts.
Tweeting: My friend Claire 
Doing: Trying not to fall asleep and fall head first on the floor.
Loving: The sunshine and Transformers commercials on TV. 
Hating: My new regular wheelchair.
Discovering: New songs.
Enjoying: My beautiful Wednesday
Thinking: Oh, you don’t want to even know!
Feeling: Discouraged
Hoping: That what I want to do to a few of my shirts come out okay.
Listening: Epica’s “The Quantum Enigma”
Celebrating: Getting ready to celebrate next Monday’s special day!
Smelling: Watermelon 
Considering: Reading after I finish this
Finishing: The movie The Parent Trap
Starting: The episodes I taped of Hey Arnold last night
Thanking: God for getting out me out of the house and letting my feelings out.