The incomparable progressive metal band Porcupine Tree are back with Closure/Continuation C/C after 13 years of silence, since their 2009 album The Incident. In his countless number of interviews, Steven Wilson at all times said that the PT were not coming back, those PT days were over and that he was happy with his solo projects. But now, after 13 years, here we are with the new PT album: the name of the album is very meaningful and I personally think that even the band has not totally decided whether it is a closure or a continuation.
English rock legends, pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal Deep Purple were in İstanbul Life Park last night on their “The Long Goodbye Tour”. Deep Purple members with their age average of 75, except their lead guitarist Simon McBride replacing Steve Morse who couldn’t join the show because of his wife’s illness, truly rocked İstanbul, made the audience sing along “Smoke on the Water” and showed us what pure rock is about and how it must be performed. I was equally amazed by the elderly crowd in the seated VIP section of the concert area, vibing with Deep Purple songs.
Their dynamic and satisfactory setlist, included their new song “7 and 7 Is” from the 2021 album “Turning to Crime”, their wonderful “Throw My Bones” from the 2020 “Whoosh!”, and unforgettable hits like Highway Star, Strange Kind of Woman, When a Blind Man Cries, Perfect Strangers, Smoke on The Water – saved best for last-. The concert was a relatively short one, but it left us with an amazing feeling of true rock with Ian Gillan’s amazing vocals, virtuoso shows by Ian Paice (drums), Roger Glover (electric bass), Don Airey (keyboards) and Simon McBride (electric guitar). Don Airey conquered the hearts of the Turkish audience with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca (Turkish March) from Piano Sonata No.11 and the famous İstanbul folk song “Katibim”i (Üsküdar’a Gider İken).
İstanbul Life Park was an impressive venue with its big stage, large stage screens and its top quality sound system. The only disadvantage of the venue was its location: deep in the woodland of Sarıyer, located very far away from the city center, with its tight path and its horrible traffic jam, I wondered whether İstanbul Life Park was a good choice for the concert; but the golden memories of this amazing show erased the difficulty of the journey to the venue.
Nice to know that the legendary rock band ordered “İmambayıldı” (a traditional Turkish delicacy cooked with aubergines and olive oil) to backstage and will be enjoying İstanbul’s historical sites today. Thank you Deep Purple, for conquering the hearts of İstanbul audience with your wonderful music and your most symphatetic band members. Long live Rock’n’Roll!
@metaloda is a registered Trademark.
(c) 2021 Metal Oda. All rights reserved. Quotations without reference is forbidden.
Turkish power metal band Saints’N’Sinners released their second album entitled ‘Rise of the Alchemist’ in April with their own record label SNS Records. The first singles from the album caused a sensation in the genre when they started to appear on digital platforms. It seems like Deniz Tuncer who wrote the lyrics and the music keeps the secrets to the ancient science of alchemy and has the power to turn “metal” into gold, as Saints’N’Sinners made one of the most outstanding power/melodic metal albums of 2022 so far.
Amorphis, the melodic death metal masters from Finland, released their new album HALO in February 2022. As I was suffering from Covid-19 in February, the issue of this article was postponed to March. Like the previous albums of the band “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”(1994), “Tuonela”(1999) and the “Skyforger” (2009) HALO is about the Kalevala, the Finnish mythological epic. HALO topped the Finnish metal charts as soon as it was released in February. Now it is the right time to take a closer look at this spectacular album.
Dark, deep and impressive are the paintings by Mario Duplantier, French technical death/progressive metal band Gojira’s talented drummer. Reflecting his impressions from his travels around the world with his band, his art underlines his deep compassion for nature and animals and asks questions about human existence.
Swedish progressive metal supergroup Soen was on a worldwide recorded live-stream from Atlantis Grammofon Studios yesterday, on the 18th of February. Supporting their latest album “Imperial”, which I believe was one of the best metal albums of 2021, they did something spectacular already on their minds for a long time. They came with different songs from past and present albums: I noticed four tracks from Imperial, another four from Lotus, two from Lykaia, one from Cognitive and a surprise track I’m going to reveal later in this article.
As devoted followers of Metal Oda Instagram page might already know, each month I pick a classic vintage car and post a short review entitled “The Classic Car of the Month”. As the first post on classic cars at metaloda.com web page, we have prepared this month’s article along with Alp Karpuzoğlu, Anesthesia Band vocalist Ege’s brother, a classical cars enthusiast and an expert in this field. For metaloda.com, Alp chose a very special classic car, the 1962 Chevy Impala SS Sport Golden Anniversary.
When I wrote about the best metal albums of 2021 in December, I didn’t tell you which one I thought was the best among them. There was one hint though about its release date for the attentive reader. As I said in this article, there was that one album in 2021 which left me speechless and this is the “Moonflowers” by the Finnish death-doom masters Swallow The Sun. When I reviewed Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu in September, I remember saying it was too early to label this or that as the best metal album of the year, although I am a great Iron Maiden fan.
Some musicians hold a special place in my heart, one good example is prog metal master Steven Wilson. In October 2021, I made a broadcast in Clubhouse Metal Oda on Steven entitled “The Genius of Steven Wilson” where we explored his music through the years. Steven was nominated for 2022 Grammy Awards at the end of November: this was when I started to write this article. Many familiar faces in Rock & Metal genre are nominated for 2022 Grammy Awards in different categories: those who come immediately to my mind are Gojira, AC/DC, Mastodon, Dream Theater, Deftones and Rob Zombie. When I checked Wilson’s nomination, I was surprised to find out it was in Production-Best Immersive Audio category and not in song writing. So, here it would be appropriate to dive a little bit into Immersive Audio.
A lot has been said and written about the album “Fortitude” by the French technical death metal band Gojira, since its release in April 2021. Now as the end of the year draws near and we go through the best albums of 2021, I wanted to say a few words on this powerful album. Read more