January has seen somewhat of a slow start to the year for metal releases. Despite this, there have still been some that are well worth your attention. Have a look at the gems below and let me know which ones sound the best to you… Continue reading “Monthly Overview – the Best of January 2019”
Tag: A Secret Revealed
A Secret Revealed – Sacrifices (Review)
This is the second album from A Secret Revealed, a post-metal band from Germany.
The band’s debut album – 2015’s The Bleakness – was an album that I thoroughly enjoyed and stuck out with its vision of heavy, emotive modern post-metal. Continue reading “A Secret Revealed – Sacrifices (Review)”
Interview with A Secret Revealed
A Secret Revealed have recently released their début album The Bleakness. Bleak it may be, but it’s also a Post-Metal tour de force. Join me, as we attempt to pierce the darkness…
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
Hi! And first of all: Thank you for the interview! We are A Secret Revealed, a five piece band from Würzburg/Germany. We play Post-Metal anchored in melody with equal measures of Black Metal and Hardcore influences and just released our first full length album “The Bleakness” via Bastardized Recordings.
Give us a bit of history to A Secret Revealed
The band was founded in 2012. After releasing our first EP “Lay My Memories To Rest“ we had several line-up changes and played shows with Bands like “Agrypnie“, “Der Weg Einer Freiheit“, “Ära-Kra” and many more. In 2014 we found our final line-up and recorded our début album in collaboration with Nikita Kamprad. We know each other for a long time from different bands in our hometown and so it was quite natural to form a band.
What are your influences?
All our band members have different musical backgrounds, so our musical influences are quite various and reach from Post-Rock to Black Metal or even Pop. Overall other Post-Metal Bands like Devil Sold His Soul, Cult of Luna or Pelican are the biggest influence for us.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
At the moment I’m listening to a lot of bands. But these I’d like to highly recommend. If you don’t know them, you should give them a listen:
- Fjørt – D’Accord
- Der Weg Einer Freiheit – Stellar
- Capsize – The Angst in My Veins
- Red Apollo – Altruist
- Polar – Shadowed by Vultures
- Oathbreaker – Maelstrøm
- Devil Sold His Soul – Blessed & Cursed
What did you want to achieve with your new album?
Of course we also wanted to reach more people with the album, but most of all it’s very important to us, that everyone who listens to “The Bleakness” can feel the atmosphere and empathize with the deep despair that we pack into our songs.
How do you write your songs?
Our guitarist Ralle and I usually compose all our songs at home and record a pre-production of them. After everyone in the band listened to it and approved it, we rehearse them and work on small changes if necessary. Once a song is instrumentally finished Lukas or our vocalist Paul add the lyrics to the song.
Your sound takes in a wide-range of different styles. How did you decide what you wanted to incorporate into the album?
To be honest it wasn’t a real decision which styles made it into the album, it all happened completely natural when we wrote the songs. Nevertheless the most important thing for us is that, whatever kind of idea someone comes up with, the idea/the riff should support the atmosphere and fit into the song.
Are you happy with the final result?
We are very pleased with the final outcome. For our recordings we collaborated with Nikita Kamprad (Der Weg Einer Freiheit) who is responsible for the powerful and differentiated sound we wanted to achieve. We are very satisfied how everything worked out in the end. Of course there are always some new ideas and stuff that came into our minds after finishing the record, but these ideas have to wait for the next songs.
What’s you favourite song on the album and why?
This is a real hard one. Eventhough i like every song in its own way, I personally like “Drowning” the most. This song changes between fast blast beats and slow atmospheric clean parts and the guest vocals of Nikita make this one very unique.
What can you tell us about the lyrics and theme of the album?
We think the whole album is very good summed up by our title “The Bleakness”. All of our songs deal with a lot of personal struggles, disappointments and experiences. Even though every song stands on its own, they all create a melancholic and oppressive ambiance and make the album work in its entirety.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
That’s hard to say, because we just released the album, but there are already some new ideas coming up. We think that our songs probably will be longer and a little bit more atmospheric.
What does the future hold for A Secret Revealed?
Near-future plans are definitely booking shows and promoting our first full length record. We don’t really know where this journey will take us and what we can expect to happen but we are highly motivated and can’t wait for the upcoming months.
A Secret Revealed – The Bleakness (Review)
A Secret Revealed are a German Post-Metal band and this is their début album.
This is emotive Post-Metal that has a good mix of upbeat misery and negative energies.
The Bleakness is an interesting listen as it combines a few different styles of Modern Metal into a coherent assault on happiness. Post-Metal, Modern Metal, Post-Hardcore and even the odd bit of Doom, Shoegaze and Extreme Metal all get incorporated into their overarching depressive aesthetic.
The vocals consist of impassioned screams that are very much in the blood-curdling, emotive Hardcore style.
The music is nicely varied and revolves around the central motif of the band which is ultimately one of bleakness, it seems, (hence the album title).
Although it’s largely a heavy affair, the band never go too far into ultra-heavy territory and instead use the guitars for maximum emotional content. This is backed up and reinforced by the expressive leads and melodies as well as the odd bit of orchestration here and there.
This is a band who are enjoying the freedom of Post-Metal by doing their own thing with contemporary Metal music. They have eschewed the Doom route that most Post-Metal takes and instead has chosen the road less travelled by bands like Deftones and Devil Sold His Soul, only more Metallic.
The Bleakness may be just that, but it’s also a triumph.
Highly recommended.
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