2007-YEAR OF THE FEMALE FRONT

2007 THE YEAR OF THE FEMALE

By Jason Parrella

Heavy Metal and hard rock fans alike, particularly enthusiasts of female fronted outfits, should be in their glory with all the releases scheduled for the year 2007. The female fronted heavy metal genre has continued to progress at staggering numbers, and this year will see a deepening trend.
Whether or not each band decided to use the ever popular male grunts or clean passages, it's the beautiful females that carry most of these bands. Not coincidentally, nearly every one of these bands feature women that are smokin' hot, which certainly adds to the aura of each group.
People are taking notice too. Revolver magazine recently released their second annual Hottest Chicks In Rock/Metal issue, which gave attention to the genre. Unfortunately, the magazine knows very little outside of hard rock and popular heavy metal. Sure, Lacuna Coil's Cristina Scabbia should be on the cover for her all-around beauty, but Marta from Bleeding Through and Maria from In This Moment are questionable choices. It's a shame that the beauties from Epica(Simone Simons), VOA (Melissa Ferlaak), EOE (Francine Boucher), Within Temptation (Sharon den Adel) and ex-Nightwish's ever popular Tarja aren't recognized here in the states. These chicks are friggin' smokin', and can sing with the best of them.
Going back a year earlier, things seemed heading down the road of disappointment for various reasons in this genre. Very few female fronted rock/metal albums hit the shelves, and the few that did were arguably very subpar. A few examples were Lacuna Coil's Karmacode and Angtoria's God Has A Plan For Us All.
Even worse, the first couple days of 2006 fans learned of the news Amaran broke up shortly after Christmas 2005. Amaran, even with though only 2 LP's existing in their catalogue, was arguably the most impressive of all the groups in the genre during that time. The year 2006 also brought news of the death of the lead vocalist for Elis.
2007 has fortunately been quite a different story though. Within the first week of 2007, Elis continued on after finding a new vocalist. Much the same, Nightwish found a replacement for the fantastic Tarja. As the year began, fans learned of the many release to come in 2007 from female fronted metal/hard rock bands. The list included some of today's premier female-fronted metal/rock bands: After Forever, Nightwish, Visions of Atlantis, Autumn, Elis, Echoes of Eternity, Edenbridge, The Agonist, In This Moment, Within Temptation, Epica, and Arch Enemy (you can throw Deadlock in there too).
Despite the excessive hype for the early releases for 2007, most failed to meet the expectations of the listeners. Sirenia (Nine Destinies and a Downfall) and Krypteria (Bloodangel's Cry) fall into this category, as did the early releases from Autumn (My New Time) and Elis (Griefshire). Moreover, summer albums from The Agonist (Only Once Imagined) and In This Moment (Beautiful Tragedy) seem somewhat poor, especially the latter.
Deadlock (Wolves) and Echoes of Eternity (Forgotten Goddess) were both excellent releases that fans hoped would reignite 2007's future releases. Both albums tended to lean more towards the heavy metal category, in part due to the melodic leads, as opposed to goth inspired hard rock.
Soon thereafter, Visions of Atlantis (Trinity) released a highly catchy album, especially in the first half of the album, when the guitar is more prevalent. The solid release from VOA surely put the pressure on Nightwish, who are scheduled to release their new album in September. The two bands are closely related with the symphonic, operatic goth metal style.
In 2006, we saw a new trend that many fans believed would continue over onto 2007; female vocalists doing guest spots on heavy metal albums. Fans were shocked to hear females singing small parts in several 2006 releases, most notably in Kataklysm (In the Arms of Devastation), Evergrey (Monday Morning Apocalypse) and In Flames (Come Clarity). Fans who assumed this new trend would continue into 2007 were correct. Listeners got guest female spots in albums released by Dragonland (Astronomy), Firewind (Allegiance) and Dark Tranquility (Fiction).
Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, releases from After Forever (After Forever), Epica (The Divine Conspiracy) and the aforementioned Nightwish (Dark Passion Play) will see the light of day. And from the early demos I've heard, I can hardly wait. In due time, it would not surprise me the least bit if 2007 is forever remembered as the year of this beautiful genre.
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