Staying in Europe; This time with big hair, symphonic orchestral choir backed operatic female singer led metal band Epica.
As with Nightwish, Edenbridge and Therion before it, Epica arrived in my life during a scour of Usenet for interesting new music based on them appearing on a compilation and by how much people protested about me playing the music.
Tight leather pants wearing flame headed Simone Simons compliments (in the loosest sense of the word) grunt vocalist and guitarist Mark Jansen in a band backed by choir and orchestra playing predominantly some variation of symphonic heavy metal akin to other European, Scandinavian and Dutch bands of the time.
For some (usually long haired youths with confidence issues, tattoos and bad facial hair) the presence of someone like Simons on posters, album covers and Youtube videos tends to encourage popularity even if the majority of your music is shite. See Within Temptation for example. Sadly, in my case, it isn’t lack of tattoos and bad facial hair that puts me off, however it is age, sensibility and the loss of friends that has brought me to the point where I listen to this music and think: “WTF is this shite I’m listening to?”
Consign to Oblivion? Consign to the bin more like.
Stegzy's Music Project 
Into Temptation: The Best of Gothic Rock — Various Artists [#637]
by stegzyWhen the much talked about Great Internet MP3 Download Free-for-All of the mid to late noughties hit, I was trying to develop my musical tastes in the dark elven forests of gothdom. As long-term readers may remember, one of the many tactics I use to discover music is to download compilations to figure out which bands I like the sound of.
One of the first compilations I downloaded was called Into Temptation. It had some really good songs on it from bands like Nightwish, Within Temptation and Ayreon. Sadly, I lost the first version due to file and disk corruption and, despite repeated attempts, was unable to locate the version I had. But with acts like Nightwish, Within Temptation, Ayreon, Sirenia, The Gathering, Lacuna Coil AND Tristania….it will do.
Complete tracklisting for this compilation:
1 –Within Temptation – Ice Queen
2 – After Forever – My Pledge Of Allegiance #1 (The Sealed Fate
3 –Nightwish – Ever Dream
4 – The Gathering – In Motion #1
5 – Tristania – Wormwood
6 – Ayreon – My House On Mars
7 –Within Temptation – Our Farewell
8 – Ambeon – Cold Metal
9 –Lacuna Coil – Senzafine
10 –After Forever – Emphasis
11–Trail Of Tears – Driven Through The Ruins
12 – Sirenia – Meridian
13 – Beseech – Between The Lines
14 – Therion – O Fortuna
And if that list doesn’t get you running for the Kleenex you’re obviously listening to the wrong genre.
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After Forever Ambeon Ayreon best of compilations Gathering (The) gothic Lacuna Coil metal Progressive Metal Sirenia Symphonic Rock Therion Trail of Tears Tristania within temptation