| CD REVIEW MaYaN |
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Band : MaYaN This project was started in early 2010 by Mark Jansen of Epica (where he plays guitar, writes quite a bit of the lyrics, and provides grunt vocals), together with guitarist Sander Gommans and keyboardist/ screaming singer Jack Driesen (both formerly of After Forever – which, by the way, was originally founded by Jansen and Gommans...the latter also wrote and produced his project HDK's 2009 album System Overload and was the additional lead guitarist on the Kiske/ Somerville album). Their aim: to create a real heavy combination of technical Death Metal with Jack's trademark Symphonic arrangements. However, after writing some music together, Gommans could no longer dedicate more time on the project, and therefore Frank Schiphorst (see Symmetry, Marcel Coenen & Friends, Christmas Metal Symphony) was asked whether he was interested in filling the gap...which he sure was! Upon Schiphorst's joining things started to move real fast with new songs popping up in no time. With the project evolving so positively, the trio decided to turn it into a band and really go for it. So, enlisted were drummer/ grunter Ariën van Weesenbeek (formerly of God Dethroned, session drums for Delain's debut album, session drums for HDK, now with Epica), guitarist Isaac Delahaye (also a former God Dethroned member, and now also with Epica) and bassist Jeroen Paul Thesseling (of Pestilence and Obscura fame). The music asking for clean vocal parts, some brainstorming was done which resulted in a collaboration with guest singers Floor Jansen (ReVamp, ex-After Forever), Simone Simons (Epica), Henning Basse (Sons Of Seasons) and Italian Opera singer Laura Macri. Demos were sent out to Nuclear Blast first, the first label the band members could think of suitable enough to release their album, and as you can see label and band came to a deal. So off to Sascha Paeth's Gate Studios in Germany the band went to record their stuff. After the recordings Thesseling found out his schedule was simply too busy to be able to give MaYaN the full attention it deserved for the live shows that would soon ensue, so he was replaced by former Sun Caged and former Delain bassist Rob van der Loo. The album now, is a pure delight for any fan of the more melodic types of Death Metal. To be quite correct, it needs to be said that in some of the tracks at the beginning of the album the “Symphonic” part of the music is actually rather Philharmonic, the difference being that in Symphonic music there's no copper horn blowers! But that is really the only “negative” comment I have here, because the music overall combined with the mixed vocal stylings is a highly delightful hybrid which the listener feels compelled to hear out from the first notes of the album until the end! And all one needs to do in order to get convinced of that is to listen to the duo of album teasers and full-length version of the song “Drown The Demon” which the band posted at (www.) myspace.com/mayanofficial. As to how the band will manage playing all the songs without all their guests vocalists on the stage, that will remain a mystery until the band starts performing (actually, they've already presented their material on stages in Holland, Germany, and Belgium). Meanwhile, all we can do to do this band credit is to nominate its album into our year-lists! 98/100 Tony. |