ParaBlue? Evans Belle?

There may or may not be several other things I get into tonight, but I want to start off with a little bit of music talk.  I used to be huge into discovering new music and was completely excited when I stumbled into something that was just ungodly awesome.  That desire is nowhere near as strong anymore.  Sure, I still find my way into new things now and again, but it’s become a rarer and rarer thing over the past couple of years.  It’s funny, too, because stumbling is pretty much the way I found every single one of my favorite bands.  And there’s a definite hierarchy to my favorites.  And I differentiate between an awesome group and an awesome CD.  An awesome group puts out multiple awesome CDs.  For instance, Breaking Benjamin is an awesome group because they’ve put out 3 fucking amazing CDs.  Angtoria, on the other hand, I can’t call an awesome group because they’ve only ever made one CD.  It’s fucking ridiculously amazing, but it’s still only one CD.

As for the hierarchy of favorites…I say it that way about them because the order can change depending on my mood.  Mostly, my favorites are as follows (in no particular order):  Breaking Benjamin, Cold, Static-X, Staind, Kittie, Seether, Hootie and the Blowfish, Evanescence, Disturbed, and the trigger for all this musical talk, Evans Blue.  Ah, Evans Blue…  When I found out they’d dumped their singer, Kevin Matisyn, I was practically heartbroken.  No joke, it was that painful.  This was the best band to come around in several years when I first heard them in 2006.  Their first CD, The Melody and the Energetic Nature of Volume, was goddamn amazing.  It’s an absolute classic.  There isn’t a weak track on it.  My own favorite sign of a true classic CD is that I’ll periodically become obsessed with a different song upon further listens.  There have been times when I’ve been obsessed with each song on that CD.  And don’t even get me started on the cover of Sarah McLachlan’s "Possession."  Ri-goddamn-diculous.  Then, only about a year later, they followed it up with the equally amazing The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends.  Again, truly an awesome CD.  What made them so great (besides the obvious things like lyrical content and overall sound) was the interplay of Kevin’s voice with the music.  His style of singing was (I don’t want to call it distinctive, because I don’t think it is) basically a perfect match with the music.  I had always suspected that Kevin was responsible for most of what it was that made the band great.  He was the primary songwriter, afterall.  After hearing the latest single from the new version of Evans Blue (with their new singer), it’s completely obvious that Kevin was the driving creative force behind the first two CDs.  And, to make it worse, there’s the demos Kevin released of the planned third Evans Blue album, The Stage is Set for the Revival of an Anthem.  There are several more fucking awesome songs in there.  So, of course, they’ve all been tossed aside by the new version of the band.  I’ve been thus far unimpressed with what they’ve thrown out there with the new singer (who just isn’t all that great).  BUT….

Come to find out, Kevin Matisyn has a new band, Parabelle (stated on their MySpace page to mean "close to or resembling beautiful."  And you know what?  This is the sound I was missing from the new Evans Blue.   The songs they’ve got loaded up on that page sound almost exactly like the previous incarnation of Evans Blue.  So it looks like I should be adding Parabelle to the list of favorites.  A, luckily for my favoriting criteria, their first CD is set to be a double album, so I can immediately slot them as an awesome band as opposed to just an awesome CD.  Heh heh.  I love loopholes.

Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox:  "In My Soul" by Parabelle, "Gone Again" by (The Original Version of) Evans Blue (this song is one of the demos Kevin released after being dumped out….it’s basically a completed track and it’s goddamn awesome), and "I’m Calling" by Angtoria

And, since I’m feeling kinda lazy now that’s it’s working towards 4AM, I think I’m just gonna stop myself here.  Sometimes over the weekend, I think it’s time for me to be due a new entry in the Comicry series.  Got lots of stuff to cover.  ‘Til then….

Sayonara.