Oke.. continuing on my current obsession with gothic-metal music.
Been listening to the Steam of Passion album more and more, and its really starting to grow on me.
I have been digging a little deeper into what this band is all about.
Now it turns out that Stream of Passion is project number X for Arjen Lucassen. This guy seems to be a serial musical entrepeneur and seemingly a rather big deal in the Dutch gothic-metal scene. His is mostly known for his Ayreon Rock Opera albums which feature a dazzling array of guest artists and performers. He seems to occasionally branch off to do more specific musical endeavors, such as, in this case, creaing a band and a musical style, and an album, around in this case Marcela Bovio, the lead singer of ‘Stream of Passion’, but who’s main band appears to be Elfonia, a Mexican goth/metal/progressive group, which in turn seems to have grown out of a band called Hydra.
Few days ago, the Stream of Passion website was addorned with a forum, and I noticed something interesting happened. Both Elfonia and the Ayreon main site already have a large groupy community posting on the site forums, with band members themselves regurlarly posting alongside the fans. These two groups now seem to have merged on this new Stream of Passion forum, which is rather interesting to see. Marcela herself seems to be almost an admin on the forum, which just struck me as really funny and cool. I wonder if that personal touch is gonna stay long though, considdering they are getting some major meansteam airtime with this album. Where are the hoards of silly fan-kiddies that are bound to invade the forum? Am I one of them? :D
Having really gotten into the album now, I have no choice but to buy it. And extra motivational factor is that though stuff like the message board, you get so close to the actual artists, that you wanna be able to post their without a guilty concience. I know the band members will read my post, and I feel I owe it to them to give them the respect they deserve by buying the album. But being just a post away from directly communicating with those very people really helps drive that point home.
Of course the best place to buy the album in this case, is from Arjens online store itself. They will make the most return from any purchase via that site, cause its basicly them themselves.. or Arjen at least. Isn’t the internet great! This is the kind of relationship I would want with a band, this has nothing to do with the mainstream commercialism of the major record labels and their pre-produces plastic boy-bands.. this is the real deal, dealing with the people themselves.