Discoveries on the Horizon

I love discovering new bands. Sometimes they become favorites and sometimes I'm less impressed, but you never know until you try. Several of the new discoveries I've made have been by buying cheap, used CD's from the local new-and-used record store, Ernie November. They are usually CD's that would never be sold at any normal entertainment store in my area, but the strangest things end up at Ernie for $5 or less. One of my absolute favorite albums was acquired this way. This past week, I bought two new (used) CD's there.

The first one that caught my eye was a band called Evemaster, and the album is called Wither. I have never heard of this band before, but I liked the album art (hey, sometimes that's all it takes!) Looking at the back of the CD, I noticed the copyright was held by a record company in Phoenix, AZ. Being from Arizona, I wondered if this was a local AZ band I hadn't heard of. I did a quick Google search and it turns out they are actually a metal band from Finland. Now, most metal from Finland is somewhere in between "Pretty decent" and "Friggin' awesome" so this CD went into my proverbial shopping cart.

The second one I ended up with was Austria's Visions of Atlantis, and their 2011 album Delta. This is a band name I recognized, though I wasn't sure why. I think it is simply because they've toured with Epica. I have never heard their music, but my Google search tells me they have been compared with other bands I like or can at least tolerate, so I figured it was worth a shot!

If either of these albums strikes my fancy, I will probably be posting a review or simply a post full of excited raving. In the meantime, I'd like to encourage you all to support your local record stores, because the people who own and work at them are generally pretty cool, and you never know what discoveries you might make!