About 2 weeks ago I moved to Los Angeles, CA to live, work and escape cold weather. It’s been sunny and hot the whole time I’ve been here, but for some reason I can’t get enough grimness into my ears. Funeral doom and mid-paced black metal don’t really fit the abundance of palm [...]

As I professed in an earlier dark dose post — I thoroughly enjoyed Before the Dawn’s album “4:17am”. My anticipation rode high for the follow-up album, “The Ghost” which was released earlier this year. This anticipation lessened slightly as I heard musical mastermind Tuomas Saukkonen had kicked out all members of the band at some point. Obviously I don’t know how much this move had impacting the final result, but unfortunately I was fairly disappointed when I finally heard it.

Every once and a while I am overcome by a strong yearning to hear a song I haven’t heard in ages. It’s almost always a song which made an important impression on me at some point in my life. About a year ago it was “Rock me Amadeus” by Falco, which I recall as being obsessed with around age 6. Sure, that song is somehow still fun to me, but a recent yearning recalled a much more serious song. You probably know it — “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard another band more directly influenced by Opeth (or any other band) than Memfis. Usually such statements would imply my distaste for a band due to this lack of originality or creativity — but this is not the case with Memfis. Sure, certain riffs or moments in songs seem directly pulled from various Opeth songs (listen to the beginning of “The Moor” by Opeth, then listen to the beginning of “Cover it Up” by Memfis — many more examples could be given if the time was taken) — but I’m actually able to somewhat overlook this. The similarities also can be found in their particular mix of clean and death vocals, but again I overlook it. The songs even flow from one into another not unlike “My Arms Your Hearse”, but still I overlook this. Why? To put it simply, Memfis are fantastic musicians, the song writing is top notch and the end result is nothing short of completely professional.