Author: Zsolt Némethy

Another amazing review!

17.01.2024

metal-digest.com, “The Normless Music Magazine” wrote an amazing review on Thanatology! 

„Zsolt Némthy’s one-man instrumental Metal project Darkwave bring an EP of chunky riffage, mellifluous keyboard stabs and pads and tonalities from here, there, and everywhere. This Hungarian multi-instrumentalist takes the concept of soundscaping further than almost any of his peers, and uses the furious guitar lead in lieu of vocals. You may argue that’s nothing new or extraordinary, but what there is sounds amazing (he self-produces too) and is quite beautifully written and played. Yes, there is a Proggy indulgent side, and a couple of tracks feel a little overlong. You’ll forgive that quite easily as overall this is a strong and entertaining EP.„

Check out the original post here: https://metal-digest.com/2024/01/17/darkwave-thanatology-ep/

A huge milestone!

03.01.2024

In a poll that received over 1,000 votes, readers of the excellent Metal Has No Borders webzine voted on their favorite metal releases of 2023. The voting started on the 18th of November and ended on Christmas Eve. It is my distinct pleasure to share the amazing news: Thanatology received Bronze Tier in the poll for Readers’ Metal Album of the Year!

Right now I’m speechless. It is not very often that a self-released album of an independent musician receives such an enormous recognition – and now I feel extremely honored and grateful! Let, therefore, my first thoughts fly to all those who believed in me and voted for Thanatology. Thank you for your enormous support: not just for voting on my latest release, but also for encouraging and helping me all along the way! Music is basically a special and intimate form of interpersonal communication – therefore it would be meaningless to create a sonic framework to transmit feelings and thoughts without the circle of those who listen to it. Thank you for keeping company and travelling with me on this amazing journey!

Also, thank Metal Has No Borders for the opportunity, and their appreciative words on my album: “”If King Crimson had formed in modern times with an instrumental agenda for prog-thrash, the result would be the right brain freakout titled Thanatology. Zsolt Némethy commands the one-man project, Darkwave, into the arena of symphonic, experimental, atmospheric, and neo-classical shred” (click here for the original entry on metalhasnoborders.com)!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

The long annual summary post

27.12.2023

I know that nobody reads long posts anymore, but I can’t become a person who I’m not: I am simply unable to put a text together out of five concise sentences. So, please bear with me – my usual long annual summary post will follow.

2023 has been a wild ride to me. I managed to release Thanatology, my third full-lenght album (regardless that Spotify notoriously keeps calling it an EP…). Believe me, I poured all my heart and soul – and also a huge amount of time, practice and effort – into it. I know that I’m some kind of a perfectionist – and perfectionism is often considered to be a two-edged sword. Besides composing, recording and programming all the tracks, I spent countless hours with learning how to mix and master a decent metal album. Not gonna lie, the result turned out much better than I expected – Thanatology sounds clearer and more natural compared to the first two releases. Still, there is always a place for further imporvements (says the perfectionist…) – so I decided to remix all my releases before re-issuing them on physical CDs in the near future. This is the most important activity that keeps me busy these days. So please keep an eye on this website and/or my socials if you’re interested in getting physical Darkwave goodies (CDs and – hopefully – some merch, too).

Thanatology received extremely good feedback: it was favorably reviewed not only by people who listened to it, but also by metal webzines – metalhasnoborders.com even listed it among the best albums of August, 2023! (Just a side note: to tell the truth, this was absolutely unexpected to me! My focus has always been on creating something meaningful and to connect with people who resonate with my musical experimentation. Therefore, the possibility of being mentioned together with important players of the modern metal scene never occured to me. To see Darkwave on the same page with Crypta, Angra or Brujeria is really an amazing honor!). Right now, Thanatology is on the third place in a poll at metalhasnoborders.com for the best metal release of 2023 (the final results will be announced in early January) – who could have imagined such an enormous success a couple of months ago? I certainly didn’t, that’s for sure.

To cut a long story short, it seems that Darkwave finally stepped through the shadow line, if you know what I mean. I could continue writing about the main events of 2023 for hours, but the release and favorable reception of my beloved Thanatology fills my thoughts with pride, joy and thankfulness. I – of course – have plans that will provide me enough work for at least a decade, but I already summarized them elsewhere. Therefore, let me finish this lenghty annual summary post with a word of gratitude. Darkwave is surrounded by the love and support of a circle of good friends and supporters, and I am extremely grateful for each and every one of you for being here and encouraging me! A musician without listeners would be nothing more than a bizarre manifestation of a dead end.

Thank you for being with me in 2023! I just have one simple request: please never forget about me! 2024 will be another fascinating year for Darkwave, and I can’t wait to see, what the future holds for us!

Sound evolution

03.12.2023

I’m just checking in to show you what I’m working on right now.

Earlier I promised substantially remixed versions of all three Darkwave albums – and I made quite good progress with the process. Let me show you the intro part of Aquila in three versions: the original recording from Hexapla, the remixed/remastered version from Hexapla-The Remasters, and the initial version of a brand new mix that already sounds substantially different from both earlier versions. It’s still far from the final result, but now that I’m mixing the drums, the whole song seems to sound somewhat more natural and thick to me (it’s still far from the final result: mixing the guitars, bass, etc. will be done in the near future).

Let me know in the comments, what you think!

I need your help!

22.11.2023

Please help me with a vote!

Metal Has No Borders shared their favorite metal releases of 2023. If you like what I do, please help me with voting on my latest album (Darkwave: Thanatology) as Best Metal Release of 2023, by following the link below, clicking on my album in the alphabetical list, then scrolling down and pressing “Vote”! The poll will close on the 24th of December.

I’m so proud that the editors included me in this prestigious company of amazing artists from all around the world – please help me to take one step further on this fascinating journey! Thank you for your support from the bottom of my heart!

Vote: Best Metal Release of 2023?

Breaking the silence

21.10.2023

It seems that nowadays I’m constantly in some kind of a reflective mood: I retrospect on everything I did in the past, while trying to figure out, how to go on. The first two and a half years of my musical journey have been centered around building up things: I put three albums together, worked on polishing my recording, mixing and mastering skills, and at the same time, I significantly improved my gear. Well, mission accomplished: my first three releases are out – you can listen to (or even download) them, if you like.

However, I feel like something is still missing. I realized that I’m sitting here in an isolated bubble while composing, recording and playing songs. Creating music alone is a blessing and a curse at the same time – and while I prefer to keep it this way, I desperately want to connect with you guys who listen to my stuff. If we accept that “music happens to be an art form that transcends language” (by Herbie Hancock – and who would disagree with that…?), then its most important capacity is to help people getting closer to each other by transmitting feelings and thoughts from one to another.

So, I think it’s time to relocate the emphasis from the current “composing-recording-mixing-promoting-repeat” cycle to something more personal. Last week I did a small survey on my Instagram, and it seems that you guys are interested in seeing me live. So… I’m working on going live on Twitch, YouTube, or any suitable streaming platforms. I still need some time to put it all together (I recently had a couple of dental surgeries, and my jaw is still not 100% suitable for longer conversations, and I also have to learn, how to use those platforms…), but my intentions are clear.

Stay tuned friends, because live sessions are coming in the near future!

The ultimate “why”…

04.10.2023

In a recent interview, the former Accept singer Udo Dirkschneider claimed that younger metal bands need a concept to stand out. While I fully agree on that (the question is always there, how one can differentiate him/herself from others in a world where approximately 100.000 songs are uploaded on Spotify on a daily basis…), it was not the main reason, why I finally – after much hesitation – wrote this post.

It’s actually quite hard to answer such questions in a few concise sentences. Why do I still bother to formulate such a “mission statement” to my music? The reason is simple: I want you guys to fully understand, what are my main motivations when composing and playing songs (apart from the pure love for music, of course). While I already wrote quite a lot about my personal motivations earlier, I never defined the exact conceptual framework that glues the small fragments together. Per definitionem, I would say that my aims are the followings:

  • My most obvious aim is to explore all those territories that lay between “modern” and “classical”. I firmly believe that all sorts of music belong to a continuum, and although I’m first and foremost a metal musician, I’m also free to implement elements from the vast legacy of past and present musical styles in order to express my feelings and thoughts in the most appropriate way.
  • However, if we believe that “The purpose of art is to make the unconscious conscious” (Richard Wagner: Opera and Drama (1851)), then even a musician has to be always accountable for his/her ultimate motivation for creating anything at all. In this regard, my answer is quite simple: music is the ultimate manifestation of my profound quest for meaning of all things. In other words, my music can be considered as some kind of a very personal soundtrack to my inner struggles, while I’m still wandering inside the vast labyrinth of the human existence. Well… in the “dark night of the soul“, as St. John of the Cross would have said somewhere in the sixteenth century Spain.

You might have already realized my interest for all things beyond the veil of visible reality in the denomination of my songs and albums. The track titles of “Hexapla” and “Missa Innominata” are clear references to the rich transcendental heritage of the Western civilization, while “Thanatology” refers to a scientific discipline that explores the physical termination of the human existence. To be absolutely honest, I have always been searching for the answer to the excellent question posed by G. W. Leibniz in 1714: Why is there something rather than nothing? (“Warum ist überhaupt etwas und nicht vielmehr nichts?” In: Die Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade) – and I think that our personal answers that we give to this fundamental question of metaphysics have a decisive role on our whole human existence.

Will you join me in this quest? Will you listen to this soundtrack to my trip in my own dark night of the soul?

Future plans

01.10.2023

Sometimes I feel like I’m writing these posts mainly to record, how time flies. Thanatology was released almost two months ago, and I must admit that it’s performing even better than I expected. Being an independent musician I have extremely limited resources to promote my stuff, but despite all these limitiations, I have visitors both on the streaming platforms and on this website. I’m extremely grateful for that!

Furthermore, I thought that it would be useful and informative if I provided you a timeline for the next few months’ planned activities – just to show you, what are the main goals I want to achieve. Well, here are the plans:

  • First and foremost I’m working on substantially remixing all three Darkwave albums. The reason why I’m doing this is quite simple: I want to improve the sound for CD printing. Yeah, that’s right: I want to release all three Darkwave albums on physical CDs! This will probably be the hardest job I’ve ever done: I need to remix and remaster everything, re-record bass tracks for Hexapla and Missa Innominata and design full CD booklets. Also, I have to find a manufacturer who can print physical CDs (with cover art and booklet) for a reasonable price and find out, how to promote and distribute these physical copies.
  • Secondly, I already started translating my lyrics from Hungarian to English. It proved to be a shockingly demanding job: translating poems to a different language requires time, inner peace and a special state of mind. But I understood that I shouldn’t omit vocals from my music anymore – not just because I constantly get feedback from people who explicitly request it, but rather because I also feel like I should make these songs to a more wholesome experience by supporting the emotional content with words. I must admit that I still have no vocalist in sight, but I’ll work on the problem once the lyrics and the vocal patterns get ready.
  • As always, I started working on something new. To be honest, I haven’t even stopped writing music for a second: it seems that for me it’s impossible to take a break from composing and practicing. And I think it is the normal way of doing things with passion, dedication and love.
  • And on the long run, I plan to go live online. I really miss direct, face-to-face interactions with people who are interested in my music, so I decided that once I’ll get ready with my remixing activities, I go live on one of the streaming platforms. I have no idea, how does these things work (to be honest, I’ve never ever streamed live), but I’ll find out the ways and possibilities soon enough.

Wel, these are the plans. I always repeat it, but it’s true and I mean it: I’m extremely grateful for your presence, support and love. Being an independent musician means being alone most of the time – no bandmates, no live shows with encouraging faces, no frequent feedback. But I feel like a small, supporting circle of friends started to develop around Darkwave, and it’s extremely important to me.

Thank you.