What’s “Thanatology” about?

Thanatology is a scientific discipline that examines death from many perspectives, including physical, ethical, spiritual, medical, sociological, and psychological. It emerged out of the “death awareness movement” that started in the 1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.” (source).

Despite its title, my upcoming album has nothing to do with depression or sadness. This album has nothing to do with gloomy feelings or fear of death, too. This album doesn’t even intend to transmit negativity. On the contrary: Thanatology is my very special diary that tells you in six songs, how I slowly became aware of the fact that the time – my time – is running out. I try to present a multifaceted and very emotional picture of this deeply spiritual journey.

The opening track (“The Last Wasted Down“, referring to the realization of fragility and brevity of life) starts with an oriental flute theme. The sounds of a flute and a piano combined with progressive metal riffs lead to another oriental guitar motif, then subsequently into a faster part with tight blastbeats.The second track (“Stepping Through The Shadow Line“) is intentionally two-faced: it combines brutality with orchestrated melodies, a thrash-based speed with a funeral hymn-like gloomy bridge. “Necronym” (the name of or a reference to a person who has died – an obvious link to all things I’ve left behind to have time and dedication to do new ones) starts with an acoustic, jazzy part followed by some unconventional melodies upon a monotonous, pulsating riff and a piano-based, gloomy middle part. Following a Voivod-like bridge, the song ends up in the original riff packed with synthwave fills. Then there immediately comes the orchestral into of the fourth track (“Legacy Of The Worthless“) with tons of guitars tuned in drop D and some synthwave support. The fifth song entitled “All Shall Perish” intends to be some kind of a recognition of our own mortality, signified with the ringing bells in its intro. Then comes a part of slow brutality supported by a brass orchestra and followed by a jazzy middle part with pianos and one of the fastest moments of the wole album in the shape of an old-school thrash riff. The closing track (“Farewell Before Sunset“) is again a thrash metal-based song combined with a melody that I find very emotional.

Well, that’s basically the structure, the logic and the message of my third album that will be released exactly on the second birthday of my debut material Hexapla, on the 3rd of August 2023. I can’t wait to show you the results of the hard work of more than one year! I hope you guys will enjoy the final product!

Album cover art!

Despite that most of you probably already saw it, still I think it’s time to officially unveil the cover art for my brand-new album Thanatology!

As always, the cover photo was done by my talented, long-time friend, Dávid Ujhelyi. We’ve been friends for decades, so besides my music, he also knows the person behind it. Consequently, his cover art concept with a blend of dark artistry and clear-out symbolism serves as a visual gateway not only into the sonic realm that awaits the listener, but also to the deeper layers of my true self – a kaleidoscope of emotions, stories, and experiences that will hopefully ignite your imagination and resonate within your soul. Let me thank him again wholeheartedly for this amazing piece of art!

Stay tuned friends, as Thanatology will be released on the 3rd of August!

Announcing: Thanatology – available August 3rd!

Dear Friends,

I am thrilled to announce the forthcoming release of my new album Thanatology on the 3rd of August 2023!

Thanatology represents the culmination of countless hours spent refining the sound, exploring new sonic territories, and pouring my heart and soul into every single note. With each song, I try to embark you on a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts, not only by mixing the rawness of Hexapla and the more complex song structures of Missa Innominata, but also by challenging certain musical conventions and orchestrating a symphony of diverse influences that hopefully fuse together to a memorable experience.

Stay tuned to darkwavemetal.com, my Bandcamp page and my social media channels for more updates and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the making of Thanatology! I can’t wait to share the album with you, who have supported me throughout all my struggles and successes of this musical journey. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to each and every one of you for your unwavering support!

If you want to presave the album (Spotify, Apple Music), you can do it by clicking here: https://ffm.to/thanatology!

Please, mark your calendars for August 3rd, and get ready to listen to Thanatology!

Stay tuned and keep rocking!

Zsolt

My guitar rig

I just realized that I never posted a decent summary on my guitar rig. Here and there I uploaded some information, but the whole stuff has never been collected so far. Well, it’s probably because I don’t use a proper guitar rig: I have five guitars, but my small amp (actually a Line6 Spider V20 guitar combo) is used only for practicing purposes, while everything you hear on the records is purely digital.

First of all, I use two guitars most of the time: for riffs I prefer my modified ESP LTD EC-256 (FM See-Thru Black Cherry Sunburst) with two high output Seymour Duncan pickups (Pegasus and Sentient). This small singlecut, fixed bridge guitar equipped with Elixir Optiweb (010″/046″) strings is capable to produce the fattest and most brutal sounds when needed. However, for guitar solos and experimentation I use my Jackson JS32Q Dinky DKA (AH Transparent Green Burst) superstrat with a Jackson-licenced Floyd Rose tremolo (to be honest, I’m not a frequent tremolo user, but sometimes it can be quite useful if you have one on your guitar). Also, I’m in love with the neck profile of this instrument (it’s actually the Speed Neck from the Jackson’s Soloist series with a shape somewhere between the “C” and the “D” neck profiles: a fast and comfortable one!) – that’s why I use it pretty often, despite the constant struggle of correctly tuning a Floyd Rose-equipped guitar. For the acoustic parts I play my Fender Redondo Player dreadnought electroacoustic guitar with a comfy “C”-shaped neck profile and a built-in Fender-exclusive CD-1 Fishman pickup/preamp system, while for the bass parts I use a budget-friendly, but solid LTD B-10 bass. And as a bonus, I have a very old friend in the family too: my old Harley Benton S-620 TR Rock Series is still with me, although I don’t use it too often anymore. I keep it mainly out of nostalgic reasons: when I moved abroad and back I had to sell my instruments and stop playing the guitar for a couple of years – and this old Harley Benton was my first guitar, when I came back and had the chance to play again.

And now comes the boring part. Everything that comes out of my guitars is routed into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Generation audio interface, which directly sends signals into a Mac computer equpped with a Steinberg Cubase Digital Audio Workstation (I still use Elements 12.0 but in the long run I think I’ll have to invest into an upgrade to the Artist version, due to its higher versatility and premium features). The guitar sounds are produced in one of my two virtual amp-and-effects processors that turn the computer into a fully customizable guitar/bass rig. Until now I mainly used Positive Grid’s Bias FX2, but recently I started to quite heavily use the Archetype Nolly plugin from Neural DSP – both are great plugins and I plan to use them in a parallel way, according to my current needs.

An old song in new shape

A couple of days ago I asked you on my Instagram page, whether you think it’s worth to invest a lot of energy into remixing my old songs, using all the new skills and technical capabilities that I have now, years later than these old songs’ original release dates. And you were so kind as to say YES, encouraging me to keep continuing these efforts.

Well, this is what I meant when I said that I want to put these old songs in a completely new shape. I’m still working on them, but it’s like a teaser below.

Enjoy and please give me some feedback! I desperately need your opinion on that – thanks so much in advance!

https://darkwave-metal.bandcamp.com/track/aquila

It’s Missa Innominata’s first birthday!

It’s always hard to start writing these kind of posts – not because I don’t know, what to share with you, but rather because there are too many things at the same time on my mind. So, instead of trying to “find my voice”, let me jump immediately into the middle of things: Missa Innominata, my second full-lenght album became one year old today!

Missa Innominata represents an important milestone for me. Not just because of its concept and multicolored musical approaches (back then I was in a mood for heavily experimenting with various tonal and emotional elements) but also its sound and way of production. I don’t say that it turned out to be perfect in this regard (not at all!), but I do say that it was created with the intention to reach the best achievable quality both on the songwriting and music production side. I always used to say that composing and making music is a constant journey towards an ideal, never-achievable musical perfection: and Missa Innominata is definitely a significant step for me in this continuous learning process. While I internalized the basics of music making and sound production during the recording, mixing and mastering of my first album, here I already had at least a general idea on how to do these things better than before. Compared to the rawness of Hexapla, Missa Innominata turned out to be a less brutal, but more sophisticated and multilayered album with various emotional aspects and faces.

Let me tell you that I’m extremely proud of this album. I really poured my heart into these six tracks, trying to condensate multiple feelings and thoughts in the shape of a wide range of musical approaches. Besides the joy of creating (hopefully quality) music, however, I learned a couple of lessons too, while creating this album. The most important lesson was that I realized that I need professional help to further refine my recording, mixing and mastering skills. There is always a point where one has to realize his own limitations – and my most obvious limitation was my instinctive way of mixing and mastering my own music. I needed guidance on how to evolve. Hopefully the sound quality of the next album will witness those enormous efforts that I put into learning how to mix music.

Anyway, it’s almost midnight here, and I just wanted to share my joy with you guys before the day ends: happy birthday to the second Darkwave album!

The new album is almost ready!

This is the post that should have already been written weeks ago. I should have shared my joy with you guys earlier: the recording and mixing of the new album is finally finished!

The whole process is not 100% complete yet, though. I still have to spend a couple of days with mastering and fine-tuning the tracks. Also, I must upload the result somewhere to distribute the new album on the main streaming platforms, and it will probably take an additional couple of weeks. But first I must put aside everything for one or two weeks, in order to have a chance to re-listen to the new songs with “fresh ears”. My brain and auditory system are already saturated with the constant sound-overload: I must double-check the tracks again from a certain “distance”, to identify any possible weak points.

What to expect from these new songs? First of all, I think I succeeded to work out a significantly improved, clearer and more robust sound. Although it’s not easy for a home studio to compete with “real” studios quality-wise, I think this time I managed to do a quite decent job. The new songs sound fatter, darker and more compact than the previous ones (someone whose opinion I rely on so much even said to me the other day that the new material “sounds very confident”). Also, I tried to keep the new songs in a more compact shape than I did in the lengthy and multifaceted compositions of Missa Innominata, while maintaining the raw and uncontrolled energy that was characteristic to Hexapla. Furthermore, I applied either classical or sometimes even more experimental harmonies that seemed to me to represent many of my feelings and thoughts that were inside my heart and head while working on these tracks. Therefore, the new songs intentionally incorporate a wide variety of emotions ranging from distraction, sadness and bitterness to joy, grandeur and hope. I really can’t wait to show you the result of almost one year’s hard work and I do hope that you will like these songs!

Also, let me share with you the title and tracklist of the new album. The album will be entitled “Thanatology”, which is “the scientific study of death and the losses brought about as a result” (quote from Wikipedia). I have been meditating a lot about the “big questions” of human existence lately, and many of the books I read was somewhat concerned about the ultimate meaning of life and death, too. That really made a deep impact on the way of my thinking, and this is what you can see represented in the tracklist, too:

  1. The Last Wasted Dawn
  2. Stepping Through The Shadow Line
  3. Necronym
  4. Legacy Of The Worthless
  5. All Shall Perish
  6. Farewell Before Sunset

Stay tuned friends, because more news are about to come!

Another short video teaser

Hey everyone,

This is just a small excerpt from one of the new songs for you. It’s neither short or long (and definitely doesn’t sound like final), but I hope you can catch a glimpse from the general feeling of the new album. And yes, I was bored and did some experimentation with the video filters – that’s why the hard light and black cuts lol…

Do you like it? Let me know it in the comments!

A short sneak peek into the new songs

I’ve been working on new songs for a while. Although I’m still in the recording/mixing phase (for me, these things somehow always intermingle…), let me share with you guys a very short teaser.

I know that it’s still very preliminary, but let me know in the comments, what you think!

Sicksense guitar solo challenge

This is something I really wanted to share with you guys!

The amazing Sicksense invited guitar players from all over the world to recreate Billy Grey’s excellent guitar solo from their “Fools Tomorrow” single. Well, just for the record: this is my attempt for this amazing challenge!

For the original version of the song, check out the band’s new single “Fools tomorrow“! Or, you can find my version below! I hope you guys will like it!