Category: News

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.

Album of the month – honorary mentions

06.09.2023

In case you haven’t seen it on my Instagram or Facebook: I really felt honored by the post of Metal Has No Borders, an excellent website posting metal music from all around the world. They nominated three amazing albums (the recent releases of Sheperds Reign, a folk metal band from New Zealand, Crypta, a Brazilian death-thrash formation, and Cunabula, a Lithuanian post-metal band) as albums of the month (August, 2023). And the editors decided to list Thanatology among the honorable mentions! It’s such an honor to be in the company of such excellent metal bands!

Look, how they summarized the essence of Darkwave: “One-man project led by Zsolt Némethy, Darkwave is the zany hypothetical of if Dream Theater‘s John Petrucci was thrown into the arena of symphonic / experimental shred.”

I’m really speechless. Thank you so much, Metal Has No Borders!

Spotify results

31.08.2023

It seems that Thanatology performs quite well on Spotify. Look at those numbers below!

Never forget that YOU made it possible. And please always remember, how grateful I am for your constant support and encouragement! Thank you so much, my friends!

An amazing review on Thanatology

27.08.2023

The Italian AllaroundMetal wrote an excellent review on Thanatology. You can either check out the original (Italian) text here, or read the English translation below. Thank you AllaroundMetal for the kind words and encouragement!

Darkwave, instrumental metal not for everyone

“Get comfortable and of the right disposition of spirit, shut out the world from yourself, turn off the lights and let the tide of notes of “Thanatology” – the third album by the Hungarian project called Darkwave – wash over you. Behind the nick name is the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Zsolt Némethy who started in 2021 with the full-length “Hexapla,” moving on the following year to the second album “Missa Innominata” – all self-produced (like this new record), unfortunately available only in digital versions, and unfortunately unknown to us. Némethy’s music is extremely peculiar, a kind of progressive with a few moments close to thrash, but also with countless references to other musical genres (from neoclassical, to fusion, passing even through some touches of Venetian rondo!), all entirely instrumental; it is as if Mekong Delta (I think the Hungarian musician’s main influence) met Cynic, Voivod and Anacrusis, resulting in a highly alienating, but extremely peculiar and definitely original music. The whole thing, as you may have guessed, is by no means easy-listening, primarily because instrumental metal normally is not, but also and especially because this kind of prog is anything but easy to understand and approach. That’s why at the beginning of the review I recommended you to be in the right state of mind, otherwise it’s easy for this music to blow our brains out because of its complexity and particularity. Certainly, to play in this way, one must have an uncommon technique, but technique alone is not enough because one must also know how to “compose,” one must always have the “song-structure” well in mind – and sometimes the good Némethy lets himself go, probably because of his desire to overdo it. The songwriting, in fact, could be improved and above all be more concise and effective: it is not by chance that the best song (“Legacy of the Worthless”) is also the shortest. Nevertheless, “Thanatology” is a record of remarkable quality, in which the lack of a singer is not even felt (the guitar takes care of it!). The Darkwave project would deserve much more attention, because at this level there are few, very few bands around the world!”

The end of an era or a new beginning…?

20.08.2023

Thanatology has been out for more than two weeks.

While I must admit that 2023 hasn’t been an easy year for me, this release proved to be one of the few highlights. I spent countless hours with composing, recording, mixing and fine-tuning Thanatology – and now that I look back on these laborious times, I feel like each and every hour I spent with this release was worth the effort. Considering all my limitations and the hardships all along the way of creating this album, I’m more than happy with the final result. Also, promotion is going better compared to my previous records – I had the chance to give interviews (you can check them by clicking here or here) and present Thanatology to a wider audience in the metal community. Taken all these results together, I really have no reason to complain.

There is still one thing that bothers me. This one thing always keeps coming up during conversations, and to be absolutely honest, I had been contemplating a lot on it before – regardless the feedback I got. And this particular thing is the lack of lyrics and vocals in my songs. Without the intention to repeat what I already wrote on instrumental music before, I still believe that instrumental compositions have the potential to transmit feelings and emotions without channeling the listeners’ thoughts in one pre-defined direction. Instrumental music leaves place for imagination and free interpretation. Still, at the same time it loses something by not utilizing the power of words that might make the music even more suggestive. As Iris Goessens wrote in one of her Instagram stories: “if the vocals don’t kick ass, your listeners are not gonna care about the heaviest riffs in the universe, and fasterthanmaxverstappenblastbeats you guys came up with“. And this is something that I want to focus on, while meditating on the concept of my next release.

Because I’m already working on that. And believe me, it’s really not that easy: first and foremost I’m a guitar player, and I create music through inventing and playing guitar harmonies, melodies and riffs. Still, I don’t want to let half of the story being untold by narrowing my musical compositions exclusively to guitar riffs and solos. After all, my musical experimentation started with creating lyrics… Thus, finally I came to the conclusion that Thanatology will probably signify the end of an era in my musical journey: it will likely remain my last instrumental album. I can’t promise anything, though: I still don’t know vocalists who could bring my vocal ideas into life. But I’ll do my best to find someone in order to push the next Darkwave release even further, onto a completely new level.

In this regard, Thanatology is a serious milestone for me: it signifies both the end of an era, and a new beginning.