A huge milestone!

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!

I need your help!

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!

On feedback, encouragement and art

It’s been almost one month since Missa Innominata came out, and I feel like writing a short summary on this exciting period of time.

In contrast to the previous one, I decided to promote this release on various online platforms like Facebook or Instagram, and this little promotion campaign resulted in a rise in numbers of streams, listens and followers. I, however, seriously think that there is one single thing, which is even more important than the numbers regarding the reception of my album(s): the direct feedback of the community – family, friends, music enthusiasts, followers, and in general everyone, who feel like connected in any way to me or to my music. Therefore, first of all I would like to thank all of you who dedicated your precious time to my previous and recent albums and gave them a listen – I really appreciate your support! I’m extremely grateful for your comments, likes, reposts or any kind of your feedback: please, always be aware that without this constant encouragement it would have been very hard for me to maintain my original impetus and stay focused and motivated. Thank you for being here and walk this path with me!

Also, (as many of you know) SoundCloud provides a great opportunity to comment, repost and numerically rate songs for everyone – so besides the aforementioned “direct” ways of getting feedback from people visiting my website, subscribing to my Spotify or YouTube channels, or checking my Bandcamp page, this is a great opportunity for getting further feedback from random listeners, too. And I must admit that reading these comments was also a heartwarming experience – not to mention the overall scores of my songs that are currently varying between 8.5 and 8.9 out of the maximum 10. All in all – at least based on these initial reactions from supporters and random listeners – Missa Innominata performs well; and this is something that makes me feel grateful, happy, and – I must admit… – proud, too.

Art (at least how I see it…) is a bi-directional process: l’art pour l’art (at least in its purest form) is something unacceptable for me. Painting a picture or writing a sonata just for the sake of the creative process itself seems to me somewhat insufficient, somewhat out of focus. Without doubting the fundamental value of finding joy in creative processes, I see art basically as a powerful tool to transfer feelings, emotions and messages from person to person: a channel connecting people in a very intimate and emotional way. When words fail, music speaks – and in this context it can sometimes be the only chance for us to transcend our limitations and finiteness. Music gives us a chance to fight a heroic struggle against the separation of human from human, and a weapon to combat the sometimes so evident overall sadness of the mortal human existence. That’s why it’s always so touching to see your visits and likes on my pages and read your comments: these simple and very important signs of your presence are those momentums that constantly remind me that I’m not alone on this journey of transmitting feelings through the channels of metal music. There are always people “on the other end of the line”, and my messages (it may sound weird to mention “messages” in the context of instrumental music, but still: my messages are my feelings that I try to express in my musical creations) are heard.

Thank you for being here in our little, but constantly growing community. Thank you for inspiring me and giving me the chance to create and transmit musical messages that would otherwise remain pointless, locked inside the hard drive of a computer in my home.