Rock music and dark fantasy fiction!

[EternalStarLight]

I'm an avid reader and rocker out to any thing that's Rock-N-Roll! I love symphonic metal (Nightwish, Within Temptation, Epica, Leaves' Eyes) as well as new rock like Shinedown, Adelitas Way, and Nickleback... but my true affection is going to always be with Disturbed :) I love reading and in my spare time nothing is as wonderful as a dark urban fantasy woven with great attention to detail and plot-- I love the Mercy Thompson novels by Patricia Briggs and the Zodiac Series by Vickie Pettersson.

Anyone have any amazing books/music to share that they've adored their whole life or just recently discovered? Share!

[Lilias]

If you haven't yet discovered the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher, go hunting. Now.

(They go particularly well with Blind Guardian. ;))

[Hemingway]

If you like Epica then, surely - surely - you like Kamelot? I may have to give Ghost Opera a listen. It's the perfect music for dark and rainy fall night.

Perhaps second best is Iced Earth, specifically their Horror Show album, but also The Melancholy EP. The latter has a very, very good cover of Judas Priest's The Ripper.

[yobo]

If you haven't yet discovered the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher, go hunting. Now.

(They go particularly well with Blind Guardian. ;))

Anything that goes well with Blind Guardian has to be good.  ;D

[gaggedLouise]

Slightly a side track - two superb biographical books about two archetypal glam rockers:

Nikki Sixx' The Heroin Diaries was just amazing. Hilarious, dramatic, heartrending. honest, intelligent and really literate description of the road down into a drug-soaked, lonely hell. And you don't just get to hear Nikki's voice, but also those of the people he mentions in his diary notes, who were around the place: bandmates, musicians, friends, producers, women around the band: he bravely invited them to write their own comment posts to specific days and incidents twenty years after. Plus THD has some of the greatest integration of text and pictures I've ever seen in a book on music.

And George Tremlett's Bowie: Living on the Brink does some of the same for David Bowie's career (the seventies especially). The guy is insightful, he understands both Bowie's creative side, his love of theatre and the business side of rock music - Bowie's struggle for breakthrough and then for the rights to his own music and control of the millions he generates, and against drugs and alcohol. Lots of wonderful anecdotes about the zany side of touring and recording with Bowie, too. Tremlett didn't do any new interviews with Bowie when he wrote his book in the mid-nineties but he'd had long talks with him at his home a couple times around 1970 and knows most of the key people in Bowie's early career, whom he interviewed again for the book (excepting Angie Bowie - he knew her at the  time she was Mrs.Bowie but I don't think he talked to her again).

[EternalStarLight]

If you like Epica then, surely - surely - you like Kamelot? I may have to give Ghost Opera a listen. It's the perfect music for dark and rainy fall night.

Perhaps second best is Iced Earth, specifically their Horror Show album, but also The Melancholy EP. The latter has a very, very good cover of Judas Priest's The Ripper.

I absolutely adore Kamelot--- and what makes it terrible is that they are on tour with Nightwish over here in the States and they are going to be in PA this Sunday and I can't go and-and-and *whimper*

[Chris Brady]

Van Canto is pretty cool too.  A Hard Rock A-Capella band.

Seriously: 

Van Canto - Last Night of the Kings (Official)

Van Canto - Rebellion Cover (Official)

[Hemingway]

I absolutely adore Kamelot--- and what makes it terrible is that they are on tour with Nightwish over here in the States and they are going to be in PA this Sunday and I can't go and-and-and *whimper*

Well, now that Kamelot have lost Roy Khan, and to a lesser degree after Nightwish lost Tarja, those bands aren't that interesting. Kamelot touring with Fabio Lione was interesting, but ... Tommy Karevik, at least from the performances I've seen on youtube, while not bad, lacks ... something I can't quite define.

[Naiah]

I adore Within Temptation, great to see another fan! :D Also love Nightwish!

As for books, you cant go wrong with Joe Abercrombie, awesome writer. Same with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and Way of Kings. Both are fantasy writers. And cant leave out George RR Martin's series A song of Ice and Fire (though he drives me insane cause its not completed yet :P)

[Steppenwolf]

The lady mentions symphonic metal and no-one mentions Symphony X? Really?! Come on guys :P Granted, they're more on the side of progressive metal, but they have some more symphonic albums.

PERSONAL FAVOURITE!
Sea of Lies, from the album The Divine Wings of Tragedy
Symphony X - Sea Of Lies (Original)


The Damnation Game, from the album The Damnation Game (the guitarist really has a field day on this one)
Symphony X - The Damnation Game


Accolade II, from the album The Odyssey
Symphony X - Accolade II


Paradise Lost, from the album Paradise Lost (this one's a little lighter)
Symphony X Paradise Lost

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Brent Weeks is pretty good, has a very superhero fantasy style read to the pages.  As for music, I would have to go with E.S. Posthumus.

[Sasquatch421]

*Raises hand* Another Within Temptation, Nightwish and Leave's Eye's fan here... I also love darker stuff like Cradle of Filth, Behemoth and Dimmu Borgeir even if I can never remember how to spell it. Newer stuff I've been very happy with Halestorm, Shinedown and Pop Evil. Although I'm mainly an 80's type metal fan.... Actually Shinedown, Theory of a Deadman and P.O.D are going to be playing in Sioux City here shortly... Wonder if I can still get tickets?

Then this summer for the Divot's Concert series they have already announced The Beach Boy's and Skillet. Warrant will play at the Off-Road Ranch as well...

I'll support Weeks since I have the one trilogy about the assassian... Don't remember what it was called though the Dark Angel trilogy I think? Then I do like most of the D&D novels and anything R.A. Salvatore.

[EternalStarLight]

Loooove Shinedown and Halestorm--- saw them in my area not too long ago, one for a headliner with Halestorm and Shinedown at Uproar Festival. I love the new CD by In This Moment--- wasn't a huge fan of theirs until I heard that CD and it was EXCELLENT!

[Pumpkin Seeds]

So love the new album by In This Moment.  I agree, their other stuff didn't do it for me but this latest album is so awesome. 

[Sasquatch421]

Blood kicks butt, deffinetly liked it better then A Star Crossed Wasteland. Though I loved the early stuff... Maria Brink has such a lovely voice to waste just screaming... Like Lzzy Hale has an awesome voice, I think she might beat out Amy Lee though not by much.

[Andrew Awesome]

If you like strange dark fiction I would highly recommend John Dies at the End by David Wong.  It is bizarre, creepy, funny, and incredibly compelling. Check it out on Amazon.

[ElusiveM00se]

Music - Nightwish, Rhapsody (of Fire), Sonata Arctica (saw them live, was AMAZING), Epica, Within Temptation, Dragonforce


Books - Anything written by Terry Goodkind, but start with "Wizard's First Rule". And DO NOT watch the TV show.

[Sasquatch421]

I wanted a new series to start reading and ended up picking up Black Blade Blues and Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts.... I'm not done with Black Blade Blues yet, but it's been pretty good in my opinion. A great follow up to reading Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans.