Yes, I made a post about Warrel Dane yesterday. I know it isn't my normal fare but I have a plane to catch very early tomorrow to head to Ohio and I won't be back home until late Monday night. For this reason the posts I am working on now happen to be ones that I can stop and share without being concerned that I might get interrupted in preparations and not be able to finish them.

Yesterday I covered the Sanctuary album "Into The Mirror Black". Today I will cover two different albums from Warrel Dane and this will likely be my last post for a couple of days. I will be covering the self titled Nevermore album which is their debut release. The other album that I want to touch on is Warrel Dane's solo album "Praises for the War Machine".

I will cover more music besides Warrel Dane, I am just in the mood for some Warrel Dane the past few days so that is what I felt like writing about.

Now after Sanctuary broke up during the tour for "Into The Mirror Black" I didn't really hear about them. A friend of mine loaned me the first Nevermore album and at first I didn't know it was the same guy, but I quickly could tell as I listened to it. I do want to add that an interesting thing about the Sanctuary break up is that I actually piled into a car with some friends and we drove 200+ mountain miles (takes 4 hours+ one way) to see a Sanctuary and Fates Warning concert. We arrived in Denver to find out the concert had been cancelled and soon after that we heard about Sanctuary breaking up.

Nevermore has Warrel Dane and Jim Sheppard from Sanctuary, and the new young and gifted guitarist Jeff Loomis.

People often say the first song on an album sets the tone for the rest of the album. If that is the case then Sanity Assassin was certainly a good choice for an introductory song.

Nevermore - The Sanity Assassin

The next song I want to cover is C.B.F. which stands for Chrome Black Future. So now I'll show introduce you to C.B.F. (Chrome Black Future). Guitar wise this has of my favorite parts that are closer to the type of rhythms I myself write and the vocals as always are stratospheric.

Nevermore - C.B.F. (Chrome Black Future)

I wanted to include this one as Warrel Dane can almost hit some very different octaves and styles in this song. It is a bit lower in many parts. It is a bit closer to where he seems to shift over time in future albums. This is also a song I was caught singing a time or two myself, for you see I can't really sing like my nuts are in a vice as much as I might like to. I just don't have that range.

This song is called The Hurting Words and I wouldn't call it the most exciting of the songs on this album, but the vocals are a bit different, and it is still quite good. It is just a different energy.

Nevermore - The Hurting Words

Now at this point I want to move to Warrel Dane's solo album Praises to the War Machine which I think is absolutely brilliant. This came after there were a number of Nevermore albums out, so between the songs above from Nevermore to these his singing approach had evolved in interesting directions. He still will go for higher octaves, but overall he has brought a lot of his singing back into his more natural tonal area. I think the result is just as compelling as any others.

The intro track on this solo album is called When We Pray. Some people may be offended by these lyrics and others might totally find them brilliant. I am one of the later.

Warrel Dane - When We Pray

Now I thought some people might be offended by the phrase "Nothing ever changes when we pray" though there was a lot more lyrics than that. I figured that one phrase might be enough to offend some people even if they agree with everything else. Well I think this next song is very powerful and it may actually make up for this... This song is called Brother.

Warrel Dane - Brother

Now I am only going to do one more song from this album, they are both excellent albums and there is plenty of wonder in them that I didn't cover. If you are at all interested in what you heard then I recommend checking the complete albums out.
I will close this with my favorite song from his solo album with the simple title August.

Warrel Dane - August

Closing

I have a much bigger music project I plan on starting possibly next week. It will take quite a bit of work to put those together. Right now before my trip I was inspired to write these simpler posts. I hope I've managed to create some more Warrel Dane, Sanctuary, and Nevermore fans... If you were already a fan then hopefully you enjoyed listening to these again like I did.