Meden Agan – My Name is Katherine

Meden Agan was an occasional jam for me a few years back. I used to listen to some of their singles, but I never went beyond that. It’s been 6 years since their previous album, “Catharsis“, but a random appearance in my feed of one of their new videos reminded me of their existence. Turns out they dropped a new record just a few months back, titled “My Name is Katherine“, and since, as far as I can tell, no one in the band is called Katherine, the title sparked my curiosity. So I decided to give the whole album a spin.

It turns out this is a concept album and Katherine is the main character of the story. I didn’t understand the full plot from the lyrics alone. I think they allowed themselves to leave things unspecified through the song lyrics because there is an actual book, written by singer Dimitra Panariti, that offers the full story. But what I could tell from the lyrics is that there’s trauma, romance, disappointment, drama and most importantly, MURDER! Juicy innit? Now let’s look at the music.

Meden Agan is symphonic power metal. It’s fast, orchestral and epic. But unlike most power metal oriented bands, it sounds particularly dark, gloomy and dramatic, and despite multiple characters showing up, there seems to be quite a lot of focus on the main character’s internal isolation. The music is highly reflective of this. It uses the structural groundwork of power metal, with a fast, double-bass driven drum performance, many sharp and galloping riffs and technical solo sections, but the melodic choices, orchestral elements and keyboard tones steer the overall sound towards a more hollow and tragic vibe.

Meden Agan – Moth

The attack on the riffs and drums sounds very aggressive and unforgiving. While most of the music is focused on high speed constant riffing and picked up machine gun drum patterns, they also break the routine now and then, offering some more headbangable moments (‘Time Like Space’, ‘Trapped’). The drum parts also add a lot to the dramatic feel in certain key moments like the cymbal play when ‘Trapped’ kicks off, or the menacing floor toms on ‘Victorious’ and ‘Rejection’. ‘Victorious’ even shows us some blast beats. Looking at the individual instrumental performances, the insane technical skill is undeniable. Even the bass, which mostly lurks in the background, comes through enough for me to pick up some very satisfying details. Plus there’s a moment when the bass gets the spotlight, on the closing track, ‘Transition’. That moment and some proggy riffs in the bridge made this one of my favourite tracks on the album.

Meden Agan – Rejection

On the melodic end of the spectrum, there are a lot of lead guitar melodies and a varied offering of keyboard and orchestral tones, ranging from lush, layered string sections to synth effects, to the point where it’s hard to tell whether it’s all just the keyboard or if they layered orchestral samples as well, but I would bet they did. ‘Sickness’ is probably the most dramatic moment on the album, with a massive layering of orchestration in the bridge section that builds up to the guitar solo.

And that gets us to solos. Each song has a guitar solo and there are two ways that it can happen. The first option is that a few melodic lines start and then it spontaneously switches to an outright obscene amount of shredding, sweeping, swirling and running through as many notes as possible. The other option is that we skip the few melodic lines and get right into the shredding! Sometimes this is also mixed in with keyboard solo lines, becoming a mega-fabulous duel (“Confident”).

Meden Agan – Transition

To top it off, Dimitra Panariti offers a stellar vocal delivery. She sits comfortably in a pretty good range of chest voice as well as head voice for the most part. She also moves up into operatic vocals or fry screams when the songs call for it. But most importantly, she steps into the character so well that you stop thinking about her, and start thinking about that traumatized girl that tragically messes up all the things. Also, the Greek accent is amazing! Did I forget to mention this is a Greek band? I’m mentioning it now. This is a Greek band.

So if you too are a fan of dramatic storytelling, blisteringly fast drums, epic orchestrations, swirling guitar leads and multi-faceted vocals, then I suggest you look no further and give “My Name is Katherine” your undivided attention.

Track List:

1. Moth (05:28)
2. Time Like Space (05:01)
3. Trapped (04:06)
4. Shedding (03:24)
5. Rejection (04:20)
6. Confident (05:44)
7. Sickness (06:41)
8. Victorious (04:44)
9. Beyond Any Suspicion (03:56)
10. Transition (05:13)