19 March 2024

Baptized in Metal: Başak Günel

Welcome to an article series on Tempelores where the staff members bare it all for the audience… and by baring all, we mean the origin point of our metal journeys, the singled out, solitary album responsible for being our gateway drug into the boundless universe of metal that in the end became more than just background for most of us.

Alright… It’s actually hard for me to start or to point out one particular album that started it all because… well, my journey into metal actually progressed in layers. It all started with those ’emo’ bands… Yes, you heard it right.

It must have been the years 2005-2007 and I have had one hell of an adolescence so what could be a better companion to those tough years? The emo/rock bands that have been around. There were a lot of them at that time but a few bands did it for me… Those were Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco and My Chemical Romance.

     

It is quite impossible for me to explain what a huge impact these albums have on me. Surely my music taste has changed a lot and is still changing but those albums and those bands still managed to stay in my mind so I owe them a lot…. and as you can imagine, they were also my gateway to the metal scene…

Towards the end of 2007, I made some big changes in my life and decided to study abroad at the age of 17. Around that time, I had a few friends who were into metal music and they recommended me some names… Those were Opeth, Nightwish, Within Temptation, Tristania, Poisonblack, Ensiferum and Sentenced…. Apart from that, HIM was one of the few bands I rediscovered and fell in love with… I knew them beforehand but with the release of “Venus Doom” in 2007, I became a hardcore fan of them among with the bands I named…

If you asked me what my favorite songs were at that time, the list would look like this:

  • Nightwish – Nemo
  • Within Temptation – Ice Queen
  • Within Temptation – Mother Earth
  • Opeth – Face of Melinda
  • Opeth – To Bid You Farewell
  • Opeth – Porcelain Heart
  • Poisonblack – Love Infernal
  • Poisonblack – Nothing Else Remains
  • Sentenced – Nepenthe
  • Ensiferum – Victory Song
  • HIM – Kiss of Dawn

What an interesting and weird combination, right? A little bit of everything! Viking metal, symphonic power metal, prog rock and gothic metal/rock.

On the other hand, my dad is a huge fan of progressive rock legends like Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Strawbs, Yes, The Who and so on… As a matter of fact, my first concert was Ian Anderson gig with my parents! So you can tell I was already getting ready to enter the ‘rock and metal’ scene. As much as these bands had an impact on me, they weren’t often in my playlist.

Me moving to Germany changed a lot of things and my music taste has definitely been one of them. Many bands that I adored and adore played in Germany so this made me discover more and more bands which definitely worked in my favor! Nowadays, I listen to everything (just when I got into the metal scene) but the albums and songs that I mentioned above have a special place in my heart for many reasons.

In the recent years, certain albums have been the pathway for me and opened doors to many bands for me…. But this story is still yet to be written…. You know what they say….

Stay tuned