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Artist
Strength Through Joy
12+ albums
neofolkapocalyptic folkdark folkmilitary popmartial folk
about
There is more than one artist with this name: 1) Strength Through Joy was founded in Adelaide, Australia in 1991 by bassist Timothy Jenn and vocalist Richard Leviathan. Although Jenn had his roots in the gothic musical milieu of Ireland and Leviathan was a bullet-belt wearing black metal fan, the two men seemed to have a lot in common and soon struck up a friendship. Although Leviathan himself had no prior musical experience before meeting Jenn, he wrote some great lyrics and had a distinctive if not good singing voice. After cutting a short demo of dark folk material, the boys in the band wrote to Death In June leader Douglas Pearce to ask his permission to send a demo to him. Pearce responded affirmatively and then pointed out that he actually lived only a little more than 10 kilometers down the road from them. Upon their meeting, Pearce agreed to produce Strength Through Joy's first album as he found himself genuinely impressed with the band's "originality." I'm not sure if that was originality he was hearing or if was hearing what Death In June had sounded like ten years earlier; even Leviathan admits "his (Pearce's) influence on the...style of music is obvious."* Either way, in 1994, Strength Through Joy released a single on vinyl called Dark Rose that featured three songs. Of note is the opener A Grave For Burning Wings on which Douglas Pearce actually sings and plays acoustic guitar, the style of the song presaging Death In June's 1996 album Rose Clouds Of Holocaust.
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