Stuck In My Skull 526 -- "Engraved Within"

Song: "Engraved Within" || Artist: Serentity || http://youtu.be/M2YCOSSLhK4 ||

Comments: Good morning! I know many of you -- myself included -- might be dragging on this Monday morning, so let's get the lead out together with this song. I found this track last week while listening to my metal station on Pandora. For the record, this is one of my oldest stations on that sight, spanning back multiple years -- at least three, I think. To put things in perspective, this station started not just before they gave unlimited usage back to free listeners, but before they instated the 40 hour cap in the first place. playlist.com was a thing when I made this station. What I'm trying to say is, it's old, and I've put an obscene amount of work into coercing the algorithm to play just the sort of symphonic metal I like. Pandora is built to randomly throw some songs into the rotation that are farther from the beaten path of any given channel in order to add diversity, and you can generally tell when that happens: You'll be listening without a care and suddenly, "Hello, this song is completely different." This is not an instance of that randomness, this fit perfectly into my station. How, then, have I never heard of Serenity before last week? I'll omit my very long discourse on why I think human DJs beat algorithms (you can see most of it in the guest entry I wrote about web radio for Melodic Music Project a bazillion years ago here). The point is, Pandora, why did you take so long to tell me about this band?! This song is excellent. It's got great vocals that remind me strongly of Seventh Wonder. Its instrumentation is nearly as strong as Epica's. As the youtube comments on this song point out, Serenity fills the same amazing niche as other greats like Dream Theatre, Symphony X, and Kamelot. Pandora, why did you take so long to play this? Go and listen to this, dear readers. If you like my taste in metal, you won't be disappointed.