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A very difficult letter. Trying to focus on "lesser known metal bands" is really hard if there hardly are any bands that start with the letter Q. We have Queensryche (no umlaut on the y, as NG doesn't support it at the moment), but personally I wouldn't call that metal. :P

I was thinking about a band called Qntal, but I would've had to define "metal band" in a REALLY broad sense to include them here (they make medieval music combined with electronic sounds btw). So I decided to pick death metal band Quo Vadis for this one. They may be not a "lesser known band", but I really don't have that much choice here.

The band:
Quo Vadis is a technical melodic death metal band from Montreal, Canada and was formed in 1992 by Bart Frydrychowicz, Yanic Bercier, and Arie Itman. At first, they played Metallica and Megadeath covers, but soon began to write their own songs. In 1995 a demo tape was released.

One year later, the debut album "Forever..." was released, which was recieved well by critics and fans.

It took the band 4 years to release another album. "Day into Night" was released in 2000 and it sold much better than the debut album. Also, the sound was much different from "Forever...", since the female vocals and the violins had disappeared, while the song structure got more complex at the same time.

In 2001 "Passage in Time" was released, but it was a compilation album, containing the entire 1995 demo, some rerecorded songs and two live songs.

After that, the line-up changed a bit. Bassist Remy Beauchamp left the band as well as Arie Itman (guitars/vocals), they where replaced by Dominique Lapointe and Stéphane Paré, respectivly.

In 2004 the next album "Defiant Imagination" was released. The material has been written much earlier, though.

So far, "Defiant Imagination" is the latest album, even though the next album "But Who Prays for Satan?" has been announced. Release date is December 2012 as of now, again with a different line up. Paré left the band and was replaced by Trevor Birnie, but only one year later he left the band again and was replaced by Matthew Sweeney. William Seghers also left the band and was replaced by Marc-André Gringas.

Also, Yanic Bercier left the band. He relocated to Tennesse some years ago and flew in from the US for the shows all the time. He was replaced by Patrice Hamelin.

The Song:
This is "Let it burn" from the second album "Day into Night". The band is heavily influenced by Metallica, Megadeath and Death (especially the album "Invalid thought patterns"). I think it really shows in this song. Everything sounds very familiar, heh.

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The Cover: