First off, while posting questions like these here is perfectly fine, flagging a report on the band might be a better way to inquire about warnings: the report queue gets a bit more traffic and it's good to have such documentation on the site itself, rather than only on the forum. Other mods/knights can also request the attention of individual users in reports, so I might have actually seen this sooner if you had done that
I was the one who added the warning, so I'll comment. I saw that her name was on the jacket of the new album too, which does seem to indicate that she joined Amenra as an official member (and why I didn't initially remove her as a member when I saw that you had added her to the lineup). However, upon further inspection this seemed less and less likely to me:
- There's no mention of her being an official member in multiple interviews with the frontman, but he in fact strongly implies that she was only invited to do vocals for the album:
Was it his vision to bring in Caro to sing on these tracks given the way they work together on Oathbreaker? Was this something he had in mind from the outset?
CHvE: Yes it was, they have done a lot together. We always like to have different voices on an album, and I especially like the complementary vocals of male and female on one record, I really like the dynamics of that. In my opinion, you kind of tell a more complete story then, it’s not just testosterone driven, it’s more balanced. As it was in Flemish, it automatically came to us that maybe we should ask Caro to at least do something, and put a stamp on there. It’s an extra force of nature that we have on the album, it’s really nice, it gives it an extra dynamic.
https://www.heaviestofart.com/post/a-co ... -of-amenra
Speaking of Oathbreaker being on hiatus, another big change for this record is you have Caro Tanghe [Oathbreaker vocalist], and there’s a new bassist with Tim de Gieter joining. What brought on these reshufflings and how did they influence De Doorn?
With Caro, the decision came quickly. Lennart played with her for years in Oathbreaker, and we automatically thought about Caro and thought she could contribute, lend her talent and her voice to the album. We missed her, also. She has been living in the States for a couple of years now, and in the past, we’ve toured together a hell of a lot, and we lived in the same city for a long time. And I’ve always had a love for mixing male and female vocals. I always loved that dynamic. It makes everything feel more in balance, more like a document of everyone’s story instead of only a certain part of the population.
https://www.invisibleoranges.com/amenra ... interview/
(notice that the interviewer mentions that Tim joined the band, but he doesn't say that Caro joined, only that she sang on the record)
Original German text:
Eine Beobachtung aus sehr persönlicher Warte: Ich habe Amenra bisher immer als eine Band mit sehr „männlichen“ Energien wahrgenommen. Das kann überwältigend und alles-planierend wirken. DE DOORN bringt da eine Balance rein; es ist ein perfekter Zwitter aus Zerstörung und Schöpfung, offen für alle Kräfte und Energien. Kannst du dem ein Stück weit folgen… oder hältst du das für totalen Quatsch?
Ich gehe da im Grunde schon mit – muss aber auch sagen, dass diese Mischung auch auf vorigen Alben bereits vorhanden war. Mindestens seit unserem zweiten Album, das Anfang der 2000er entstand, haben wir immer versucht, weibliche Aspekte drin zu haben. Und damit meine ich nicht nur eine Gastsängerin! Die Musik vorangegangener Alben hatte ebenfalls Momente, wo wir als Schöpfer sehr emotional und verletzbar waren – und Momente, wo es extrem kraftvoll wurde, auf eine Art, dass man sich nahezu unbesiegbar fühlte. Dieses Wechselspiel ist auch hier wieder vorhanden.
--
English:
An observation from a very personal point of view: I have always perceived Amenra as a band with very “male” energies. This can be overwhelming and all-planing. DE DOORN brings in a balance; it is a perfect hybrid of destruction and creation, open to all forces and energies. Can you follow that a bit ... or do you think that's total nonsense?
Basically I already go along with it - but I have to say that this mixture was already present on previous albums. At least since our second album, which was made in the early 2000s, we've always tried to have feminine aspects in it. And by that I don't mean just a guest singer! The music of previous albums also had moments when we as creators were very emotional and vulnerable - and moments when it got extremely powerful, in a way that made you feel almost invincible. This interplay is also present here again.
https://www.metal-hammer.de/amenra-erlo ... e-1782425/
(in retrospect this excerpt isn't really as relevant as I thought it was, as it's talking about previous albums...but the interview also touches upon the change in bass player, so if a new vocalist had joined it's odd that it would not also talk about that)
(Also, regarding this quote - "De Doorn became the first Amenra album on which van Eeckhout sings entirely in Flemish—this time joined by Oathbreaker vocalist Caro Tanghe." - this only really says that Caro sang on the album with Colin. It doesn't mean she joined the band.)
- The band made a Facebook post announcing Levy Seynaeve's departure from the band last year and the name of his replacement, Tim de Gieter:
https://www.facebook.com/churchofra/pho ... 71/?type=3 The addition of a new vocalist is a much more prominent change, so if Caro really joined the band, why was there no similar announcement made for her?
I also messaged the band recently to clear this up, and while they seem averse to explictly labeling her as a session vocalist (they called her a "contributing artist" in their messages to me; this might also explain why her name appears on the physical albums/Bandcamp as it does), they confirmed that she's not a member of the band. So I think that settles the matter once and for all.
Also, I would like to point out that it is not mentioned anywhere that she joined in 2021. In fact, the Invisible Oranges interview says that the band flew to the US (where Caro currently resides) to record vocals in 2020. So following that logic, shouldn't she have technically joined in 2020, or earlier? Not the most relevant point perhaps, but it serves to emphasize the importance of doing thorough research before drawing any conclusions.