Van Canto is a German band that I’m about 97% sure that no one at LHS (or perhaps even the whole Midwest) has ever heard of that was formed sometime in 2006 who plays a very special genre of music. So special that no other band has done anything like it before. It is metal a cappella. Yes, a cappella and metal music together.

Yes, metal without guitars is possible, and they are living proof of that.

Van Canto consists of two lead singers, one male and one female (Dennis “Sly” Schunke and Inga Scharf), three other singers imitating guitars with their voices (Ross Thompson, Stefan Schmidt, and Ingo “Ike” Stezinger), and a drummer (Bastian Emig, formerly Dennis Strillinger until 2007). So, it is not completely 100% a cappella since they use drums (they did try to replace drums with voices but the guys passed out two minutes into one of their songs).

Don’t believe me? Go on Youtube, type in “Van Canto To Sing a Metal Song”, only official live video they have (I suppose you could find ones took by fans, I did find a decent one for “Neuer Wind” once). While you’re there, you might as well check out some of their other music videos. I highly recommend “If I Die In Battle”, “Lost Forever”, and “Speed of Light”. Van Canto is also known for their a cappella covers of other metal bands such as Metallica’s “Battery”, Nightwish’s “Wishmaster”, Iron Maiden’s “Fear of the Dark”, and Fading Starlight’s “Black Wings of Hate” (which also happens to be Inga’s former band).

Van Canto’s current project is creating/singing songs for something called “Peer Returns”, which is some kind of interactive story about a kid who exiles himself from society into his own world filled with demons, as far as I can tell.