...but please make sure not to take their earlier albums, let's say: their stuff before 2005 - it's just nicer to listen to pipes played by people who
finally found out, how to use them properly...
There's a whole scene of "medieval"-inspired metal- even techno-projects using bagpipes in Germany, but most of them really suck on the pipes (nice picture...
).
While we're at it, there are some great Punk-, Rock-, and Metalbands with Bagpipes (naturally! Remember: AC/DC and kORN used GHB on early albums!)!
I suggest:
- Mudmen, a Canadian (Hard-)Rockband with two award-winning Highlandpipers
- Enter the Haggis, a Canadian Rockband with frequent GHB-use
- Great Big Sea, a Newfoundland Folkrockband sometimes using GHB
- Dropkick-Murphys (of course!), a Red-Skin-Oi-Punk band from Boston with GHB,
- Real McKenzies, similar
- Dixebra, a Ska-Punk-Band from Asturies (NW-Spain) with excessive and very good use of traditional (and electronic) Asturian Gaita
- Ramoneurs de Menhirs, a Breton Folkpunkband using Biniou and Bombarde (medieval Breton oboe, sounding not unlike GHB)
- Black Label Zone, pipers from a Bagad (Breton Pipeband) doing Hardrock
- Eluveitie, a Swiss (!) Folkrockpop-band (used to be Folk-Metal, but their latest album changed the style - unfortunetely...
) with extensive use of different pipes and Hurdy-gurdy
- Aes Dana (beware! There's a terribly kitschy New-Age-Easy-Listening-Band of the same name!!!), a french-Breton Folkmetal-Band using Bombarde
- Glorystrokes, an English Folkmetal-project (no pipes, but great accordeon)
- Korpiklaani, a Finnish Folkmetalband with accordeon, fiddle, whistles and sometimes torupill (Estonian pipes)
- Znich, a Belarus Folk-Black-Metal Band using Dudmaisis (last two albums, first one was boring Black-Metal without trad. influences. I'm incertain about their political intentions, though, since I don't understand Belarus...
)
- Mark Saul, an incredible Highlandpiper from Australia. He usually does Folk-Techno but has a few Metal-inspired pieces on his album as well.
There are other projects, esp. in the "Pagan"-Metal-scene, using bagpipes as well. But many of them have racist tendencies (e.g. "Slavland" from Poland, "Astaarth" from France),also their piping is not very convincing...
Also, there are quite some projects of electronic (wave-) music in France, Belgium, Germany and, as it seems, also Austria (!) using Hurdy-gurdy, Cornemuse and/or Schaeferpfeife. Also, there are a few Folk-Hiphop-Bands using pipes (e.g. Manau, Bretagne or Lecker Sachen, Germany).
And there are loooots of folkpopbands using pipes in practically every nation having a bagpiping-tradition...
Make of that, what You will - personally, I dislike it, if Pipes are used only as an accessoire to spice up pop music a bit. But if tradition want's to be alive, it has to evolve as well. So I really like traditional (inspired) music played on trad. instruments in a contemporary way. It simply shows, tradition is still alive...