Van Canto is an a cappella metal band from Germany, founded in 2006 and composed of five singers and a drummer. Although the group is often classified as an a cappella ensemble, they use real drums in their music, instead of vocal percussion or beatboxing.
Van Canto fuses a cappella with heavy/power metal, creating what they call "hero metal a capella". While only two of the five singers perform the lead vocals, the other three will instead use their voices to imitate the guitars and the bass, with the help of amplifiers, in an attempt to sound closer to the original instruments.
As soon as the band was founded, its debut album, A Storm to Come, was released through General Schallplatten. It features seven original tracks, as well as cover versions of Metallica's "Battery" and "Stora Rövardansen" from the movie Ronja Rövardotter. Additionally, videos were shot for the tracks "The Mission", "Battery", and "Rain".
On 30 September 2007, they announced a new drummer, Bastian Emig, who replaced Dennis Strillinger's position in the band. In December 2007, Van Canto signed a worldwide record deal with Gun Records/Sony BMG. Also in December, the band were announced as part of the line up of the Wacken 2008 festival. The band also announced that their second album, titled "Hero", was in the progress of being recorded. Hero ended up being released on 26 September 2008, with producer Charlie Bauerfeind.
Van Canto performed a South American promotional tour between 23 June and 2 July 2008. The live performances took place primarily in Brazil, which is the homeland of Ingo Sterzinger. Soon after, the band arrived in Germany to perform live at Wacken 2008. A new song, "Speed of Light", was released as a digital single on 8 August 2008. A music video was shot for the song as well.
As of late 2009, Van Canto was recording their third studio album in Twilight Hall Studios, with Bauerfeind and via Napalm Records. The album was due to contain around 11 tracks, fewer covers than Hero and a couple of bonus tracks. It was released worldwide in early 2010, which happened alongside the worldwide release of their previous two albums.
The album was announced at Nuclear Blast official website as Tribe of Force. The tracklisting features 13 tracks, two of them being covers ("Master of Puppets" by Metallica and "Rebellion" by Grave Digger), and three of them featuring guest artists: Victor Smolski (from Rage) guest appears in "One to Ten", Tony Kakko (from Sonata Arctica) guest appears on "Hearted" and Chris Boltendahl (from Grave Digger) guest appears in "Rebellion".
Recently, Van Canto announced in their official website that they would perform guest vocals in the next albums by bands Blind Guardian and Grave Digger (At the Edge of Time and untitled, respectively). They also appeared on the Tarja Turunen album What Lies Beneath (on the track "Anteroom of Death").
On 23 August 2010 their entire library was removed from popular music streaming service Spotify, but it reappeared on 8 September 2010. On 2 September 2011 their library was removed again and hasn't reappeared since
On 21 September 2010 it was announced that they had teamed up with the popular MMORPG Runes of Magic to create a music video based around the game for and with the game.
On 17 February 2011, it was announced on the official Van Canto website that the band was entering the studio and suspending touring until June in order to create a new album.
As of September 23rd, the band's new album Break the Silence has officially been released.
