Well after brainstorming and glancing through my prior posts, I notice that I have not had much to say about power metal. Power metal is a genre that it took me a little while to get into. Not because I did not care for the music, far from it, but because I have been so focused on the more extreme genres like death and thrash metal.
Power metal is my best friend's favorite genre, but like I said, it took me a bit longer to really get into it. I will start today's post, the first in a new series, with five power metal bands that I got into before I really got into power metal. The point of this series is to look at five bands from one genre that have affected my tastes in some way or another.
1. Queensryche
This band is kind of a fusion between power metal and progressive metal, particularly on their earlier material. Their later material dropped much of the power metal influence but the band was at least as important as Jag Panzer and Fates Warning on the American scene. I have two of their earlier albums and two of their mid-era albums. I much prefer their earlier stuff which is faster, more aggressive, and more emotional than the rest of their material. Geoff Tate has one of the best voices in metal. This was the first power metal band I really got into. The band did not really lead me to any other bands and my tastes mostly remained stagnant from here.
2. Iced Earth
I always liked the album covers for this band but never really knew what to expect from them. I had heard that they were kind of like a thrashier Iron Maiden and this comparison is what lead me to bite the bullet and check them out. The comparison proved to be reasonably accurate. The riffs were very similar to Maiden, except the galloping was not from the bass, but rather the rhythm guitar. Matt Barlow's voice was incredible in its own way. Unfortunately Iced Earth has had some difficulty in keeping singers and Barlow was out of the band for awhile. He is back now, but this has hurt Iced Earth's ability to become the force they deserve to be in American metal. Iced Earth eventually lead me to Symphony X and Blind Guardian.
3. Symphony X
Symphony X is similar to Queensryche in that they are more of a progressive power metal band. I became interested in this band when they released The Odyssey, a concept album about the Greek epic poem. As a big fan of Greek mythology in general, and that poem in particular, I HAD to check this out. The album is great, although it lags in a few places and is definitely longer than it should be. Still, the band sounded like a more drawn out and epic Iced Earth. Not bad at all. Their latest album is a concept album revolving around Milton's Paradise Lost.
4. Children of Bodom
This is kind of an odd band to be here, but once you get past the harsh vocal style, it begins to become apparent that Children of Bodom is indeed a power metal band. The melodic structure, wailing guitar solos, keyboards all are closer to Blind Guardian than to melodic death metal bands like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames that the band often gets lumped in with. At one time, I didn't think music could possibly get faster than Children of Bodom. Some of their songs are still incredibly fast but the band has slowed quite a bit in recent albums. Too bad, they just couldn't keep up the pace. This band lead me to Kalmah, Norther, Skyfire, Destroy Destroy Destroy, and other power metal bands with harsher vocals.
5. Blind Guardian
This is arguably the most important band in the second stage of European power metal. Helloween helped create the genre, but Blind Guardian perfected it. Blind Guardian is one of the most musically gifted bands in metal, after Iron Maiden, and has a great sense of melody and structure. Their early albums are incredible and their later ones still maintain a degree of that early power. This band made it okay to enjoy Tolkien in metal and even wrote a song about Peter Pan. Not many bands can pull that kind of thing off. After Blind Guardian, I became very interested in power metal bands. Some good, some great, some not so great. Blind Guardian though, is still my favorite power metal band.
That's it for this installment.
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