Volume I, Chapter 7: UNBREAKABLE BATTALION, Battle 1: Omen vs Rhapsody
Omen - Battle Cry
I guess I have a confession to make: I'm probably a True Metal hipster. The reason being that I like Omen, a band that is impossible to like unironically. Even by mid-eighties cheese standards, these guys aren't cool, they have never been cool, they never will be cool, but they think they are. They are so desperately uncool that they are not "so uncool they're cool". And for that, I simply have to like them.
Rhapsody - Emerald Sword
Before LT's Rhapsody, there was a band called Luca Turilli's Rhapsody. Before Luca Turilli's Rhapsody, there was a band called R.O.F. You get the point, the punchline is that at some point there was a band simply called Rhapsody. The CHEESEVIVÖR takes you back to those days of yore, long past human memory, to bring you a band that has been ripped off more than any other in the realms of Cheese, the warriors of old that spawned the most unfortunate of all exploitation genres: Italian Symphonic Power Metal. Yes, they were the ones who started it all... do we deify them to the Cheese Heavens for that, or do we cast them into the deepest pits of Hell, where even Dante wouldn't set foot?
Volume I, Chapter 8: IMMORTAL BATTALION, Battle 1: Stormhold vs Freedom Call
Stormhold - God's Crusade
On their official YouTube channel, Stormhold claim they are a band founded in 2008 which has always had high ambitions. Ten years later, we have a band here that is so obscure that the only detailed information I could find on them is on their official YouTube channel. If they fell short of their ambitions as a major metal band, can they do better as a major Cheese Warrior band?
Freedom Call - Fairyland
If you find it hard to get over the fact that this band has an album called Stairway to Fairyland, it might even be more difficult to swallow the fact that this is where the former members of Primal Fear, Gamma Ray and Iron Savior go to die. And this is the band that frustrated Sascha Gerstner so much that he left saying that he would never play in a metal band again, only to join Helloween a year later. Striking story, no?