Power Metal

Murder89 said:
I've been listening to The 25th Hour by Vision Divine the last few days and I'm loving it.  :yey:
I should check more albums of them.
Check out The Perfect Machine :cheers:
 
The German band Helicon didn't have the greatest singer I have ever heard (btw I just read that he died from unknown cause in 2013) but I quite like the songs I remember from the live compilation Power of Metal, featuring Gamma Ray, Conception (with Roy Khan before he went to Kamelot), Rage and this band.

Please check out the cool riffing. Catchy stuff!

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Would anyone else agree that Judas Priest has elements of power metal in their music? This can be said about alot of other classic metal bands like Priest, Maiden, Accept. I've been noticing it a lot in Priest's music lately. A lot of people say Painkiller was power metal/speed metal. I hear elements of it in Helloween even, like their Gambling With The Devil Album.

I'm just curious if Halford and co. are into power metal and were influenced by any particular PM while writing Redeemer of Souls. Do they ever talk about what influences their recent music?
 
Of course. Well, more the other way around. Power metal bands have seventies-era Priest in their music.

Personally, I think it started with Let Us Prey / Call For The Priest in 1977.
@ 4:54
 
I think Judas Priest was their influence on Redeemer of Souls.
 
A lot of power metal bands are strongly influenced by Painkiller. Primal Fear and Gamma Ray being the first that come to mind. Ever hear Deliver Us by Helloween? That's gotta be one of the most awesome Priest/Painkiller influenced songs I've ever heard.
 
It's crazy to see a thread I started 5 years ago is active right now. For the record, I was huge into power metal when this topic started, and I eventually came to enjoy many of these bands.

Then I kind of phased out of the genre for a while.

But now it's pretty much come back full circle. I'm currently listening to and discovering Avantasia and Kamelot. I still have yet to listen to Sabaton :S, but they're on deck!
 
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I think the best power metal bands at the moment are Helloween and Edguy. They both have more then just the stereotypical power metal sound, in fact both bands have evolved from a classic PM sound into something much more.

I'd love to get some suggestions for some power metal bands you think I may like.
 
Have we got many Helloween fans here? I'm curious what people think of Keeper Legacy compared to the original two. Personally, I don't think it sounds much like a Keeper album. I think they should have saved King For 1000 Years for Gambling With The Devil and called that album the third Keeper.
 
Bumping this to praise the new Angra album Omni. Really good stuff and some parts are reminiscent of classic Symphony X with good production. It can get a little technical but never without sacrificing heaviness. An ideal blend of power and prog.

Favorite songs: Travelers of Time, Black Widow’s Web (awesome female vocals), War Horns, Omni - Silence Inside. The orchestral final track at the end is also cool, although it would’ve been better at the beginning imo.
 
It's crazy to see a thread I started 5 years ago is active right now. For the record, I was huge into power metal when this topic started, and I eventually came to enjoy many of these bands.

Then I kind of phased out of the genre for a while.

But now it's pretty much come back full circle. I'm currently listening to and discovering Avantasia and Kamelot. I still have yet to listen to Sabaton :S, but they're on deck!
Cool to see you returning back to power metal, I had a similar experience. Started with Stratovarius (and metal in general) when I was 14 years old in 2000, also really liked Nightwish, Sonata arctica, Rhapsody and Gamma ray.

Became tired by power metal by 2003-2004, just bought Stratovarius when it came out. And then late 2009, visiting an old friend and talking about the good old power metal, he traded me some Rhapsody (of fire) albums I didn’t have, and then I felt like I came home again. Getting into Freedom call, Edguy, Avantasia, Kamelot, listening to all my classic albums again...and I’m still really into this kind of music.

Sabaton is great, so are Battle beast. I can also recommend Cain’s offering, former Sonata arctica guitarist Jani Liimatainens band with Stratovarius singer Timo Kotipelto
 
Bumping this to praise the new Angra album Omni. Really good stuff and some parts are reminiscent of classic Symphony X with good production. It can get a little technical but never without sacrificing heaviness. An ideal blend of power and prog.

Favorite songs: Travelers of Time, Black Widow’s Web (awesome female vocals), War Horns, Omni - Silence Inside. The orchestral final track at the end is also cool, although it would’ve been better at the beginning imo.
They are coming to Denver:

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I got into Gamma Ray in 1995 when U.S. metal had gone in the shitter and everything was going in a nu-metal or rap metal direction. Land Of The Free was a revelation to me, like all of my favorite melodic metal bands had been thrown in a blender with Queen and a dash of Broadway showtunes.

The band changed their lineup for the next album Somewhere Out In Space, and while that album and the follow-up Powerplant were both excellent in their own way, the band had lost the finesse of Land Of The Free and replaced it with double-bass-drum bombast.

Their output became dicier over time, with Majestic being their only studio album of the 2000s that really stood out to me; and now they're just a shell of what they once were. But they sure burned brightly from 1995 to 2000.

Luca Turilli's first two solo albums, King Of The Nordic Twilight and Prophet Of The Last Eclipse, are also excellent for what they are. Prophet has a pretty singular style, if you like bouncy, spacey synths with your neoclassical power metal.

Powerwolf is a more recent favorite of mine -- at this point they've kind of supplanted Gamma Ray as my go-to power metal band. Their output has been a bit uneven -- Lupus Dei is their masterpiece, but it's not really power metal; more like gothic traditional metal with lots of pipe organ. They went through a transitional period with their next couple of albums, then emerged in pure power metal mode (still with pipe organ) with Preachers Of The Night, which is probably their second best album. Blessed & Possessed is also good, and I'm just now listening to The Sacrament Of Sin, their newest album which just came out today.

Their The Metal Mass live Blu-Ray set is superb -- three great concerts in different types of venues. I just wish it had more Lupus Dei material on it.

Powerwolf also did a pretty cool cover of "The Evil That Men Do" on the bonus disc to Blessed & Possessed...
 
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