?Classics? of power metal #3: RUNNING WILD - Death Or Glory (1989), initial impressions
Past exposure to this band/record : None beyond seeing the band's name over and over, both in lists of best power metal records and in primers about PM. So I come in with the basic understanding that Running Wild are one of the institutions of europower, one of the defining bands from the Hamburg scene. My understanding is that doing any kind of survey of PM without knowing anything about Running Wild would be almost as bad as doing so without knowing Helloween, hence this pick for the project. And also that apparently they were doing the "pirate metal" thing before it was cool. Well, let's get one thing out of the way first: whatever else one may say about the unimaginatively titled * Death Or Glory , it rocks. I don't actually have much else negative to say about it. I was expecting things to maybe be a little basic, a little knuckle dragging. Instead, principal impression here is that Death Or Glory is polished in a good way. I...