?Classics? of power metal #0: Intro

I throw around genre labels often as adjectives.  They're a convenient way to summarize a certain collection of elements.  As far as actually listening to music, I usually don't so much to pick a particular subgenre to explore, though.  It's more to find someone I love, either from a new release or a specific recommendation from someone, and then follow them through their career.  Sometimes this results in a deep fandom wherein records get spun over and over.  Sometimes I fall off because someone only nails it once or twice but not consistently.  And sometimes there are the near-misses, wherein I listen to someone a lot, I like them, I clearly see that they're good at what they do, yet there's a distance to the fandom.*  Over the years I've come close to falling in love with a few bands that have certain elements in common that leads them to be labelled "power metal."

At one time I thought SERENITY, the power-adjacent symphonic metallers from Austria, were my shit.  Except that despite a lot of listens, I started to notice that I wasn't really retaining much about the music; however cool it might sound, I couldn't even tell which song was which.  I drifted away, because they weren't really worth that many $20 CDs.**  (And that was even before they released, in the tewnty-first motherfucking century, a record uncritically glorifying the exploits of Richard The Fucking Lionheart.)  I like this band and have tried, and failed, to make it something more.  Dabbled in Kamelot a little bit as a result too, but not enough for too many $20 CDs.

At a different time, I thought Finnish legends Sonata Arctica were my shit.  The energy, the progressive song structures, the tasteful use of keyboards, and the unique lyrical approach - what wasn't to like?  Turns out, they have quite a few truly great songs, but mixed in are a bunch of nothing songs that bore the living shit out of me.  And to me, Sonata's pre-Reckoning Night work, which is the part of their career most closely identified with "power metal" and the part most often reminisced about by fans who think the band lost the plot as their sound evolved, does not have a higher hit-to-miss ratio than does any other "era."  Overall I like this band and have tried, and failed, to make it something more.

At yet another time, after discovering some hilarious cover art and then liking the songs I actually heard, I thought that Helloween, the most classic of power metal bands, might be my shit.  Helloween never forgot to rock, and put the soaring vocal melodies first and foremost.  I've listened to quite a lot of Helloween, and never regretted it.  They're an infectiously fun band.  I also was never quite able to shake the feeling that they're a limited band.  They do a thing, some versions of the thing are especially good and some versions sound like lesser versions of the same.   I like this band a lot, but don't think they're quite next level.

 

Let's dive a little deeper into that, since Helloween come from a group of Hamburg-based bands that claim, with some dispute, to have invented "power metal."  Whatever Helloween's music does right and wrong thus is kinda what's right, and wrong, with PM as a whole.  The excesses... well, they're excessive, and seem to spread through the rest of the power metal I've heard.  On, say, Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Volume II, the same record as all-time metal classic "Eagle Fly Free," they can go nuts with the shtick and the sincerity.  What is "Dr. Stein?"  Why is it an alleged classic?  It's an apparent joke song that isn't fucking funny; what even is the joke?  Then you flip the album/tape/whatever they used in 1988 and a few songs later, the title track is thirteen and a half minutes of a shrieking man telling an overwrought story, played straight, about "you" saving the world from Satan.  I actually think that the fact that I'm a fan of fantasy writing makes me especially skeptical that song lyrics will have anything remotely interesting to say about quests, battles, dragons, etc.  

 

Again, I'm not trying to pick on Helloween as unique offenders here; my point is that their offenses seem widespread in the subgenre.  I mean, look.  I do little top-fifteen lists every year.  A few power metal records almost always make it... but almost never anywhere close to the top five.  That's where I am. 

As best as I can tell, many of the key elements that tie these and other often lesser bands together include some individual things I do love.  I love music that goes fast but doesn't necessarily try to be the heaviest thing imaginable.  I love making the singer the focus, and I love my rock smothered with a heavy sauce of pop hooks.  I love a keyboard or a string section to add extra ornaments to a guitar.   At its best, power metal can produce an irresistable ear-candy high that goes hard.  The Helloween track "Future World" is cheesy as hell and I absolutely do not care, because it is also absolutely infectious, bursting with optimism and joy with a chorus I'd hum all day if I weren't already humming the riff all day.  I'm always looking for more music that makes me feel that way.  I continue to be fixated by the belief that there's got to be more of those classics out there.

In order to explore whether I can love power metal, why it is awesome, and why it might not be, I tried to put together a group of records to encapsulate different flavors within the power pot.  Here's the list of what I'm planning to write about***:

Manilla Road - Open The Gates (1985)

Adramelch - Irae Melanox (1988)

Running Wild - Death Or Glory (1989)

HammerFall - Glory To The Brave (1997)

Helloween - The Dark Ride (2000)

Avantasia - The Metal Opera, Part I (2001)

Falconer - Falconer (2001)

Kamelot - Epica (2003)

Angra - Temple Of Shadows (2004)

Wuthering Heights - The Shadow Cabinet (2006)

Ancient Bards - The Alliance Of The Kings (2010)

Judicator - At The Expense Of Humanity (2015)

Lovebites - Awakening From Abyss (2017)

Ascension - Under The Veil Of Madness (2023) 

So, that's the project.  I do already know The Dark Ride and Under The Veil... but included them because they seem like they'd be interesting to write about.  The other twelve, however, I am coming in totally blind.  So as to produce something like a "reaction," I'll write up preliminary thoughts after two listens or so, followed by a more "final" review later.  Hopefully it'll be as interesting to read as I expect it'll be to write about.  And hopefully I'll find some music to convince me that our future lives will be glorious.  Could definitely use some of that right about now.

Next:  At The Gates by Manilla Road, initial impressions, whenever I get around to it!

*And on especially rare occasions, manifesting in posts like "Marillion are a really good band!  Let me shit all over them for forty pages!"

**I am old.

***I worried about the "order" a little, but concluded that there's no way to make a linear, coherent story out of a hodgepodge of records chosen in part for breadth and diversity.  I only know how to do things chronologically, so...