“Name another site out there with writers hiding behind silly monikers whom you know better than your best friends. Name a site you dared to lean on, pouring your heart out in the comments, getting positive and uplifting responses when you needed them most. Name a site you’ve spent as much time debating, loving, and sharing music as you have on AMG. You can’t.” Truth telling.
“Aeons ago, long before I answered the casting call to write for this prestigious hostile work environment or had even commented on a review, I was but a reader and lurker of the site. Even then, I imagined that I might one day find my name written upon the sacred digital stone of AMG’s “About” tab. I fancied that I might form an inseparable bond with one Swordborn, the site’s apparent resident cheese custodian. In my fantasies, we’d frolic together through meadows like metal Cupids, firing 4.0’s and 4.5’s at power metal albums all willy nilly, laughing all the while.” Oh, so this is one of those fanfics.
The weekly staff playlist and a Blind Guardian primer? Oh snap, this is a good week!
“Every once in a while, something trvly special makes its way to the bin, something that I just can’t fucking wait to wax reviewic on. I’ve been pretty blessed with the majority of my selections as it is, but there’s still always room for something better—until now. I’ve been lusting over the chance to babble about Radiant Dark, the upcoming masterpiece by the UK’s The Drowning, and at long fucking last the day has come—” Powers used irresponsibly.
“In 2017, Boston band The Offering dropped a self-titled—and killer—EP that got them noticed by Century Media. Well, it’s time to check out their debut full-length Home, so grab something olde, something nü, something growled, and something blues, because today we’ll be haunting the chapel to see if the band can successfully marry an unhealthy number of musical influences into a cohesive whole.” Holy headlock!
“The smoke hasn’t even cleared from the battlefield that was the recent Sabaton opus, and here we go again with another over-the-top war-themed power metal album, this time by Israel’s Desert. It takes a certain amount of moxie for a relatively unknown act to drop their third album right alongside that of their nearest comparison point. Fortune Favors the Brave indeed. Desert does have a lot in common with Sabaton as far as thematic approach and overall bombast level, but they also sound a lot like Blind Guardian and Iced Earth. That’s quite a wicked trifecta.” Get sandy.
“Of all the bands that flooded the European power metal scene in the late 90’s and early 00’s, Sweden’s Freternia is certainly one of them. I’m not so much apathetic towards them as I am unfamiliar; I followed countless power metal bands in the previous decade, and while I’ve long known of Freternia’s existence, I never got around to adding them to my rotation. In retrospect, they were a solid early example of Blind Guardian worship, and one that may have tapped into some serious potential, had they not fizzled out in 2002 after only two albums. When several members of Freternia formed Cromonic a few years back, I had thought that the latter band would serve as the former’s replacement, so I was a bit surprised when Freternia’s comeback album, The Gathering, surfaced in the promo sump.” Join the Freternity.
“Dream Tröll. It’s a weird-ass pairing of words even in the realm of metal bands, yet one that glides off the tongue, despite every synapse in my brain screaming “That’s not right!” Sonically speaking, Dream Tröll is beholden to convention, but their splicing of genres is handled so ingeniously as to make such an unclassifiable name somehow fitting. It’s easy to draw correlations between traditional metal, power metal, and good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n roll, yet Dream Tröll plays with these tropes in delightfully unexpected ways, resulting in a distinct sound displaced from any defined era of metal music.” Trölling with the oldies.
“Musically, Holy Tide sounds a lot like Pyramaze, specifically Immortal and Disciples of the Sun. Vocalist Fabio Caldeira reminds much more of Disciples’s Terje Haroy than the inimitable Matt Barlow, largely due to the lack of Barlow’s gruff edge. The main reason for the Pyramaze comparison, though, is the keyboards. Both Pyramaze and Holy Tide make heavy use of that once-maligned instrument, smartly toning down the guitars when the keyboard takes the lead and vice-versa.” Big stuff is big.
“There’re seven things in this world I cherish, seven people I don’t hate, and seven albums I’ll love to the grave. OK, the seven ‘things’ are only one, the seven ‘people’ are only two, and the seven albums I plan to die with are none of your fucking business. ‘Seven’ is a lucky number for dumbasses in Hollywood movies. But, for me, seven is a convenient middle-ground to questions from my boss, family, and ‘friends.’ ‘How much longer is this gonna take?!’ Seven minutes. ‘Christmas is starting! How far away are you?’ Seven days. ‘How old is Abigail?’ Seven. Wait! Nine?! Fuck. You get what I mean. Regardless of how idiotic a lucky number can be, ‘seven’ might be, indeed, a lucky number for Germany’s Stormhammer.” Lucky number Stormhammer.
