“Reasons Behind is a four-piece Italian symphonic power metal band trying their hand at synth metal on Project: M.I.S.T., their second full-length album. Given that Reasons Behind’s debut album sits squarely in pure symphonic metal territory, I can imagine the band had fun getting their hands dirty experimenting with synths and chasing after more trance or dubstep inspired sounds for their new release.” M.I.S.T. opportunities.
“Angry Metal Guy’s latest n00b interrupts your regularly scheduled black metal to bring the ultimate question: is power metal metal? “It has the word metal in it, so of course it is, you babbling bumbling baboon,” you say. I get it, and it’s been proven again and again, but while various facets of the metalverse have to justify why they’re not rock, power metal is one of the only styles that must justify why it’s not pop.” Justify our love.
“The brainchild of Frozen Crown’s Federico Mondelli and Sleeping Romance’s Federica Lanna, Volturian prioritizes fun over all. These tunes will get stuck in your head, you will kind of hate that they get stuck in your head, and you will be powerless to stop it if you give it the smallest opening.” Activate earworm lock!
“Rather than a refreshed take on a démodé genre, DarkTribe’s music feels as if abducted from the late 1990s or early 2000s and put into stasis, trapped in that timeline and preserved in a pristine state forever. So powerful and candid is this stylistic anachronism that the band’s third LP Voici l’homme acts as a rotten Proustian Madeleine, eternally evoking yet never reaching the sonic imagery of first encounters with bands such as Labyrinth, Stratovarius, and Evergrey.” Lost tribes.
“If you mopped up all the Darkthrone albums and wrung the juice out into a bucket, the grey slop collected would have the same general properties as To Fathom the Master’s Grand Design. Horned Almighty deliver their simplified black/death metal in a punky but neat package: ‘t’s crossed, ‘i’s dotted, Satans hailed.” Cleanup in aisle trve.
“Coupled with an overly dense production, Forsaken left a bad taste in my mouth, and my review was decidedly mixed, noting the issues above, while lamenting how good everything else was. Noveria is absolutely a talented band; they just made a series of misjudgments that I could not overlook and feverishly hoped they would not repeat. So it wasn’t without some hesitation I took up Aequilibrium. And let me tell you: there are few greater joys than the feeling that a band has taken your constructive criticism to heart.” Power with grace.
“Once upon a time, your friendly neighborhood Steel Druhm was a big time power metal nerd. I loved nearly all of it, no matter how cheesy, poppy, dragon intensive or elf friendly it was. With advancing age and the inevitable cynicism that follows, my tolerance for saccharine-sweet Euro-pop-power diminished, and I’ve became increasingly judicious in what is deigned worthy for admittance in the ears ov Steel. One of the few power metal albums I still return to regularly is Excalion’s 2007 opus Waterlines. The Finnish act found a near-perfect blend of heaviness, accessibility and over-the-top fun on that platter and its withstood the test of time and shifts in listening habits.” Songs and Emotion.
“We all have our weird idiosyncratic dislikes. For me, one of those is people who cut spaghetti with a knife. Despicable barbarism. Another is the random and unnecessary capitalization of letters within a word. So you can imagine my reaction when the new album from SinHeresY landed in my lap.” Don’t hang up.
“I guess I brought this on myself. All that trash I’ve been talking at the office about power metal has finally come full circle, and here I am laying out the carpet for a power metal band. The debate rages on: does power metal belong among the ranks of true metal or is it too melodic? I suppose, since the beginning, one of metal music’s core tenets has always been a focus on excess. Whether it be slamming death metal’s absurdly violent lyrics or black metal’s corpsepaint, power metal’s dramatic focus on the operatic and epic certainly fits.” Abuse of power.
“Every once a while we at AMG hack and slash each other for promos. In this case, I slice-and-diced one Very Messy Individual™ (Holdeneye) in the name of a symphonic death metal band by the name of Stormlord. You see, symphonic death and symphonic black metal seem to be on the upswing this year.” Storming with malice.
