Priest's Power Metal Church

This week we're going to focus on a band everyone should know in Power Metal circles, German Heavy/Power Metal band Primal Fear! After lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers auditioned to be frontman for Judas Priest in the '90s and lost out to Tim Owens he decided to form a kickass band. Primal Fear are raw metal, chunky riffs, booming bass, soaring vocals and a brilliant heavy metal feel to them. Sounding similar to bands like Iron Savior, Judas Priest and Iced Earth I strongly recommend them to any new power metal comer. Any of their albums are worth getting bar perhaps New Religion which is their only shitter in my opinion. Jaws of Death is a great place to start as is Black Sun. I've given you some sample songs below to make you understand why these guys fucking rule! Give them a listen.

Priest's Power Metal Church

Evening to my followers in America where uh hopefully it's still Wednesday!

My recommendation for you this week is a band called Agonizer. They are Finnish and play melodic power metal which is pretty heavy. Their debut album Birth/The End is their only one available. I like this band for their low end riffing, chugging rhythms and powerful style. The introduction song to their album is below, check it out see what you think:



Until next week my friends!

Priest's Power Metal Church

Alright metalheads, Priest reporting in here from chilly ol' England. It's been a while since the blog had some activity that was due to the main posters here working on a forum which means a great deal to us. A

Anyway, plan from now is each Wednesday evening I will be posting a weekly dose of power metal/melodic metal for you guys to check out and headbang to \m/

This week I thought I'd start with a power metal gem not everyone knows about but should... SAVAGE CIRCUS!!!
This band were formed by Thomen Stauch after he left Blind Guardian because he didn't like the direction their music was going in. He grouped together with Piet Sielck (Iron Savior, ex-Gamma Ray), Jens Carlsson (Persuader) and Emil Norberg (Persuader) to form a band on par with early Blind Guardian. Fast, furious and melodic as hell. Savage Circus is a MUST for anyone digging the old Blind Guardian material such as Imaginations, Battalions of Fear, Nightfall etc.

Recently just released their new album Of Doom and Death, their second after debut album Dreamland Manor was released 4 years ago. Both are equally brilliant and worth checking out.

Here is a sample of what Savage Circus are like:



This is my tip for this week. Await next week's recommendation!

Text book stuff from Sweden!

Now Morifade are another one of those many underground power metal bands that you’ll usually only come across completely by accident or in mentioned in a list on Youtube or something. Funnily enough, I came across this band in another way, that is; I typed ‘Sci-fi’ and ‘power metal’ into the Metal Archives search engine and picked a band name at random and then My-spaced them. How lucky I was because I really liked what I heard.

Morifade of Sweden are nothing special, but I have to say, they’re bloody good for what they are, which is: light-hearted, sci-fi sounding power metal with elements reminiscent of bands like Stratovarius and Labyrinth.

They have plenty of speed, but not an overdose. They have interesting riffery with a lot nice rhythmic work as well as a lot of great modern power metal leads and melodies. The drumming is great too, a lot of alternating patterns and ‘speed up and downs’ (think Wuthering Heights (but not that much lol)). The overall arrangement has some good variation, you won’t get bored with this after the first few tracks and you’ll easily loose you self in a two or three back-to-back listens of the album. Vocals are what you would expect from Stefan Peterson, mid-ranged, full, melodic and straight forward. Keyboards are well placed, subtle and get very quick in the pre-chorus areas, as in most great power metal.

This is just another of the great, hard working power metal bands out there that just know what they’re doing and do it well. There’s’ a lot of catchy soul-raising tunes on this release the will have you coming back again for more. My only criticism is of the lyrics which are very bland and is nothing you haven’t heard before but other than that, the music is top notch power metal.

7/10

Highlights: Escape, In Martyria and Revive for a while.

Avantasia

I read this curious article this morning which made me think a bit more of Tobias Sammett but I also kind of question his way of thinking a bit. Here is what he had to say regarding the release date of the next Avantasia album:

"This is not a rock-&-Roll-homestudio-project, we'll work with a choir, with a symphony orchestra and - no matter if the music-industry goes down the toilet - I'll spend a fortune on creating the whole thing. So I'll take all the time I need, and it won't see the light of day until I am completely satisfied. Some who know my plans said, that it's unreasonable to spend one's savings on creating a piece of music these days, as the music industry is going through hard times. Absolutely right! But do you consider it extremely reasonable to shoot a man into space? It's unreasonable to spend money for whatever, life itself is unreasonable, because - believe it or not - in the end it's quite often pretty lethal. I am rather unreasonable and therefore unsad."

Interesting.




Priest

Project Strato

Not sure how many of you are fans of Stratovarius but as one of the early power metal bands they have been around for a very long time and gone through numerous changes. I was reading on metal-rules.com earlier today that Timo Tolkki (who recently departed the band) is forming his own project called Project Strato which is utilising the Dreamscape line-up and tentatively called their album Return to Dreamscape. The hope is this will revisit the type of music they played on this album 15 years ago and give Timo Tolkki the opportunity (in his mind) to close the book on Stratovarius. The remaining band members still continue to play with the band's name and the issues they have had to deal with Tolkki and his mental illness came to culminate in late 2007 with his departure. This year they have a new album, new guitarist and hopefully a new fresh outlook.

I will get a chance to see this on Monday when I go to see them play along with Firewind.

Priest

Blind guardian... in a game?

Look for your self, quite funny really.

the video features a new song from their upcoming album.



The making of/motion capture and interviews.




Apparently Hansi and the other band members will also be featured in the game
as NPCs!

Whats next huh?

Need..moree....poweerrrrr!

Here are some power metal bands for all raging warriors to check out!

Pertness



Strange name, great '08 debut from
the new Swedish band. Speed and battles
power and melody.

Dark Empire



Some aggressive power/thrash. Quite technical
with Persuader/Savage Circus singer Jens Carlson.

Crystallion




Concept power metal based on the crusades.
catchy, fast and soaring power metal.

Landguard



Truly magical prog/power from Italy.
A must have for any power fan.

Timeless Miracle



A band seemly coming out of no where,
boast some extremely impressive power metal
that will have you hooked and obsessed for a
long time.

Role Model Power/Folk

Here we are! The latest installment by the legendary folk/power band: Falconer! I'm sure I'm not the only one who’s been hanging out for this one after the mild disappointment of Northwind. Even though Northwind was still pretty damn good I felt that it lacked the thought and effort that the previous albums had.

This is the second release with their original singer Mathias Bald who reunited with the band in ’06 on the aforementioned album and it’s good to hear his voice again. There's not much that can be said about him other than he rules and sings in the same vein of the deep vocalists like Hansi, Piet and Jens Carlsson. But enough about Mathias, let’s discuss the music.

I’m happy to say that this album is a return to the bands roots, namely; the self titled debut and Chapters From a Vale Forlorn. These two albums being closer based on power metal than the next few, which i felt (while still killer!) were closer based on heavy metal. This release however, achieves the balance between the two genres perfectly. We’ve got the speed and melody of the first two albums and the heaviness of the later few. So basically the music is really on par with this one, its powerful, catchy, progressive and more folky and epic than ever.

Speaking of folky, we've got a few ballad tracks on here too where the vocals are all sung in Swedish. Personally i would say this is the album’s only downfall but that may just be because I'm not a huge fan of ballads.

There are some new elements in the album too, namely the introduction of metal opera/symphonic influence and also another guest vocalist who duals with Mathias on the last track. It’s great to see this sort of thing in the band because it really makes their music sound more dynamic and epic (think Rhapsody of Fire) and also shows that their are growing as band. The best thing about this is that it’s not over done so much that you would have to re-classify them because they exercise control and still keep it heavy.

All up, this is a another solid release from a solid band that really just cant seem to do no wrong. The music is brighter and folkier than ever with catchy guitar riffs and hooky melodies. The arrangements are well balanced introducing new elements whilst emphasizing the old. In short, these guys really are the role models of the genre.

9/10.