Power Metal Reviews

High tempos, soaring vocals, memorable choruses, and majestic melodies – often harmonies – all made me an avid power metal fan as an early teenager. And despite getting into other genres through the years, my love for power metal never really faded away. As a result, quite a large part of my Album of the Week reviews have been about power metal albums. You can find all the power metal reviews published on Kevy Metal right here. Overlaps with my heavy metal reviews inevitably exist.

If you are looking something that isn’t listed here, I might still have reviewed it. I didn’t start properly tagging my reviews until a few years in. You can use the search bar to search for any artist or release you want to know more about using the search bar at the bottom of the page.

  • Album of the Week 46-2020: Kinniku Shojo Tai – Omake No Ichinichi (Tatakai No Hibi)

    After crazy eclectics Kinniku Shojo Tai reunited about a decade and a half ago, they decided to focus on what they did best. Melodic power metal, muscular funk rock, Queen-ish layered bombast and proggy weirdness. If that already sounds quite eclectic to you, you would not be wrong. Post-reunion Kinniku…

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  • Album of the Week 45-2020: Aria – Kresheniye Ognëm (2020)

    Licensing issues prevented Aria from releasing their two albums with Artur Berkut internationally or even including tracks from them on compilations for years. As a result, the band simply decided to re-record the albums with their current – and best – singer Mikhail Zhitnyakov this year. Not a bad idea,…

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  • Album of the Week 44-2020: Seikima-II – News

    In the nineties, Seikima-II basically released two types of albums: distinctly old school heavy metal albums and poppy hardrock albums with a glossy production. The former tend to be more to my liking, but both sides of the aisle have one notable exception. ‘Kyofu No Restaurant’ is easily the most…

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  • Album of the Week 43-2020: Sanctuary – Into The Mirror Black

    When Warrel Dane announced during his lifetime that he had the master tapes to the entire show of which five songs appeared on the extensively bootlegged ‘Into The Mirror Live’ EP, I was excited to see its full release. Dane wouldn’t live to see the release of the full show,…

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  • Album of the Week 42-2020: After Forever – Decipher

    All of the better bands from Holland’s late nineties wave of female-fronted goth-ish metal bands had something special, often rendering them far less gothic than they were given credit for. After Forever’s debut album ‘Prison Of Desire’ seemed to suggest they only had one of the better singers of the…

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  • Album of the Week 32-2020: Persuader – The Fiction Maze

    Having a great singer is beneficial to any band, unless that singer to no fault of his own sounds a lot like another popular singer. For years, Persuader has often been written off as a poor man’s Blind Guardian due to Jens Carlsson’s uncanny vocal resemblance to Hansi Kürsch. Personally,…

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  • Album of the Week 29-2020: Esqarial & Kupczyk – Klassika

    Esqarial started out as a fairly progressive death metal band and like most of those bands do, they gradually evolved into something more complex. Contrary to many bands of the same ilk, however, Esqarial also gradually became more melodic. Apparently to the point where frontman and current Vader guitarist Marek…

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  • Album of the Week 27-2020: Arakain – Jekyll & Hyde

    Now this is how you do a modern metal album! Ever since current singer Honza Toužimský joined Arakain, the band has slowly been moving into a slightly more melodic direction. And with an increasing degree of variation in the tempos, something already hinted at on ‘Adrenalinum’ (2014) and ‘Arakadabra’ (2016),…

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  • Album of the Week 25-2020: Takenori Shimoyama – The Power Of Redemption

    ‘The Power Of Redemption’ is the second solo album Saber Tiger singer Takenori Shimoyama has released in less than six months. It is however, significantly different than ‘Way Of Life’, released in November. While Shimoyama’s raw, impassioned vocals worked surprisingly well with the largely acoustic music on that record, ‘The…

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