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.
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Album of the Week 26-2019: Megadeth – The System Has Failed
Originally devised as a Dave Mustaine solo album, ‘The System Has Failed’ eventually became Megadeth’s comeback on multiple levels. Not only did it feature Mustaine returning to activity after an intense arm injury sidelined him for at least a year and a half; it is also more or less unequivocally…
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Album of the Week 25-2019: Savatage – Hall Of The Mountain King
Depending on the era, Savatage is either the most classy of the first generation US power metal bands or the vehicle for producer Paul O’Neill’s rock opera ambitions. The first album O’Neill produced for the Floridians, however, screams eighties power metal. Often literally. Everything worthwhile about American heavy metal in…
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Album of the Week 17-2019: Black Sabbath – Mob Rules
Black Sabbath completely reinvented itself when Ozzy Osbourne left and Ronnie James Dio took over. ‘Heaven And Hell’ turned out to be one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time and made Sabbath catch up with the blossoming NWOBHM scene with class and conviction. Its follow-up ‘Mob Rules’…
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Album of the Week 15-2019: Catharsis – Imago
Although seen as a genre predominantly from northwestern Europe, some of this century’s most interesting power metal releases are actually from elsewhere and don’t always make it over to the west. Some bands try to make the transition by translating their songs to English, but ‘Imago’, the third full-length of…
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Album of the Week 14-2019: Jupiter – Zeus ~Legends Never Die~
Multiple times over the last few years, I had feared that Jupiter would disband. There have been several line-up changes and I thought the final nail in the coffin would be the reformation of Versailles, the hugely popular, but slightly inferior band that almost the entire original line-up came from.…
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Album of the Week 12-2019: Anthem – Nucleus
Some European label – Nuclear Blast, no less – finally has the balls to release Anthem’s music outside of Japan. Sure, the band needed a set of songs with English lyrics to accomplish an international record deal, but apart from the lyrics, Anthem was always easily one of the more…
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Album of the Week 10-2019: Kipelov – Zhit Vopreki
Valery Kipelov’s name will forever be inextricably linked to the legendary Russian heavy metal band Aria, which he fronted until 2002. His current band, simply named Kipelov, is more than just a continuation of the Aria sound, however. In fact, Kipelov is much more in line with contemporary power metal,…
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Album of the Week 06-2019: Aria – Feniks
‘Feniks’ was a return to form for Russia’s Aria. Not entirely like the titular character, because bassist Vitaly Dubinin never really lost his special songwriting touch, but ‘Feniks’ is definitely the first Aria album since ‘Krov Za Krov’ two decades earlier that is pretty much excellent from start to finish.…
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Album of the Week 02-2019: Gargoyle – Gaia
For some reason, ‘Gaia’ often gets ignored when people discuss the greatest works of Gargoyle. Up until last year’s unfortunate dissolution of the band, the songs on ‘Gaia’ did not even appear on their live sets all that much. Maybe that is a result of the material on the album…
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