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 16-2017: Labÿrinth – Architecture Of A God
Despite their distinctly Italian power metal sound, Labÿrinth was a pretty unique band in the country’s mid-nineties metal scene. They shared their countrymen’s melodic sensibilities, tendency towards higher tempos and somewhat symphonic approach, but also had an uncommonly romantic vibe for a metal band. However, not long after founding guitarist…
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Album of the Week 14-2017: Onmyo-za – Kishibojin
Concept albums can be a tricky affair, but when done right, their atmosphere and continuity lifts everything about the albums in question to a higher level. Take Onmyo-za’s ‘Kishibojin’. It’s one of those albums that leaves very little to be desired and therefore is almost impossible to turn off before…
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Album of the Week 13-2017: Wicked Mystic – Lithium
Sometimes unexpected breakups inadvertently mean that bands go out while they’re at their peaks. Yours truly was thoroughly impressed with Wicked Mystic’s sophomore album ‘Lithium’, but before they could properly promote the record, the band had already broken up. And that means that outside of the Netherlands, not many people…
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Album of the Week 12-2017: Seikima-II – Mephistopheles no Shouzou
A cliché often used for eighties rock bands that survived through the nineties is that their records sound as if the nineties didn’t happen. Hardly any album answers more to that sentiment than ‘Mephistopheles No Shouzou’. Despite being released in 1996, the compositions, arrangements and production scream eighties hard rock…
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Album of the Week 10-2017: Pentagram – Bir
Around the time ‘Unspoken’ was released, Pentagram must have realized that there was a demand for their Turkish language songs, which the album lacked. So a year after that album, the band released ‘Bir’, a collection consisting entirely of songs in Turkish lyrics or without any lyrics at all. This…
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Album of the Week 09-2017: Onmyo-za – Fuujin Kaikou
With the genre nearing five decades of existence, finding unique sounding metal is becoming increasingly difficult. Onmyo-za somehow succeeds at doing so without attempting anything too far-fetched. Their riffs and twin melodies are generally from the traditional heavy metal and hard rock mold, but their open-minded approach to songwriting allows…
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Album of the Week 02-2017: Firewind – Immortals
Due to the band members being busy with other projects, Firewind has been a little dormant the last couple of years, but luckily there is a new album. And not just any album, it’s the first metal highlight of 2017. Everything the relatively lackluster ‘Few Against Many’ was missing is…
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Album of the Week 01-2017: Stygma IV – The Human Twilight Zone
Sometimes bands are so short of the attention they deserve, that they even surprise me pleasantly when I come across them in my own collection. Because really, Stygma IV’s brand of dark, somewhat progressive power metal is nothing short of excellent. And yet, they’re not exactly a household name. Maybe…
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Album of the Week 51-2016: Mary’s Blood – Fate
There has been a veritable cornucopia of female heavy and power metal bands from Japan these last few years. A few of them are good, a lot of them are too upbeat and poppy for my taste and then there’s Mary’s Blood. Armed with an array of excellent contemporary heavy…
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