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 33-2021: Aion – Absolute
No, ‘Absolute’ is not the best Aion album. ‘Aionism’ will probably forever hold that title for me. Given the time it came out, however, it is quite surprising how good the album is. It came out on the heels of their far too upbeat self-titled album and the rather plodding…
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Album of the Week 32-2021: Attacker – Sins Of The World
Attacker might just be the only US power metal band that is better now than they were in the eighties. Their peers often suffer from the “best since” syndrome. Even the ones that are actually making good albums; every good album Vicious Rumors makes might be their best since ‘Welcome…
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Album of the Week 30-2021: Heretic – Breaking Point
Mike Howe’s untimely death earlier this week spurred on a lot of people to put on the excellent albums he recorded with Metal Church again. For the record, I don’t think either Howe or Metal Church have ever sounded as good as on those records, but I thought it might…
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Album of the Week 28-2021: Rakshasa – Hyakka Sousei
Rakshasa came to my attention while searching for bands that sound like Onmyo-za. They don’t really; both bands have an approach that combines heavy metal with traditional Japanese elements in their sound and aesthetics, as well as an emphasis on female vocals – pretty much exclusively in Rakshasa’s case –…
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Album of the Week 25-2021: Helloween – Helloween
It would be tempting to compare Helloween’s first album after the return of singer Michael Kiske and founding guitarist Kai Hansen to the reunion that made Iron Maiden a three-guitar band. A better comparison would be Testament’s reunion with Alex Skolnick and Greg Christian. Maybe a weird comparison, but like…
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Album of the Week 24-2021: Galneryus – Union Gives Strength
During the period leading up to the release of ‘Union Gives Strength’, Galneryus consistently referred to the release as a “special album” in marketing outings. So what’s so special about it? They probably did not want to give the impression that it’s one hour plus of new material, as roughly…
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Album of the Week 22-2021: Burning Witches – The Witch Of The North
Around the time Burning Witches started writing for last year’s ‘Dance With The Devil’, the Swiss band seemed to realize that they needed a little more variation in order to stand out from the crop of younger traditional heavy metal bands. On that particular album, the increased variation in tempos…
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Album of the Week 19-2021: Blind Guardian – Tales From The Twilight World
Transitional periods are often interesting and somewhat risky for bands. In case of Blind Guardian, ‘Tales From The Twilight World’ and ‘Somwhere Far Beyond’ still feature the band’s early speed metal roots fairly prominently, but the arrangements in particular already hint at the more theatrical sound they would later come…
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Album of the Week 17-2021: Gamma Ray – Sigh No More
Gamma Ray’s second album ‘Sigh No More’ is generally considered the black sheep of their discography. That probably has to do with the album’s relatively dark, somewhat cynical tone rather than with its actual musical content. No one will ever hear me say that ‘Sigh No More’ is the best…
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