Avantasia streaming Ghostlights

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Avantasia is arguably a notable power metal act and perhaps one of the EU’s most profitable exporters of cheese. Man can’t live on cheese alone, but DMU occasionally attracts fans of mainstream power metal, and sometimes for all its goofiness it’s less idiotic than whatever else is trendy. Ghostlights will officially release tomorrow, but the German entertainment news site Bild (at least I think it’s lightweight news; meine Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut) is currently offering a stream of the album for those who want to preview the album. As is typical for this band, Ghostlights will feature an all-star roster of power metal musicians, and is generally very accessible and poppy; saccharine even once listeners acclimate to the sound. We might give it a review someday; no guarantees.

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Iron Maiden working on their second video game

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Back in 1999, Iron Maiden released Ed Hunter, a greatest hits compilation that also included a video game of the same name. The game hasn’t aged well at all (and even in 1999, it was underwhelming). 17 years, though, have wrought enormous changes in the video gaming industries, and thusly, Iron Maiden’s second effort (at least, if you don’t count the minigame released for “Speed of Light”) is under development. Legacy of the Beast describes itself as “an epic free-to-play mobile role playing game, set in the expansive Iron Maiden universe,” and like any bandgame it understandably includes many songs from Iron Maiden’s career, as well as some live recordings that will remain exclusive to the game for some time. Little concrete information has been released on how this game will actually play, but a signup for a mailing list on the game’s webpage suggests upcoming information in the near future…

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Imperial Age – Warrior Race (2016)

IMPERIAL-AGE_Warrior-Race_Artwork2016_final (artwork by Jan Yrlund)

Article by David Rosales

Power metal releases are, admittedly, not the the first thing this site’s audience mainly come here for, but every once in a while we grace your eyes with the occasional appraisal of very rare honorable mentions of this superficial genre. More often than not, power metal is vain and empty, and although musically competent, also musically laughable. By its very nature, it has a higher incidence of worthless products, but that could be said of almost any mainstream genre when compared to underground ones. Contrary to your expectations, Imperial Age will receive praises here today. A cursory glance at Warrior Race might leave the impression that there is nothing new, nothing different in here that could set it apart from the bulk of contemporary power metal releases. It does not even pretend to have the progressive inclinations that some of its most ambitious competitors boast of. Structure-wise, it is as predictable as the most rigid sing-along pop acts. The tone is typically flamboyant and aristocratically haughty as becomes a European power metal ensemble.
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Exmortus – Ride Forth (2016)

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Article by David Rosales

Exmortus is a speed metal band with leanings towards what is commonly called ‘power metal’, although the general public seems to lump them in the mixed bag that so-called melodic death metal is due to their use of angsty growled-barked vocals. Exmortus have built up quite a following in the young, mainstream metal community. Ride Forth is the exciting fourth album these youngsters and guitar enthusiasts have been awaiting. This album features ‘neo-classical’ metal gestures that were first introduced in very small quantities by NWOBHM bands in combination with pentatonic soloing. It took the likes of Malmsteen and Randy Rhodes to bring this aspect to the fore. Exmortus themselves highlight it to the point of making it more than just the center of the music; enlarging it to be all the relevant music to be found herein.
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Power metal musicians form “Gathered in Darkness” project

Michael “Dr. Froth” Millsap isn’t exactly a household name in his progressive rock flavored niche of metal, but through some means, he’s managed to put together a formidable roster of musicians for the “Gathered in Darkness” project. Essentially a narrative-heavy concept album; its most notable contributors include Rob Lowe of Solitude Aeternus and Candlemass, and James Rivera of Helstar. If you’ve ever listened to the works of Nevermore or similar bands, you have a good idea of what to expect from this track – power metal vocals over vaguely progressive-rock oriented mid-paced jazz-fusion groove-metal hyphencore. The musicians involved certainly value their own technical prowess, but overall this is a difficult sell to the DMU audience, and it may end up as little more than a footnote about how that alone is not enough to make an album interesting and worthy of discussion.

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Symphony X – Underworld (2015)

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Review by David Rosales

Symphony X has quite a following in the progressive power metal scene and has had such mainstream success in the technical musicians camp that almost each of the individual members of the band has his own little cult going on. In its very beginnings, the band leaned towards the so-called neoclassical stylings of ’80s melodic heavy metal. A few albums later, a clear progressive music orientation had crept in. All the while, the band retained a relatively original voice centered in Michael Romeo’s signature licks and Russell Allen’s distinctive vocalizations.
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Beorn – Time to Dare (2015)

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Power metal, the post-2000 incarnation of speed metal that mixes radio rock and Hollywood-style theatrical music into a hybrid, gets a lot of flack for being cheesy. This is true. However, it is also one of the few areas where metal musicians can create epic music and still have a large audience, since the underground metal audience disconnected from quality with war metal and was replaced with post-hardcore at the hands of vegan SJWs riding fixies to their artisanal bagel shops.
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Dream Theater continues buildup for The Astonishing

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Dream Theater’s upcoming album is certainly high concept, although I don’t foresee the results being anything other than the usual technically accomplished vaguely progressive power metal they always put out. As part of the buildup to the scheduled 2016 release of The Astonishing, the band has released a ton of visual and conceptual material, and most recently put up the tracklisting for the album. Other commentators throughout the internet are being psychically assaulted by the sheer 34-ness of the amount of tracks listed; when they recover they often end up claiming that the album will either be excellent or a colossal trainwreck. I’m personally expecting something in the middle, although visual art fans might at least find something of interest in these supplementary materials.

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Eurynomos – Eye of the Pantheon (2015)

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This short EP has been sitting in our review queue for a while, for better or worse. I personally didn’t know what to expect from this band, but I certainly wasn’t expecting Root or After Death style ‘traditional’ heavy metal with extreme metal technique (i.e what we call power metal in the local parlance). The specific genre probably isn’t important, but Eye of the Pantheon does fit in quite well with the nebulous “first wave” of black metal despite its contemporary vintage. Luckily for us, Eurynomos takes after the better metal in that vein by making up for its technical shortcomings with ambitious songwriting and that certain ineffable gutter charisma I find rather common in similarly primitive recordings.
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Rhapsody of Fire unveils new album – Into The Legend

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The consistently bombastic and melodramatic (except when splitting into two bands) Rhapsody of Fire has revealed the cover art and tracklisting for Into The Legend. Intended for release on January 15th, 2016, Into the Legend will likely continue the band’s signature style, although word on the street is that its predecessor (Dark Wings of Steel) was a partial departure from such. Without a promotional single, there’s not a great deal of information we can work with. On the other hand, expect the media to compare this to Luca Turilli’s competing and recent Prometheus, Symphonia Ignis Divinus, and perhaps for the bigger symphonic power metal fans to insist that it either does or does not live up to whatever standard some of the other bands in the genre have set with their recent material.

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