Good Music that you need to listen to (with youtube links)

[NightDragon83]

Runa216 said:

NightDragon83 said:

Runa216 said:

NightDragon83 said:

Yeah, when I first heard about the group I was expecting more of a throwback to early Helloween and Gamma Ray, but so far I like the more rock-oriented direction they've chosen to go.  I really like this song too... it's from their forthcoming full debut album later this month.  Hopefully the rest of the album sounds as good as this.

yeah that was pretty awesome as well.  I'm curious, what's the definition of power metal?  Most metal I know is pretty powerful. 

"Power metal" is the term generally used to describe speedy and melodic styles of metal, usually with a splash of keyboards and sometimes cheesy uplifting lyrics, i.e. Helloween, Blind Guardian, Stratovarius, to name some of the bigger ones.  Of course back in the day it was more straight-forward, now you have bands that try to work in operatic and symphonic vocals and melodies into their music (Nightwish, Rhapsody, Avantasia).  There's so many different sub-genres of metal these days it's mind boggling.

I love you so much right now; you've just listed off a who's who of bands I love.  Maybe not Favorites (those honors go to Dream Theater, Elvenking, and Rush), but still awesome. 

Your Opinion on Dragonforce?  

Aww, we got a "bromance" goin on haha :)  As for Dragonforce... now there's a band that everyone feels the need to voice their opinion over these days lol.

Believe it or not, they (along with a good dose of classic Iron Maiden and Helloween) are the main reason I got into metal in the first place.  Their demo album got put up on our network in college back in 2002, and I was instantly hooked.  I had always liked classic hard rock / heavy metal, but mainly just the more mainstream stuff they play on the radio all the time, i.e. AC/DC, Van Halen, Bon Jovi, the Crue, etc.  Then came 2002, which was like a perfect storm of metal for me, because you had GTA Vice City come out, which had some of the best 80's metal tracks ever on the soundtrack, Tony Hawk 4 was the first time I ever heard Maiden's NOTB... and then once I started really taking a liking to metal.. BAM... Dragonforce's debut album hits in early '03!  Instantly hooked, I became a huge fan of theirs, and it led me to seek out similar sounding bands after reading reviews comparing them to some of my now favs that I listed above.

Nowadays... it's a different story with them.  Their schtick is stale, they play the same song over and over again with the same words, just slightly rearranged each time.  The first two albums were great, then came Inhuman Rampage, where every song on the album seemed to bleed together.  To this day I can't name any other tracks off the album except for Through the Fire and Flames and Operation Ground and Pound... and I bought it the day it came out in the US!  Their last album was even worse, and I just recently heard their new single, which is just a 4-1/2 minute version of every other song they play.  New singer sounds good, but that's not nearly enough to breath new life into the band when they refuse to at least try something different with their sound and songwriting.