How should modern power metal be differentiated as a genre label?

By modern power metal, I am referring to bands such as Battle Beast, Amaranthe, Beast in Black, Metalite, etc.
These bands often use heavy amounts of electronic elements, more common female vocals, 4 to the floor drum beats, and melodies that don't feel metal influenced or classically influenced.
Calling Dragonforce, Sonata Arctica, Galneryus, and Rhapsody all one genre is fitting, but the aforementioned bands do not seem to fit into the same label as well. There is currently differentiation between the American and European styles of power metal, and the symphonic/neoclassical power metal, however the bands listed here do not fall under any of these very well.

Is there a way to communicate this genre difference with a concise label other than "poppy power metal"?

I think our own hells_unicorn referred to it as "3rd Wave Power Metal" once and I've just sort of adopted using it myself. Time will tell if it catches on but it's certainly less unwieldy than "Corsetcore for Dudes", which is what I'd been calling it previously.

EDIT: I just now realized that I could've been calling Sabaton "Tactical Corsetcore" for years and I'm furious that I didn't think of it sooner.

since the european more poppy variant of power metal has been called flower metal, and these bands are even lighter evolutions of that, then i suppose flower petal would be apt

This is fucking hilarious. The image of a drunken fan one day stumbling into Joakim and complimenting him on his tactical corset is killing me.

I call it "the only interesting thing that's happened to metal as a whole in the past decade."

Not sure it really needs a whole different name, but I do hope it all goes away eventually. Some of the worst shit I ever heard.

I will take 10,000 or more Beast in Black and Metalite clones, and be ecstatic, if it means that I don't ever have to browse the Upcoming Albums list and stumble into mind-numbingly boring stuff like Dream Troll or Eternal Champion ever again.

I love me some extremely cheesy shit so this thread made me finally check out Beast in Black. Holy shit, this is straight-up 80s rock. Which I love, but come on, Babymetal is more deserving to be on the archives than this

I have no idea why this needs a separate name.

I usually have no problem with metalheads' navel-gazing nitpicking about genres, but holy shit, some of you are just silly with it lmao. It's power metal. Just because it isn't a direct clone of Rhapsody or Helloween doesn't mean we have to give it a new name. It's poppy simplistic power metal. That's it. Also, I'm not familiar with them a whole lot but Amaranthe honestly feels like a power metalcore band more than power metal (judging from the exactly one song of theirs I have listened to). They aren't even on the archives.

I have no idea what to call it but it's clearly a new thing. It doesn't sound anything like the "flower metal" of yore (Rhapsody of Fire and whatnot). It's more like EDM music with riffs and guitar solos.

I don't like it.

"Metalite", did they really intend this to stand for "metal lite" or am I reading too much into it?



They used to be, unless my memory is really failing. When they only had one or max two albums out.

Wait, I thought they were modern death metal?

Personally I feel the adjective ''modern'' is just commonly used for bands with shit loads of synth. So yeah, BiB and Battle Beast falls under the description. But then again, I don't think it's necessary to separate them into a different sub genres. Some of the works from the olden gods were labeled ''modern'' as well just because their more poppy structures.

If anything has to be said, I'll stick to hell_unicorn's definition

Amaranthe doesn't really fit with the others. They have a much more aggressive and harsher element to their sound that the others lack, with growls, faster riffing, double bass playing and such. They kind of don't really fit anywhere because they're basically half a dozen different bands pasted together, but power metal fans tend to reject them as part of the genre. It's just their sing-along choruses that tend to make people lump them in with Euro power metal bands. They've closer to what the mods here call "melodic groove metal", which is a term I don't like, but is essentially somewhere inbetween melodeath and power metal, with the heavier bludgeoning facets counterbalanced by the lighter melodic choruses and synths. They're a poppier, more marketable version of Deadlock, who never gets credit for doing that sound earlier and better.

I do think at some point someone should come up with a new term for this variation. It's still linked to power metal, but it is starting to become distinct and large enough that it would be helpful in distinguishing it as a particular niche movement or sub-subgenre.



I assumed it was more like "socialite", but for metal.

Yes, they were listed here, some years ago. I remember seeing them here in 2014.

As for the topic's theme, I wouldn't say it could be differetiated as a new genre label. Generally, it's what MA catalogs as being "melodic [...] metal", like what happens with some of the aforementioned bands, like Metalite, Beast in Black or Temperance. I'd say that even Beyond the Black could be lumped into such category, as what they play nowadays is very far apart from the music they played initially.

But, yes, I don't think it justifies a new genre label. I'd say that the "melodic" descriptor is pretty fine and sums up what it is: accessible metal, with pop-esque songwriting techniques, clear crystal and melodic riffing and plenty of electronic elements. Definitely not pure heavy or power metal, hence the "melodic" part, to emphatize such features.

Euro power is already so defined by melody that I don't think affixing "melodic" to the front of it really helps things though. I think it's as much the more moderate tempos, more danceable beats, and electronic music influence that differentiates it from the earlier bands. "Power dance metal" might be a very clunky name for it that I hope doesn't catch on but does get the idea across. Or make it really confusing by calling it EDM (Electronic Dance Metal).

Ah, yes, good point. For sure, Force Majeure and Altaria are miles apart from sounding like Metalite or such. Although the omnipresence of electronic elements could worth it acquiring that descriptor on the genre. Maybe "electronic power/heavy metal"? That would be something like Machinae Supremacy without the gaming sound parts.

There's a bunch of bands with a similar descriptor on MA, but I don't know how do they sound like. I might check some of them later:
https://www.metal-archives.com/search?s ... band_genre
https://www.metal-archives.com/search?s ... band_genre

As BastardHead and a couple others noted earlier, my preference has been to think of power metal, and by extension most of the other sub-genres out there in terms of waves rather than overtly descriptive sub-styles. As somebody who has immersed myself in just about every variant of power metal since the late 1990s, I tend to have an easy time localizing how a particularly sub-style will vary itself from the the wider sub-genre's core/primordial sound. At times the "wave" approach to categorizing any sub-genre can get extremely broad or vague. If you take the examples of Gloryhammer (yes, I consider these guys 3rd wave, they sound closer to Alestorm than they do Stratovarius or Helloween, despite the more traditionally geared vocals), Beast In Black and Metalite, they come off as radically different from each other except for the common trait of heavy keyboard usage, but if you strip out that element you get one band that has a pretty blatant folk bent to it, another that is clearly an 80s pop/rock influenced shtick (yes, you can get that from BiB even without the keyboards being there), and a band that has a great deal in common with 90s female solo artist pop with a metallic backdrop.

Categorizing any multi-national, multi-generational musical movement is a daunting task regardless of which genre is under consideration, but I've generally found that a shorter, less specific label tends to work the best.

P.S. - The whole "melodic power metal" label is something of a misnomer, the sub-style itself doesn't pertain to melodic content specifically, but more so to the lighter timbre when compared to grittier speed metal-like approaches such as Gamma Ray and Paragon. Despite it being extremely catchy and loaded with keyboards, I wouldn't categorize "Somewhere Out In Space" as a melodic power metal album, but despite its misleading wording, this label does make a degree of sense when looking at Stratovarius and a number of bands that they directly influenced such as Dreamtale and Astralion. At least from my perspective, the standard power metal label applies best to bands that balance the grit and speed of Helloween and the more mid-paced, AOR-tinged sound of Stratovarius. Perhaps you could call it "light power metal" or "soft power metal", but those don't really roll off the tongue the way the melodic label does, so I just embrace the misnomer in spite of its glaring imperfections.

Although I'm not sure the electronic prevalence is a necessary characteristic if they have the others. For example, Battle Beast's "Master of Illusion"'s keyboards are mainly strings and a choral patch, so it's closer to a symphonic metal/rock band's dancier numbers like Within Temptation. I've listened to enough of this stuff to get a sense of it, but not really enough to say definitively if there are particular characteristics that virtually all of them have. It seems like it might be more of a family resemblance that a purely definitional checkbox criteria.

Understood. I've never heard Battle Beast's new material (I'm still stuck in their 2014 stuff), I'll have to check it out, eventually.

That's... even more scary, if you ask me...

This is not the unpopular opinion thread.

Still, this is either a bad troll, or an extremely sad opinion that real, talking and breathing, human beings actually hold. Either way, it's sad.

Their 2017 stuff > Their 2015 stuff. Seriously. Unholy Saviour wasn't that good.

I really don't see why this needs to be an entirely new subgenre? I've listened to the two Beasts, and at least to me, both are literally just bands that are on the fluffier and lighter end of European-style power metal. They have copious synths and extremely sterile car showroom production, sure, but the former has been a staple of EUPM ever since the inception of the label and the latter applies to pretty much any "commercial" metal act today. I guess you could call it "pop-metal", but that's already a term and category that exists (although it is admittedly often pejorative).

I used to call it synthcore, but apparently that’s already a genre or something, so now I just call it trash.

I feel like "melodic power metal" is probably the best label, since just lumping them in with Europower isn't accurate given that that label generally means "stuff that sounds like Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica, and Edguy" and honestly, most of the groups that "melodic power metal" would apply to sound more like Muse or Imagine Dragons than Stratovarius or Rhapsody, know'm sayin'?

You know, I sometimes hear the argument from oldheads that "brutal death metal" is a worthless genre tag because all death metal is brutal. I think this is really silly because there is a very obvious difference between "regular" death metal and brutal death metal that should be obvious on an even casual listen. Whether or not you think it's better is totally irrelevant, there's absolutely no way to argue that Mortician is less brutal than basically any band that doesn't also carry the BDM tag. There's a super clear distinction based entirely around the "brutal" aspect of the sound.

However I think the initial argument holds up against "melodic power metal", because all power metal is melodic and there are zero exceptions to that rule*, and the difference between the bands we're talking about has nothing to do with them being more melodic than any other given power metal band. Not a single one of the bands mentioned in this thread is "more melodic" than fuckin Stratovarius or Rhapsody of Fire. There are clear differences, sure. The more modern style is typically more mid paced, more willing to use electronic elements beyond orchestration patches, (arguably) catchier, (definitely) poppier, more focused on danceable beats, et cetera. There are enough distinctions for me to consider it related but separate, but those differences have nothing to do with the actual melodic quality of the music. I don't have a good answer (3rd Wave Power Metal is still the best option for me) but "melodic power metal" certainly ain't it.


* - Unless you're one of those balding giganerds who splits USPM and EUPM and further splits USPM into "blue collar" and "white collar" substyles, in which case you could argue that there's enough of a distinction in melodic focus between Omen and Crimson Glory to warrant said split, but if you do this then chances are you're a fucking dinosaur who hasn't actually given a shit about the current metal scene since 1998 and I don't want to hear your dusty ass opinions about anything.

Just to go with the times, we could call it "solar power metal".

Who hurt you?

Seriously, though, the point is more that stuff like the Beasts or Metalite don't really have much in common with a lot of acts with a more traditional Europower style, and have enough distinct elements of their own to justify a new label. They have more in common with pop rock than power metal and that's just how it goes. As for the USPM/EUPM split, c'mon, that's been a thing for a while, the two get split because you do associate specific and separate styles with the two labels.

lol the USPM/EUPM wasn't the butt of the bit, it was splitting it into blue and white collar subbier-than-sub-distinctions that I find ridiculous.

But back on topic, I might have worded myself poorly but I actually agree with you almost entirely, the only part I disagree with is what this new style should be called. I think "melodic power metal" is a bad choice because these newer bands are poppier, cleaner, synthier, etc. than classic Europower bands to a degree where a new distinction is warranted, but they aren't "more melodic" than the previous style. Temperance and Rhapsody have a lot of differences, but an abundance of melodic vocals/guitars/synths isn't one of them.

Ι call those bands Cartoon Metal and/or Eurovision Metal.

Cartoon Metal as in it's great for kids and would make a kick ass intro music to a cartoon, like the original Thundercats theme for example. Sabaton could be the ultimate Cartoon Metal band.

Beast in Black is the band that plays both genres(!) and helps define the difference between the two. Beast in Black (the song) is classic Cartoon Metal material, I can see the theme playing now, japanese style cartoon, 4 friends who in their spare time are super heroes riding robots, which of course can be combined into one super robot.

Eurovision Metal because, come on, Blind and Frozen would probably even win the competition. When that chorus hits, you can see the flags waving in the audience, you know it's true.

I used to be really negative towards Sabaton. I saw them live a few years ago and I have to admit, their show was very enjoyable, way more enjoyable than other bands, who are considered "serious" but seemed deadly boring to me. I couldn't really take them very seriously though, I mean the AH! OOH! thing from Sparta was one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in a live setting but I left the venue and I couldn't forget the hook from To Hell and Back (the whistle thing). So, being the brave soul that I am, I admitted as much to my friends and they laughed almost as much like when I told them I love Volbeat.

Then, my 13 year old son, who is currently in his formative years of being a metalhead, having made me an immensely proud dad by declaring his favorite bands to be Running Wild, Judas Priest, Riot and anything Kai Hansen (without any coaching from me whatsoever), suddenly discovered Sabaton through a strategy war game or something. Now he is going through *that* phase. And I must admit, I can't help but feel a bit warmer towards Sabaton because I can see what he likes and it's impossible not to smile seeing him enthusiastic. Through his obsession, I also picked up a couple of more songs that I dig as well, basically Primo Victoria* and Bismarck.

* The shock: Kai Hansen does not just rip off legends like Priest or Sabbath. He also rips off Sabaton! I used to say Avalon is one of the best songs from late-era Gamma Ray and then I realized the chorus is Primo Victoria, note-for-note, slowed down. Talk about mixed feelings.

"Melodic power metal", come on guys, that's just... Remember that the Germans call Melodic Metal what most call europower (and Europower is really the genre that comes from the two Keepers).
You know Cartoon/Eurovision Metal is far more accurate!

i've seen them live once at a festival, and while the pyrotechnics were nice, i couldn't stomach more than maybe 15 minutes of it, simply because i've never seen such an uncharismatic, cringy frontman. what a clown of a man. of course the music being terrible didn't help, but how anyone could take that buffoon seriously, i'll never understand

"Brutality" used to be a very subjective and nebulous term, but it's seemed to narrow down to more specifics over time, particularly the Suffocation-derived slam riffs, guttural vocals, and greater emphasis on blast beats. It's effectively taken away "brutal" as an adjective to describe other bands though, even though in the abstract there are non-BDM bands that feel more "brutal" to me than many BDM bands (usually coming from the guitar tone and overall production/engineering), but aren't considered part of the subgenre.



"Melodic metal" is way too generic. I've heard plenty of people calling melodeath and glam metal bands as that.

I always thought "melodic metal" is a stupid term but it still is what Germans (specifically) used to (still do?) call europower bands. My point was that melodic power metal is even more stupid and in this context more redundant.




Agreed about the "cringy" but I am not sure he lacks charisma. He got the crowd going, had a good connection and clearly did a good job as a frontman for his intended audience, which was overwhelmingly young kids. I was personally fuming at the time because Sabaton was headlining and Flotsam and Jetsam (doing a special first two albums set) were much earlier and got cut short at 30 minutes, which brought out my worst gatekeeping "back in my day" self... but like I said, I get it from a Cartoon Metal perspective. Not to be taken seriously but entertaining.

I saw them (from afar, briefly) again in 2018, in a festival with Maiden, Priest, Saxon and Accept, so the whole ridiculous thing was accentuated even more ("o tempora, o mores") but like I said, I have some sympathy for them now.

Oh Christ, cutting a first two album Flotsom show short for Sabaton would set my hair on fire. Those two albums are basically perfect to me.

I'm a pretty solid fan of what Sabaton has been doing for the past few albums myself, but 100% agreed, Flotsam's first two albums are obligatory listening for man and beast alike, I'd have trouble justifying the idea of cutting such a set even if it would give Iron Maiden an extra 20 minutes.

<rant>
Well, if you had asked me back in 1990 which are my favorite bands, I'd have named Flotsam in my top 5. I can't describe what the first two mean to me and this was the first time I would get to see them live. They played 6 songs, I was in metal heaven, literally childhood dream come true, Eric was a-ma-zing and then after what felt like 5 minutes... they got cut off. Imagine starving for three days and someone brings the world's most delicious steak in front of you. You take one large, juicy bite and every euphoric chemical in your brain explodes. And then someone takes the steak and throws it in the shit. That's what that felt like.

To keep the schedule going. So Martyr can go on time. Now, I don't have a problem with Martyr at all but at that point, just seeing them on stage with the Asterix helmets and all... oh boy, I was not being cool at all. Then I got to meet the band, so talking to Eric and Mike Gilbert helped a lot but I got a look at their intended setlist and I Live You Die was on it, Metalshock was on it, Doomsday was on it and that was like a stab in the heart. That passage in I Live You Die that goes "innocent children..." and then Eric hits *that* scream at "the people look AWAY" is still one of my favorite moments in music history, my hair just stood up writing about it.

Oh, well.
</rant>

It really depends on the songs. I'd much prefer this band if they sticked to somthing like the song Beast in Black, which is a fucking banger and 100% metal, but then they have super poppy songs that just feel silly, like Sweet True Lies. What the fuck's this shit? "Baby baby tell me more of your lies", Jesus, come the fuck on, who wrote this shit, Justin Bieber?

Sorry to BiB fans, I love some of their songs, but fucking can't stand others. It's all or nothing with these guys. Same with Battle Beast, really.

Yeah, calling these bands "more melodic" just makes no sense. For one thing, Yannis' vocals in BiB, Nils Molin's vocals in Dynazty, etc. are way more focused on aggression than a Stratovarius sort of approach is, so the element that's delivering the melodies is actually harsher. And apart from the vocals, there's very little melodic emphasis in these sorts of bands, because there aren't a lot of guitar leads or melodic riffs. The music often takes a pretty significant backseat to the vocals, thus giving more emphasis to the melodic element (along with the frequent aggression in the vox) and really framing it so it pops, but if anything I'd consider those sorts of bands to be markedly less melodic than the previous wave of PM, in that there are fewer melodic things happening in them. They're more focused on catchiness, of course, but "catchy power metal" is obviously DOA as a term. What you almost need is like a "stripped-down charged-up power metal" kind of thing, but 100 times less clunky than that.