I don't think it sounds terribly quiet. It sounds pretty DIY I guess, but good for all that to my ears anyway.

I want some Agent Steel worship!

I have never heard Crimson Glory live with audio this good before

https://youtu.be/yN0uum9XuB0

Try this

https://youtu.be/RbR28B1aM7s

The new Toxikull is amazing. Powerful and clear production and some over the top vocals!

This new Ironsword album is pretty cool so far. Some delicious headbanging riffs on this thing and the vocalist sounds absolutely murderous.

That got me to check out their older stuff like Overlords of Chaos, and wow, this is killer shit: https://shadowkingdomrecords.bandcamp.c ... s-of-chaos

After that I've been going down a rabbit hole of old metal on Shadow Kingdom's bandcamp. Tyrant's Too Late to Pray smokes - tremendous sound and Glen May is a beast. High Power is killer. Hadn't heard them in ages. Sweet as fuck razor-sharp guitars.

Yeah new Ironsword is great.

Here is one of the best songs of the album imo: https://youtu.be/CYzuQsxGGII

The new Ironsword is indeed amazing. Shame they released it as a digipack. But the tunes themselves are great.

Here's a good track from a pretty unknown old school heavy metal group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh89nVquWXU

And here's another that's modern but could have easily been released back in the NWOBHM movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNc8h5dMpsM

Very cool!

Yeah, definitely some Cyriis-isms on the vocal approach.

I'll have to grab it, yeah...

Right now I'm just floored by Overlords of Chaos. This is a serious monster of an album I should've gotten years ago.

Help! I don't really know how to describe what I am looking for, but maybe some dark sounding epic heavy metal. I love Doomsword and lately been getting into Ironsword, Acerus and one album by Argus. So much stuff in this genre has really high pitched vocals, which I can get into sometimes, gets tiresome pretty quickly. Maybe I am looking for stuff with the vocals not in the forefront of the sound, just dirty, foggy sounding, riff-heavy Epic heavy metal.

You are looking for Angus, both albums, but specifically and foremostly (not a word, whatever): Track of Doom. Muscular, complex riffing of the USPM variety, but with the most "manly vocals" I've ever heard outside of Eric Adams and a select few other gods.

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/A ... _Doom/3850

I just remembered why I love that album. Amazing stuff - I have revisit that record today but I have been playing the hell out of that second Toxikull record and it is great. Piercing, shrieky vocals with some pounding speed metal riffage on top!

Evangelist https://evangelistdoom.bandcamp.com/alb ... infidelium

War Dance https://wardancemetal.bandcamp.com/

Cryptic Edifice https://crypticedifice.bandcamp.com/alb ... ic-edifice

I take it you know Bathory, Manilla Road, Brocas Helm, Slough Feg, etc.

Looking for some relatively new heavy/trad metal bands!

I've been listening to a lot of Haunt, Mirror, and Amulet lately. Visigoth has caught my eye but I haven't listened much.

I'm looking for something that sounds relatively different compared to the bands listed above, and also doesn't just sound like a Maiden or Priest tribute. Could be on the more melodic side of things, could be more heavy and gritty, just gimme some bands with their own strong identity.

You could also give the "Gates Ajar" EP by Sabire a try. They are different in the sense that music is more "rocky" in a way and channels some vintage W.A.S.P vibes or some early Motley Crue riffage. It also has a fairly loose and rocking atmosphere. Plus the vocalist resembles Blacky Lawless at times so that is a plus.

Give Power Theory a shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOWC--42QBI

Loved that new album! Very vicious. The NWOTHM full albums channel on youtube is just expanding my horizons so much! Will be checking out some of the mentions aloof posted. Just got done listening to Hess' album from last year, it was really good for the middle 2 or 3 songs and decent all around. Some very nice intricate guitar passages and a unique female singer. Other recent highlights I've heard have to be Eternal Champion and Smoulder, very exciting new bands!

That Toxikull album is indeed very in-your-face. Speed metal riffing, most of the time up tempo stuff and the riffs really pound you. Nice and meaty production too!

Maybe try Ice Sword-Dragon Magic

That one is good is you like melody.

bands like dragonforce, meaning : the sheer speed of the drums and insanity solo-wise from through the fire and flames. I'm pretty sure this is not an easy one, because i do know that most of the power-metal bands have a lot of slower songs. Don't want that .

Synths are okay when it fits the songs.

Thaurorod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEIMrWIo9Go

Cellador
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQmYXvAx40A

Victorius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUUaMD2l7Ms

Octaviagrace (kinda sorta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcKB_hGMYLM

NorthTale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee6jPDoDY6I

Mary's Blood (sometimes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLM2unV0kwU

Lovebites (sometimes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEb8RtkLruA

Galneryus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckhrdoNvYJE

Celesty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEAX9bL8Sfs

Babymetal (tread very carefully, they're a minefield)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIfPobGQmio

I like on some of Zelkiiro's links and they reminded me why I love USPM

So the new Bütcher album absolutely rips. Killer raw speed metal(think Exciter etc) with more than a bit of black metal

That Butcher album is great - even the epic track works. The riffs are amazing!

Thanks for the recs. Need to shift through them a bit more. I already know Lovebites and octaviagrace, also Mary's blood. Problem i have with ( mostly Japanese bands) is that they are kinda all over the place. Lovebites is a premium example : their new album has 2 very fast songs ( thunder vengeance and Set the world on fire) while the rest are a lot more mellow.

Mary's blood is the same, their new video High 5 is pure punk. Don't get me wrong , i like the song, but please stick to what you do best.

Try out both Eternity's End albums for some Dragonforce-level intensity. They just go all out.

No doubt.

Makes me want to crank "Ample Destruction" at full volume.

The production on that album is so soft that cranking it at full volume sounds like any other album at normal volume, though. :V

It's possible to like USPM like Ample Destruction (the quintessential metal album to me) and europower... not a fan of a lot of Zelkiiro's list myself but Thaurorod is killer anyway.

Just like all the best metal albums!

I know but I personally cannot get into europower. Almost no albums of that genre do it for me. I like the first two Hammerfall records but I consider those to be classic heavy metal.

I like Hammerfall for some nostalgia but I've moved away from that stuff - just seems silly and dumb to me now. I listen to USPM for some vicious riffs and Euro stuff for intriguing melodicism or atmospheres. Though both can intersect.

Hammerfall is a pure nostalgia trip for me. I hear some classic German heavy metal in those songs (Stormwitch) and they are catchy and riffy enough.

With the europower bands it is very easy to step into something that is too flowery and without any sort of bite.

I get into a very small amount of Europower, mainly because my roots in metal are there. I'd say as far as what I listen to now, Dragonforce is probably the only true cheesy, over-the-top, flowery stereotype europower among them (probably because it was the band that got me into metal). I like the first Hammerfall album a fair amount but yeah, it kind of straddles the line between europower and classic heavy metal. I like Blind Guardian but they've always kind of done their own thing, and haven't really released anything I could justify calling "flowery," at least compared to your Rhapsodies and Dragonforces. I like Falconer but they're also pretty far from your standard europower act. I dunno, I guess I like the few bands and albums that kind of branch out and do their own thing, but really can't get into that full keyboard/repeated sixteenth note-driven stuff. Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing. But just like any genre, not all bands conform strictly to that stereotype, obviously. Dark at Dawn is another band I know Emp is a fan of whom I also like a fair amount, and they sound nothing like that flowery stuff, while still falling under the umbrella term "europower." I'd wager there's some Europower out there that most USPM fans could appreciate, and vice versa.

However, the songs Zelkiiro linked are pretty far into flower metal territory, and I totally understand why most USPM fans wouldn't like them.

By the way, who else is stoked for that new Psychotic Waltz album? Crazy they're coming out with one after 20+ years, never thought we'd get anything from them again. Not expecting 'A Social Grace' level mastery here, but something akin to the quality of their other three albums would still be quite a treat! That plus the new D&W has 2020 looking to be quite the year for me for new metal albums!

Okay, so sorry to double post, but holy shit...this band Time Machine has an album called Evil: Liber Primus that is eerily similar to Kamelot's The Black Halo. It's not quite as good, of course, but it's still quite cool, and the resemblance is remarkable, considering the album came out in 2001. Maybe Kamelot heard the album and were influenced by it? Probably just a coincidence, but still really weird. The singer even sounds quite a bit like Khan in this track:


Also realized I forgot to mention Kamelot in my above post, obviously a fan. Anyone who's also a Kamelot fan should definitely check out that album/band. (That's the first album I've heard from them so I don't know how their other albums are).

For me, I just love all of the above. USPM for the riffs, Europower for the lush melodies and earworm hooks, the Teutonic stuff (Blind Guardian, Orden Ogan, Thornbridge, Thunder And Lightning etc) for a nice mix of the two, and everything in between. Just give me everything under the power metal sun.

Hey Joph, I was going to recommend you Krystos's 2017 EP since your review of Walk Through The Inferno mentions the vocalist could stand to stretch his wings a bit more and the EP fixes that, but I just checked and you've already reviewed it, haha. Props for getting me into them, regardless.

Haha yeah the band sent me a promo copy of that EP after I reviewed Walk Through the Inferno, but then I stupidly forgot about it for a year before reviewing it. Good stuff, regardless! Definitely a cool band. Interested to see what else they come up with.