Good guide, but Fighting for the Earth is an immortal classic and you've undersold it here

I thought I'd thoroughly plumbed the depths of the genre, but there's a couple on there that are new to me so thanks! Always more to find and always welcome.


Pedantry corner - given the text, it seems Black Knight is filed under the wrong section.

Haha, you're right, I mentioned why it wasn't filed with the demo compilations...and then put it with the demo compilations anyway! Fixed, thanks for pointing that out.

Assuming no one else rates Angus as USPM? I guess you could call it like THE most muscular trad metal imaginable. I dunno. I lump em in. Really wish they would get added to YouTube Music. Black Death's album as well. Miss those so much.

(Obviously I know they're not from the US. And obviously Black Death aren't USPM I just love their album so so much)

Its all pretty fuzzy definition-wise anyway. I seem to recall Ride Into Glory splitting epic metal from USPM resulting in Manilla Road falling into the former but not the latter which just feels odd. That's just the nature of these kinda umbrella terms, they can be malleable round the edges.

We finally have an official announcement and a trailer for the new Pharaoh album! I absolutely cannot wait.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj3qa8i8m ... e=youtu.be

I hadn't really thought about Angus as potentially being USPM before so I listened to the albums again with that in mind. I'd still say the first album is just really muscular heavy/speed metal, but the second album was giving me some serious Vicious Rumors vibes, so I added it to the guide! Thanks. Also, Black Death definitely rules but yeah as you said, not USPM.



I've always wanted to like the album, it seems like something I'd be into on paper, I just feel it's lacking in the riff department. Vocals are super badass for sure.

Also, why have you not included The Dying Race from Crows? German band, but they had a lot of USPM-esque tendencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nk_SPZSsf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi8pe7ZOf04

For us who miss hearing Jonny Lindqvist sing on good albums: he's doing vocals on Johan Kihlberg's Impera's latest album, and it's great.
And as a bonus we get Snowy Shaw on drums. One of my favourite drummers ever. He should be drumming on all albums.

Just stumbled upon a Dutch USPM sounding band named Masquerade. Based on what I'm sampling, this sounds pretty cool; obviously Crimson Glory-inspired, but I'm not complaining!

Sounds more Queensryche than Crimson Glory to me. A bunch of those riffs sound right out of Operation: Mindcrime, as do the vocal lines.

I'm sure I've heard Masquerade before but I'd forgotten about them. Forgot they were Dutch, too. Although they do sound more like Queensryche than Crimson Glory, they sound like a ripoff of Lethal if anything - shit sounds really, really close to Programmed, albeit even more muscular. Not sure why I hadn't downloaded this the last time I heard it, this is pretty cool.



As you may have noticed, the 'USPM from outside the US/Canada' section of my guide is pretty short. That's because I only included bands I was already very familiar with, as it's a bit hard to compile a list of "power metal bands that might be sort of close to US-ish" out of all non-American power metal bands. I'd end up thinking "eh...maybe this sounded US-ish, better check," and would've had a list longer than a CVS receipt (probably only Americans will get the joke but suffice it to say the list would be prohibitively long). I do know Crows but it's not a favorite or anything so it never came to mind. Again one I never thought of as USPM but I'm going to check that along with Dream Child and the first Saber Tiger album in more detail sometime this weekend. Been working a shitload lately as we had someone quit so I've had even less time than usual to go through music.

Okay, so, relistened to the Crows album, and my ultimate verdict is that it's mostly progressive metal mixed with German power metal. There is some USPM influence here and there, and the title track almost sounds like it could be out of a Helstar album, but most of the songs sound like old-school prog metal to me and the ones that don't, barring the title track, sound distinctly German/European. So I'm not going to add it to the list, though it is quite enjoyable and it probably grew on me a bit more even with that listen.

Dream Child I listened to about as much as I could handle. Man, I do not like this album at all besides that one track you linked. There are some cool parts here and there, but it's buried under that slick, poppy modern prog atmosphere I strongly dislike. What USPM influence I do detect is very much in the vein of Queensryche, but even if that influence is strong enough, this is not something I'd recommend to others.

Haven't gotten to Saber Tiger yet, I am planning to listen to that tomorrow. I'll update again once I've gone through it.

No idea where you get slick, poppy modern prog atmosphere from...they don't sound like fucking Dream Theater or anything. Sure, it's no endless riffing experience, but to me it's riff-driven enough to make a lasting impression. Not a fan of those faster songs either, I guess?

"Train of Fools" had a cool main riff but they kept interrupting it with the lame acoustic sections over and over, and that was the only cool riff in the song. "Same Old Song" and "Torn Between Two Worlds" just sucked. "Eternal Flight" was cool but being bookended by those two shitty tracks made it too much for me to go further. Even the original track you linked has that lame acoustic section in the middle that ruins the momentum, wasn't as enjoyable on a second listen. That's 1 cool track, 1 okay track, 1 "mweh" track, and two shitty tracks out of the first five...eh, no thanks. I may have been a little hyperbolic but "Same Old Song" and "Torn Between Two Worlds" absolutely have a slick, poppy prog atmosphere to my ears.

EDIT: Okay, so I just finished listening to Saber Tiger's Invasion and my reaction is basically the complete opposite of Dream Child. Holy FUCKBALLS this rules. Every song is great outside of "Liberate," though a couple of them do run a tad longer than necessary. Even with those slight issues though, my initial reaction is to give the album around a 90%. This thing has RIFTS in full force and has a neoclassical flourish that rivals anything similar I've heard in the genre barring Helstar or Cauldron Born. I'm definitely going to have to dig back into this band more, this just blew me away a lot more than I expected, especially after Dream Child being disappointing. Added to the guide.

We just have different ideas of what poppy prog means, but I'm glad that you enjoy that Saber Tiger album at least! It's my favorite of the band too and the riffs are mostly fuckin' great. That said, the band released plenty of ''ehh'' albums later and besides that debut, I just stick with the 2011-2015 albums (including Paragraph IV, which has some fantastic re-done versions of older songs).

Same! It's hard to believe that Bury the Light came out in 2012. I was going through some life changes that year and that album was the soundtrack to them.

Slauter Xstroyes - Winter Kill

Posted this in the reissue thread but deserves to be here as well. Get this reissue of the cult heavy metal classic while you can. 3 bonus tracks and limited to just 500 copies. Snap it up before it dissappear's again and go's back to stupid prices.