I originally planned to do an old-fashioned wide ranging reviews cluster thing here, but there’s so much new stuff that I’m listening to that I didn’t want to let these two albums that I have been obsessing over for awhile go any longer without my discussing them here, namely the new Myrath and Power Paladin records. For everything else, there will be the MSRcast where we talk about the new Darkthrone, Draconian, Geoff Tate (boy that was a rough one), Gladenfold and whatever else is passing across our inbox and streaming algorithms at any point. Recently on the podcast myself and my cohost Cary the Metal Geek discussed our trip to San Antonio to see Helloween on their 40th anniversary tour, a show that surpassed any and all expectations I had even when considering that seeing them for the first time in Dallas a couple years ago was one of the more memorable concerts of my life. The band has been on constant rotation ever since and I’m kinda upset that I only got to see them the one time on the tour, I could have easily watched that show over again once it finished, it was so damn excellent (and I hope everyone reading this got to see them on this run or will be soon). I’ve revisited albums like Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy and 7 Sinners and more, stuff that I hadn’t heard in ages but am able to appreciate much more now despite their flaws. I mention this because its part and parcel of my metal fandom these days to allow myself to wallow in the old stuff if I feel the need to, to not always been looking around the corner so fervently for the next thing, particularly when the guys who did the old stuff might not be around for much longer.
That brings me to Iron Maiden, whose documentary Burning Ambition had a surprisingly wide, albeit very brief release in theaters around the world, including one just five minutes from my workplace. On the day of it’s premiere Thursday May 7th, instead of going home, I headed over there and joined a surprising number of Maiden fans in a 64 seat auditorium at our local AMC to watch our beloved metal legends on the big screen. It was a surreal experience, because I was the first one in the place, figured I’d be the only one in all honesty, but soon enough a gaggle of other Maiden fans turned up and we passed the time conversing with each other about what Maiden tours we’ve been too, which soon shifted into favorite album discussions and talks about other bands and even the aforementioned Helloween show a month ago which some of them had gone to. Someone brought up on their phone the picture of Blaze Bailey standing in front of Eddie at the London premiere with Dave, Nicko, Bruce, and Adrian and much was made of how cool it was for him to be invited. After the show a few of us even chatted about the documentary and what our thoughts were on it — and for diehard Maiden fans, the feeling was largely that although this was a cool experience, to see the band on the big screen, the documentary itself was mostly underwhelming at best, and outright lazy at worst. I personally felt the cited reasons for Bruce and Adrian leaving were glazed over inaccurately, there was way more tension happening than just those two guys feeling burned out but diehards know the real story anyway.
But inaccuracies and weird things like hyper fixating on the negatives surrounding the Blaze Bailey era and as a result casting him in a bad light made me wonder just who the audience for this film was. It spent ten minutes on the band’s first Polish shows, a fascinating moment in the band and country’s history no doubt, yet breezed over the Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son eras and indeed much of the 2000s (like a blink of an eye, seriously). This odd pacing didn’t really help tell the biographical history of the band, nor did it help elaborate on why their return to prominence and beyond with Brave New World and the era of stadiums in the past two decades was so remarkable. I did kinda enjoy the fan interviews, but I’ll agree with criticisms that there was too much fluff in them, although I found the ones from fans in beleaguered countries such as Serbia and Lebanon to be very interesting perspectives. There are reddit threads aplenty where the film is dissected to bits, so I’ll leave that for those spaces, but the one thing most everyone agrees on as the best aspect of the film is that it brought Maiden fans into a room together all over the world to do what we did over here in southwest Houston — chat about Maiden in person, swap concert tales and album opinions at a time when hell, lets face it, that’s becoming a rarity even at metal shows were we’re all just locked into our own social groups or worse, our phone screens. In that light, the film was indeed a cool experience, but I doubt I’ll watch it again.
Myrath – Wilderness of Mirrors
I’ve had about a month to sit with Myrath’s newest and seventh album, Wilderness of Mirrors, and digest what has wound up being the year’s first truly great release to my ears. It was ironic that it came out the day after my prior article lamenting the first few mediocre months of 2026 was published and a podcast we recorded that very night where I elaborated at length on that very topic. Phenomenal timing Myrath, because I was starting to spiral, and to the band’s credit I have to applaud their sense of knowing how to meet the moment concerning their career at this particular point in time. When Karma was released in 2024, I loved its Zaher Zorgati channeling Phil Collins vocal foward nature, ceding to him the spotlight on nearly all of its concise, hookier songs, so much so that it made my best albums of 2024 list all the way at number four. I realize however that many didn’t feel the way that I felt, and longed for the band to return to the progressive roots they had shown on their early career albums, such as the breakout 2011 record Tales of the Sands. What I did suspect was that perhaps Myrath had pushed that aspect of their sound to it’s zenith on Karma, and that it would be hard to replicate successfully. The band seemed to realize that here on Wilderness of Mirrors, merging their shiny pop instincts with a carefully applied blast of the band’s progressive past to create something that ebbs and flows, and breathes deeply at times.
This approach results in songs that are more tonally introspective than bombastic, as on the yearning power balladry of “Soul of My Soul” and the cinematic Middle Eastern instrumentation and melodies of “Through the Seasons”. The return of lengthier run times is a noticeable side effect of the reintroduction of progressive elements, as on the six minute “Les Enfants Du Soleil”, where a beautiful mid-song bridge of Malek Ben Arbia’s impassioned lead guitar melodies gives way to a surprising outro section of Zorgati singing alongside a children’s choir, and this plus the context of the lyrics makes it hard not to think that this was written about the suffering of children in Gaza. The timing of this song hit even harder with its release coming so quickly after the strike on an Iranian girls school that killed 120 children, particularly when hearing the lyric about “cartables” (schoolbags in French). It’s a contender for the best song on the album, certainly the heaviest in terms of emotional weight, but I have to say that I really love the depth of the duet with Elize Ryd on “Until the End”. In any other context, this would likely be the catchiest song on the album, but surprisingly its not, with Ryd’s contributions adding dramatic flair to the epic upward trajectory happening here, with beautiful moments where her voice is isolated acapella as a sudden contrast to the layered soundscape of the rest of the song. It’s just one example of the band shaking up their sound and defying expectations throughout the album, not quite diving headfirst into their old Symphony X roots, but cleaning off some of the progressive paintbrushes they were using back then in order to put them to work again to inspired effect.
Power Paladin – Beyond the Reach of Enchantment
This is an interesting one, because Iceland’s Power Paladin burst on the scene in 2022 with their debut With the Magic of Windfyre Steel and made noticeable waves, but for all the praise it received for being a refreshing change of pace by a band putting guitars front and center instead of synths like every other new power metal band as of late, it was a bit unfocused. A product of many obvious power metal influences, that album didn’t really seem to have a unifying sonic vision, and it suffered from a thin production job that didn’t help matters. It wasn’t a bad album by any means, it showed seeds of promise, but it wasn’t something that I’d return to after that initial period of listening passed by. Now you might be thinking, hey Pigeon, have you seen Power Paladin’s silly music video? Don’t they fall under the category of dumb power metal that you were obnoxiously rallying against a few years ago? What about their lyrics, they have songs named “Sword Vigor” and “Camelot Rock City” on this new album? So here’s the thing, and this is a Spinal Tap-ian cliche by now but its so very accurate that I can’t not employ it here — there is a fine line between stupid and clever. Power Paladin are on the correct side of that line. Sure they’re silly, but it smacks of genuineness, of their sense of humor shining through (I loved the music video for “Sword Vigor”), and they seem like guys that I’d want to talk about power metal with because they seem to earnestly love the genre instead of mimicking it or mocking it.
How can I come to that conclusion about their motives you might ask (or not, this hypothetical conversation is getting out of hand). I’ve come to that conclusion because I have ears, and damn have you listened to this album? It’s passionately written classic sounding power metal awash in an explosion of guitar pyrotechnics, with full throttle tempos guiding most of these songs to such an extent that they forgot to write a ballad or even a mid-tempo number, but that’s okay. I love how intensely riff forward this album is, how twin harmonized lead guitars lead the way into incredibly satisfying solo passages, and how despite their being a keyboardist in the band’s lineup, they’re choosing to employ keyboards in the old school manner, that Jens Johannson approach instead of the blankets of cheap synth that adorn so much new garbage out there (such as Victorius). And the band seemed to have focused their sound and songwriting into something that pulls equally from Helloween and the more hard rock infused approach of Hellfire Club era Edguy, with an emphasis on hooky vocal melodies that singer Atli Guðlaugsson handles with verve and confidence. The one two punch of “The Royal Road” and “The Arcane Tower” were what really sold me entirely on this album on my first pass through, and the rest of the songs aren’t a let down in the slightest. This is the strongest power metal album since Sacred Outcry’s more serious and sober masterpiece Towers of Gold, and although it may not scale those legendary heights, that’s some seriously great company to be mentioned alongside.
