Category: 2026

September 16, 2026 2026, Blog related, concerts, MSRcast Post a Comment

The Metal Pigeon Finally Flew to ProgPower

I had first heard about ProgPower way back in 2002, when I saw some discussions going on at the UltimateMetal.com forums about some festival being staged in Atlanta at a venue called the Earthlink Live. It was a fest that was going to bring over bands such as Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray, Silent Force, Angra, and Edguy to the states for their first North American appearances. It was seismic news in online power metal communities at the time, fragmented as they were, an announcement that caught everyone’s attention. I was broke back then, the idea of going to Atlanta for a metal concert was laughable, but despite my jealousy at everyone who got to attend, it gave me hope that it was going to germinate the possibility for power metal bands to begin to actually stage tours in this country. Blind Guardian was the first to make good on that with an announced North American tour in the fall of that year, but unfortunately for us Houston fans, a terrible venue here called Cardi’s 2000 couldn’t meet the technical rider requirements for the band and the show that was scheduled to be on Black Friday was cancelled that Wednesday before Thanksgiving to my utter devastation. I thought I missed my only chance, but the thing was, that tour did well enough to convince the bards to give it another run four years later where I did get to see them finally. Edguy went on their own attempt at a run in 2005 with Hammerfall, and although their trek avoided Texas, the point was that this window was now being pushed open, a window that was first unlocked due to the efforts of a power/progressive metal fan named Glenn Harveston, a regular guy who loved this kinda music, and wanted to see these kinds of bands perform stateside, and decided to do something about it.

Anneke of The Gathering Saturday night

It would appear entirely coincidental that my first trip to ProgPower is Harveston’s last as its promoter. Yet maybe not, because it was his day three and four lineups that made me say yes when asked if I wanted an early bird ticket by my MSRcast co-host Cary the Metal Geek, who went to his first ProgPower last year. Specifically a lineup that featured Roy Khan playing a set of Kamelot classics with Seven Spires as his backing band, largely tunes from The Black Halo, a nod to Kamelot making their North American debut at ProgPower II; and Brainstorm, alumni from as early as 2004 in ProgPower V, and a band I’ve personally been a fan of since I dunno, 1998 when I first heard Unholy on HardRadio.com; and of course, The Gathering with their original lineup on their only American date for the 30th anniversary tour of Mandylion, a subgenre expanding classic album that I never dreamed of getting to hear live, let alone with the original lineup perfoming it. Nevermore dropping off day three for visa issues was a blow, but I had seen the band on the Dead Heart tour in December 2000 opening for In Flames, but I had never gotten to see Iced Earth with Matt Barlow, so I was even more fired up for Ashes of Ares doing The Dark Saga live in its entirety, an album of crucial importance in my metal upbringing. Getting to see Hammerfall once again was the whipped cream on this latte, and Seven Spires on day four was the cinnamon dusting on top of that.

I’ll leave it to other voices to talk about Harveston and this being his last run as the promoter, being a newcomer to the festival I didn’t have that emotional attachment that others who have been going for years have to him. At a certain point sometime during the fest when I was getting a drink in the lobby, I was unwittingly standing near him and someone in an Evergrey “Ever Glenn” t-shirt hollered his name aloud and walked up to him to say hello. He was perfectly pleasant to the guy but he couldn’t hide his discomfort at seeing his face on that shirt. Cary even told me that he got to see the moment the people working the merch booth first showed him the design, and his utter dismay upon seeing it. It made me like and respect him beyond just a name I’d been hearing for years online, particularly in that I suspect his uneasiness at being put on a pedestal comes from a place of wanting the bands to be the focus of attention, not himself. From the perspective of an outsider and distant observer viewing the discussions around ProgPower all these years past, you would hear his name mentioned so much in discussions around the festival and it sometimes felt a little too insider baseball. There is a distinct possibility I’ll be agitating many in saying that, but its just honesty from someone looking from the outside in, the same criticism can be leveled at a festival here in our own backyard in Hell’s Heroes, and it might be even more so in that case (another discussion for another time perhaps).

So moving on, because three paragraphs into this and maybe some of you are wondering if I’m burying the lede — did you have a good time at the festival Pigeon? Was it worth the expense and the effort? The answer is reservedly yes, I had a good time, at moments a very good time, though there’s potential for it to be a truly great time in the future should I return one day. Lets focus first on the most important things, the bands I wanted to see the most. Roy Khan with Seven Spires backing him more than lived up to the internal hype I’d billed in my head, hearing “Moonlight” sung live was something that I never expected to get treated to, and it was great to hear the other songs again. My memories of seeing him with Kamelot in 2007 in Houston are faded a bit, although I remember it feeling exhilarating, and the ProgPower set was no exception. I wish Adrienne Cowan’s backing and harmony vocals were louder in the mix throughout, but she could still be heard and was a excellent substitute for Simone Simons on “The Haunting”. It was shrewd of everyone involved to bring in a secondary guitarist into this live lineup as well, because while Kamelot is known to have a single guitar lineup, their albums are multitracked with rhythm and leads, and it helped to fill out the sound and best present these songs as close as they could be to their studio versions. I didn’t expect Khan to get emotional and teary eyed at the end of the set, and it seemed the Seven Spires members didn’t either, expressions of surprise lighting their faces as they saw him. That knocked me off my axis as well, to say the least, shakes fist… Khan!

Andy B Frank leading the charge during Brainstorm’s set

That was Saturday, but preceding it on Friday was the other big reason I was there, to finally catch Germany’s Brainstorm live in what felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity, as these guys just do not tour here, not even on opening slots on someone else’s trek. It was weird to feel headliner anticipation at 3:30pm in the afternoon but that’s honestly what was going on at that moment, and when Andy B. Franck stalked on stage and corralled us into a horn throwing fervor, I was heartened to see I wasn’t the only one who was fired up at their being on the bill. It was a great set, the band sounded thunderingly heavy, the band always representing the thicker, meatier, slabbier side of power metal, all gasoline riffage and Franck bellowing in that slightly askew yet still richly melodic way as only he can. Their set skewed to their last three albums for the most part, with a pair of songs each from Soul Temptation and Liquid Monster in the mix, I was hoping for “Blind Suffering” off Metus Mortis but that’s a minor quibble. It was honestly just surreal to behold them standing on stage in front of me, to stand outside of myself for a second and say “hey you’re seeing Brainstorm live!”. I felt the same way two hours later when Matt Barlow came onstage with Freddie Vidales as Ashes of Ares and performed all of Dark Saga. I never got to see Iced Earth with Barlow before, so it took me a minute to register that I was really seeing this guy live who I’d been listening to since 1996 on record. The standing room crowd reaction was intense to say the least, drunkies to the left of me throwing arms around each other and getting emotional, a pit opening up in the center during “Violate” and continuing throughout. From my position on the floor, it felt like the most intense, exuberant, and visceral reaction that anyone got throughout the festival.

The energy produced during that Dark Saga set carried over for Hammerfall, who despite a fairly expected mix of old and new songs in their setlist, delivered a sledgehammer of a performance that kept the energy going. To me, they had the best straight forwardly metal stage presence of anyone at the fest, not that it was a surprise to me, because it was reminiscent of every other time I had seen them in the past. Not only is Hammerfall power metal royalty at this point, but they’re also one of the few bands still standing that understand how impactful that old school, synchronized Priest / Accept styled stagecraft can be, especially with their mechanized rhythmic assault. I listen to Hammerfall as the ultimate pick-me up when I need a dose of energy or inspiration or an immediate need to feel better, and seeing them live was like overdosing on joy as a metal fan. They make me remember what it was like back in 1998 with all the tangible excitement about the heaps of power metal spilling out of Europe at that time. I was already a sweaty disheveled mess from Ashes of Ares, and I lost it during Hammerfall, I couldn’t help it, to such an extent by the way that I was exhausted immediately after and was gnashing my teeth at the delays during the video presentation immediately after to announce next year’s lineup. I bailed on Evergrey who I’ve seen a bajillion times already and took refuge on a lobby couch to recover. Before I forget, it was nice to see Crimson Glory finally, but I had to cut my time at their set short to go to the Brainstorm signing session where I surprised those guys in telling them that I was a fan since Unholy in 1998, I don’t think they even considered the possibility of having American fans back then.

Roy and Adrienne during “The Haunting”

Speaking of signing sessions, the only other one I took part in was the Roy Khan / Seven Spires session, which I got in line for relatively early yet still waited quite a while, in a session that apparently took one and half hours to conclude on Saturday. I made line friends, talked to two newcomers to the subgenre about what albums they should consider getting next (I made an extra effort not to sound like an old head talking down to young ins), and then soon it was my turn to meet Roy Khan. And there I was, meeting Roy freaking Khan, who was as gracious as you’d expect. I shook his hand, and told him that it meant a lot to see him sing live in person again. He asked me when was the last time, and when I mentioned Houston in 2007, we both chuckled at how long ago it was. So I might have had an out of body experience once again, because while I don’t really get star struck with metal artists these days, Khan is someone whose work I’ve admired since… damn, I dunno, 1999 when I first heard The Fourth Legacy being played on WRUW’s The Metal Meltdown. A piece I wrote on him on this site called “The Legacy of Roy Khan” is the single most read article in the history of the blog… to put it mildly, I place him on a tier reserved for people such as Bruce Dickinson and Ronnie James Dio, insert whatever adjective you’d like to label that tier with here. It was the Seven Spires members being present that kept me grounded and focused though, because I’ve met Jack and Adrienne multiple times before. Jack remembered me from the last time Swallow the Sun played Houston, where they were both standing next to us watching the show. Adrienne surprised the hell out of me by asking, “Aren’t you The Metal Pigeon?”. I was baffled and asked her how she knew that, and she mentioned seeing a picture on social media somewhere, I didn’t ask for specifics, but was beyond surprised. On the 1% chance that she’s reading this, hello again Adrienne!

I would be remiss not to mention Seven Spires own performance as well, they were awesome as usual, although seeing them with a live keyboardist when they took the stage for Khan’s set made me consider how much having that in their own live shows would add to their stage experience. There are so many valid financial reasons to not have a live keyboardist, but I think bands whose sound features that component heavily in their sound should try to make it happen. I wish the sound guy would’ve hurried up to boost Adrienne’s vocals in the mix earlier in their set, but it improved as it went on and she sounded brilliant, particularly with her harsh vocals. That was the theme for most of the festival, the sound would be rough at first and then gradually work into something coherent. Conception had it really bad though at first on Thursday night, no kick drum and low vocals for Khan. Apparently this is a recurring complaint for festival attendees… which begs the question, why? I should talk a bit about Thursday, because originally I was only going to Friday and Saturday, but was gifted a free Thursday ticket (thanks Cary and Mike!) and although a flight delay caused me to miss Fires in the Distance and Scardust, I caught the last few songs of Teramaze (didn’t know them, they were alright) from a seat my friends had saved where I caught my breath from having just gotten off the plane, taken the MARTA to the Arts Center station, riding in a Waymo for the first time to our AirBnB (that was a wild experience), dropping off my stuff, catching a proper human Uber back to the venue, and stumbling into the lobby bewildered and overwhelmed.

Ensiferum on Thursday night, the only band I had energy to stand for

Having recovered enough to go down to the floor for Ensiferum, who were pulling double duty filling in for the visa-ed Elvenking, and had a blast seeing the band again, this being my fourth time catching them live I believe. Honestly, I thought they were the best band of the day that I got to see, energetic and tight, also with clean vocals provided by their new (well to me anyway) keyboardist Pekka Montin. He added a new dimension to their live set that I hadn’t experienced any of the previous times seeing them, with Montin only having joined in 2020, his clean vocals truly excellent and a great foil to Petri Lindroos. Speaking of, I swear every time Lindroos looked in our direction, it seemed like he was staring right at me judging my energy level. I knew intrinsically that it wasn’t the case, but as a result, being compelled by delirious exhaustion, I unloaded everything I had left in the tank for their set and got really into it, and it was a blast. There was a mosh pit, something that I hadn’t expected at ProgPower honestly. I will add that our friend Jamal from the Power Metal subreddit community was in seemingly every single pit I saw at the fest, and I suspect now that he was the culprit in starting them all. Shout out to him if he’s reading this! Loved the guy with the green plastic sword and toy guitar setup who was bouncing around the periphery of the pit, it just felt festive and joyous. That was the most enjoyable experience I had seeing Ensiferum, and that’s taking into account their blistering set at a tiny coffin of a venue in Houston for PaganFest 2008. I succumbed to exhaustion and sat down for Firewind and Conception. It was surreal to see the latter live, but bad sound marred much of their set and at that point I wanted to go to sleep.

View from the peanut gallery Thursday, one of the few times it wasn’t crazy packed in there

This might be a good time to talk about everything else about my experience, and I’ll start with the venue itself first. Center Stage Live’s location is damn near perfect. To be a block away from the Arts Center MARTA station that can connect you to the airport makes getting to the festival from out of town feasible without renting a car or waiting for a rideshare at the airport where it can take awhile. The venue itself, although beloved by many regular attendees, I found lacking, and I’ll cite these criticisms knowing full well that there’s nothing that can be done about it. Its way too damn small. This is a festival that tends to sell out, so 1100 people in theory pack into a cramped building that suffered from a lack of adequate air conditioning. The place was a sweat box for most of the festival, and there were rumblings going on that the air conditioning had been broken on certain days which wouldn’t surprise me. From the cramped hallway style lobby area, to the surprisingly small floor space, and the entirely too packed together seating area where getting to a seat meant causing everyone seated in that row to get up and make way for you, it was a claustrophobia inducing experience at moments. It was also kinda difficult to get a seat anywhere really, because if people weren’t saving them, many people just weren’t getting up at all in between sets for fear of losing said seat. I was all too eager to be on the floor for the bands I was hyped for, but that might’ve been a behavior acted on by a minority of attendees, perhaps a byproduct of the crowd skewing older maybe? As I mentioned before, we stayed in an extremely nice Airbnb, but it was Ubering distance away unfortunately. That meant being locked into the venue for the whole day, and it was brutal towards the end of the night. Being able to reenter the venue with a hand stamp was really great, but I wished the place had a comfortable outdoor seating area to chill out away from the stifling air for a second. Had I stayed in a hotel down the street, it might have been possible to walk down, duck into one’s room really quick for a breather, or eat some pre-bought food from the mini-fridge (I relied on the bar pizza far too often), or even deposit some merch items (or change into them, as I said the venue was a sweat box).

While we’re discussing the more logistical side of things, I’ll mention that I learned some important lessons through my experience. Firstly, never trust Google Maps when it comes to judging distance. In studying the map of this particular area of Atlanta where Center Stage Live was located, Google informed me that it was a 24 minute walk of 1.1 miles from our Airbnb. Whoa, pretty close! I walk regularly and cover far more than that distance and go way longer than 24 minutes, this should be no problem right? The thing is, I learned that Atlanta is pretty damn hilly, and the neighborhood I’d have to walk through was built on an undulating series of them that I noticed on my unnerving Waymo ride. I’m from the uber flat frontier of Houston, where the only hills we see are artificially created and few at that. So as I was not going to be walking to the venue, Ubering was the way we ended up getting back and forth. Also, the world is full of speedies and slowies, in other words, people who naturally walk fast and people who naturally walk slow. I’m a slowie, I can walk for a long time but my gait is small so I don’t cover a lot of ground at the same pace that someone else might. That’s fine, there’s room for both speedies and slowies, but for my fellow slowies out there, remember that you have to double the Google estimated walk time. And be really careful if you head to ProgPower and someone tells you something is within walking distance. They might even be technically correct, but if Google says it’s more than a ten minute walk the question you need to ask yourself is, do I want to expend precious energy on walking this distance when I have to potentially last through a 8 hour festival experience that day? The answer is no, no you don’t. Let them walk, you call an Uber.

Catching some air and a little rest out in front of Center Stage

I’ll wrap up this already lengthy diatribe by answering the question I hinted at above, that being am I going to come back for a future ProgPower? I might — I certainly want to. Lineup depending. I wasn’t impressed with the 2027 announcements apart from Power Paladin, Vision Divine, and of course Nevermore. But none of them hit the Brainstorm or Roy Khan or The Gathering level of classification as a once in a lifetime opportunity. I had far fetched hopes for Edguy, dim ones at that, but hell, Heavenly would’ve gotten me back there. So would bands such as Dark Moor (seriously why were they never invited during the Alfred Romero era?), or Heavenly or Ancient Bards yet again. Or something else jaw dropping that my mind can’t even conjure up right now. As you can tell, I skew more power than prog, and next year’s lineup is heavy on the prog with a lot of names I don’t even know. My honest personal feelings are that I get why some people go every year regardless of the lineup, but for me, that’s a lot of money to cough up for an experience that was at times exhausting and uncomfortable. Having said that, I’m actually really glad I went this year and had an experience that for a long time I had written off as being something too difficult to make happen. I got to see bands I dreamed of seeing, and met many friendly fellow attendees, pretty much everyone there was really cool. There were a handful of people who helped convince me to come this year, one of whom I’ll be doing a far more detailed, painstaking blow by blow recap of the festival with on our ProgPower recap episode of the MSRcast we’re recording tonight actually. For attendees present and past, am I being too harsh on certain aspects of the festival or on next year’s lineup? As for me, I hope ProgPower gives me reason to take flight for Atlanta once again, for now however, the pigeon will roost.

My favorite picture i took, Oskar Dronjak in full guitar hero mode, what a set!

September 6, 2026 2026, Kamelot 3 Comments

Returning Heroes: New Music from Triosphere and Kamelot

Two major releases spill onto our laps on the same day, from bands who have taken wildly different roads in their career in Norway’s progressive stalwarts Triosphere, and the multinational Kamelot, a power metal institution in their own right. Lets consider that Dark Asylum is Kamelot’s fourteenth album to date, and their fourth since the last time Triosphere released their last album The Heart of the Matter in 2014, that year’s Metal Pigeon Album of the Year list topper no less. While Kamelot has made this endeavor their full time career, finding themselves on the road more often than not, Triosphere has been a part time proposition for it’s members, the band finding time for scattered gigs in the intervening years while they slowly worked on a follow up album. We’ve had reason to bitch about both bands to be honest. Kamelot have gotten a good kicking for what many feel is a noticeable sameness to their Karevik era recorded output, and deservedly so for their stagnant live setlists which have kept more than a handful of us away from attending some of their recent treks near our neck of the woods. Triosphere on the other hand have produced a more desperate and frustrating venting from fans such as myself, namely, why the hell has it taken so long to finish a new album? Twelve years is approaching Guns N’ Roses and Heavenly territory, and its particularly agonizing when their last album was so insanely great. For me, my expectations for both bands were polar opposites, because I felt everything in expectation for Triosphere and next to nothing for Kamelot other than mild curiosity (more on this later).

So lets talk about Triosphere’s Oceans Above, Stars Below first because twelve years was enough of a wait, and I’ll just say first that I find this album simultaneously thrilling and exasperating. I include the latter because goddamit, this is such an incredible album from a band that doesn’t seem to understand how to do wrong, and yet here I’m thinking that maybe had things worked out differently for the band, we could’ve gotten perhaps two albums or maybe three in the time span that it took to produce this singular one? It was pointed out to me that hey, maybe this new album wouldn’t be so spectacular if they only had a handful of years to work on it, that more albums leading up to it would’ve diluted their work and they simply focused on making this the best collection of songs they could — in other words, that it had to take this long. I’m eager to read interviews with these guys to find out what the exact reasons were for the lengthy gestation period (I know they have day jobs, I get that), but I’m not entirely sold on that rationale. But it is what it is.

In the meantime however, I can sit here and gush about brilliant songs such as “Of Tyrants”, “Monster’s Ball”, “Through the Phantom Wall”, “Shorelines”, and the title track. Hang on, that’s like the entire first half of the album right? Yes, and the scary thing is that the second half of the album doesn’t let up either — much like its predecessor, Oceans Above… threatens us with being a nigh perfect album. The striking aspect of this result is that the band haven’t strayed far at all from the sound they seemed to perfect on The Heart of the Matter and earlier on 2010’s The Road Less Travelled. These songs are still largely high octane, speed infused progressive metal with a sugary sweet hard rock center all wrapped up in vocalist Ida Haukland’s rich velvety vocal tone. She hasn’t lost a single step, her voice still capable of enormous depth and range at once, with a subtle sandpapery grit that underscores her vocal lines at just the right moments. As I write this I’m listening to “Cadence of Chaos” which has my favorite vocal moment of hers of many on the album, as she channels Ann Wilson with dramatic gusto during the opening verse. When I praised the band’s last album as that year’s best, I heaped tons of adulation on Haukland’s vocal abilities, and at the time, she was genuinely a breath of fresh air in a metal scene that largely relegated women vocalists to the symphonic metal side of things. Since that time, we’ve had some pretty incredible singers who have similar voices doing really great work, ex-Battle Beast’s Noora Louhimo springs to mind immediately for example, but despite similarities, Haukland really does stand on her own. Her approach to vocal melodies is rooted in AOR hard rock stylings for sure, but she is willing to put her vocal chords under fire and belt in a way that competes with the aggression of the music the band is dishing out.

To that end, in an effort not to just go on about her status as one of my favorite vocalists in metal, well, period, lets talk about the musicianship here to round things out. Haukland’s work on bass will get overlooked by many, but her tight, in groove lock step with “new” drummer Kenneth Tårneby is more than just standard rhythm section stuff. I found myself paying as much attention to it as I did on previous Triosphere albums, she’s an incredible talent on that instrument and I always love hearing good bass done in a way that isn’t showy or obviously bass-y. Tårneby himself is a wrecking ball, his percussion a signature element on all these songs, often as splashy as the guitars for all his unorthodox fills and patterns. Then there’s the stellar guitar tandem of Marius Silver Bergesen and Tor Ole Byberg, where if Metallum is to be believed, the band has a strict division of labor in lead and rhythm respectively, something that seems far more amorphous in other bands (no pun intended, or maybe it is). These guys are riff machines, and that’s really where the guitarwork blows me away throughout as on past Triosphere albums, in the rhythmic assault that’s laid on. Even though there are moments where Bergesen does go off in solo passages, his lead melodies for the most part feel anchored to what’s going on rhythmically both with Byberg and Haukland. It’s why I feel like Triosphere has this mechanized tinge to their music, that kind of Judas Priest-ian precision that makes you think of a mechanized vehicle rolling over your face, only much like Halford’s impassioned howling, Haukland’s very human vocals balance things out. I’ll be honest, I thought this album would be good at the very least, but I didn’t expect an album of the year candidate. Consider me shocked.

And much like Jackie Chiles, I’m chagrined as well, because I had very low expectations for Kamelot, I would even dare to say I wasn’t looking forward to Dark Asylum at all beyond a mere curiosity. The eye roll inducing cover art being similar to their past handful of albums was enough of an enthusiasm dampener for me to make me suspect this was just going to be more of the same. It’s telling that I had to be reminded that this was not indeed the follow up to 2018’s The Shadow Theory, that there was an album in between in 2023 that I just essentially erased from my mind in The Awakening. It was that forgettable (should I revisit that one? Am I wrong?). So imagine my legitimately surprised delight that dawned on me when I spun this album the first time around, when midway through I even voiced aloud to myself, “I’m actually enjoying this?”. The question was implicit, because while its not implausible for a veteran band to turn things around, there was nothing in Kamelot’s recent history that suggested this was going to be the case, but straight up, this is a very good album, easily their best work since 2015’s Haven. The primary reason for this I suspect, is that for whatever reason, vocalist Tommy Karevik finally sounds completely comfortable here, allowed to sing in his own style entirely and not chase the elusive Khan intonation and tone that he’d sometimes be cornered into on previous albums. Maybe this is just my own perception and I’m getting it wrong, but Karevik sounds way more like Seventh Wonder Karevik here, particularly in the way he structures his vocal phrasing and melody crafting.

The evidence of this can be heard on the opening track proper “Ashen World”, which passes for a Seventh Wonder tune to my ears, with Karevik soulfully sitting in a higher register nearly throughout, his nimble vocal melody deft with its sudden twists and turns. Similarly on the title track, that chorus is classic Karevik ala The Great Escape or Mercy Falls, and I love that I can really hear his stamp all over these songs, with the band following suit and keeping things a little more effervescent and bright sounding rather than forcefully heavy and dour like they have been in the past. He sounds brilliant on “Sanctuary” paired alongside Visions of Atlantis vocalist Clementine Delauney, the two of them complementing each other despite having similar registers, something about it just hits perfectly. A great chorus on this one, expansive and soaring, what I have often referred to as an arcing chorus, you can draw its trajectory on a whiteboard and it would look like 180°. Equally impressive as a guest turn is one Tobias Sammet, him returning the favor as Karevik ably guested on the last Avantasia album (and did a tremendous job) on “One Last Masquerade”, this tune a bit more anchored in traditional Kamelot-ian tropes, but skillfully written and tailored for Sammet’s distinct tone. Not sure if it was written with him in mind (usually that’s not the way it goes), but regardless, the band chose well in what song to feature him on. I gotta say, most of the time the guest vocalists have teetered on becoming a schtick for Kamelot, but they nailed it this time, although its not hard to decipher why Ignacia Fernandez was chosen for the harsh vocals despite a plethora of other vocalists who could do that better. She’s fine if a bit muted, screaming vocals aren’t a necessity for modern Kamelot songs, they’re so pushed back into the mix that they’re just a textural note anyway… I would wonder why they bother but then again she was Miss World Chile so, yeah.

Although this album is still far from classic Kamelot sound of the Khan era, I did find that shades of the old days made their way to the ballad “Ivy, My Dear”, something that sounded like it was a close cousin to ballads from the Karma era. I think the prominence of Oliver Palotai’s keys and the woodwind and string flourishes bring up that association, because this sounds more folky, more “renaissance festival” than the band have approached in years, maybe not since “Don’t You Cry” or even “A Sailorman’s Hymn”. The same goes for the strange but delightful folk ballad “Beneath the Moon (Tunglið)” which is a short two minute ditty that is lovely to behold, though I’ll admit I was caught off guard by it being sung in Icelandic apparently(!). It features guests Lea-Sophie Fischer of Eluveitie on violin, and vocalists Rannveig Sif Sigurðardóttir and Sólveig Sara Leupold, and its worth noting that Sigurðardóttir did the lead harmony vocal on the aforementioned “A Sailorman’s Hymn” on The Fourth Legacy way back in the day, making this a cool little full circle moment. Maybe my feeling of it being a knowing nod to the past wasn’t such a wild idea after all. I appreciate the band diversifying a bit with stuff like this, even if its not particularly groundbreaking for them, it helps to distinguish Dark Asylum from its immediate predecessors.

I think Karevik’s larger presence in the writing of vocal melodies here is crucial to Dark Asylum’s artistic success, and its not a coincidence that its conceptual, storyline driven nature hearkens to his work in Seventh Wonder as well… he’s got valuable experience. The lyrics are sharper here, more memorable in their diction and smoother in their delivery than albums past, and maybe that’s a side effect of him not having to shoehorn everything in between riffs already provided by Youngblood. Karevik is the undoubted MVP of this album and that’s been a long, long time coming. When Kamelot was cooking on parts of Haven, it was seemingly (and the songwriting credits supported this) because Karevik was brought onboard to help craft the songs from the ground up whereas on Silverthorn he was brought in when Youngblood and Palotai had already written most of them. I love Youngblood, he was the Chris DeGarmo to Khan’s Geoff Tate in their golden era, but he needs a vocalist to make the best of his riff progression ideas, to pair them against great vocal melodies that simply put, aren’t Youngblood’s strong suit. I’ll conclude by saying this, as a longtime fan since the early Khan days, Kamelot did something genuinely good here, its an album worth checking out. They still falter on some things, the lame cover art, the transparent focus on appearance for their guest vocalist choices (not all, but some for sure), the pointless intro and outro tracks, the terrible setlists (even on the current tour they’re still including the worst of the “heavy” tunes from the Karevik era, perhaps thinking this makes them sound more metal live, I don’t know the reasoning honestly). But that’s a discussion for another time perhaps, for now, I just want to appreciate that Kamelot released a damn good album in 2026, that’s astonishing in itself.

July 22, 2026 2026, Avantasia, Edguy, Tobias Sammet Post a Comment

All The Clowns: Saying Goodbye to Edguy

The out of nowhere news that Tobias Sammet dropped onstage at the recent Avantasia show in his hometown of Fulda, Germany — that Edguy was returning for a single show on June 27th, 2027 at the very same venue (the Domplatz) in Fulda came as a shock to all of us, particularly the crowd at that show whose reaction was captured for an Instagram post to help promote the news. The extra promo effort wasn’t necessary, because the show sold out in less than 24 hours with over 9000 tickets being scooped up. There is hope from fans that its the first in a series of final shows and not just a one-off, and for my part, I hope there’s some miracle of a ProgPower USA performance included in that run to get me to come back to Atlanta next year (I realize this is a slim chance). But beyond wishes and hopes, the news was bittersweet for me. It was a pleasant surprise to see Edguy getting resurrected, but I always hoped it was for the band coming together, older and wiser and more capable of working together in a smoother fashion than previously suggested, for the express purpose of creating new music together. When Tobias recently made comments on social media about coming around to understanding why power metal fans still loved the band’s older albums so fervently, the thought crossed my mind that maybe it would light his fire for Edguy again in order to explore this newfound peace with his musical past. In announcing that the band is seemingly going to have its “final chapter”, it seems he is choosing to lay it to rest permanently in order to close the book on the past entirely.

And I’ll be real, that is a flat out saddening notion, not only for what it means about us as Edguy fans not getting any more new music, and the band’s discography staying static as its been for the past decade now, but for what it kinda means to me and I’m sure many others on a personal level. Yeah we’re getting older, and time is passing, and that sucks for many things and is okay in some other ways, it is what it is. But all of us as metal fans are in unprecedented territory these past few years, saying goodbye to bands we loved, to icons of the genre hanging it up or passing away. It’s one thing to say goodbye to icons who are at an age where they physically need to hang it up, such as Ozzy last year, or the possibility that this is AC/DC’s final tour — and another thing altogether when it’s an artist that has it’s classic lineup intact, still in fighting shape, and they’re willfully choosing to hang it up. It’s a distinct kind of heartbreak that leaves die hard fans longing, feeling like there was music left unfinished in the metaphysical rehearsal room so to speak. With regards to Edguy, not only does it feel like that, but speaking as an American fan who in the late 90s was very aware of the burgeoning rise of European power metal and today remember just how exciting, fresh, and vital the albums being released in those years were, it feels like the signal of the real ending of that era.

I got into Edguy through a Cleveland college radio show called The Metal Meltdown that I somehow found in the late 90s (I think through the old Megadeth.com forums) running out of WRUW Case Western Reserve University. It was hosted by one Dr. Metal who focused his playlists on melodic metal, not only classics such as Savatage, Helloween, Gamma Ray, and Priest, but he was particularly tapped into bands coming over from Europe and had contacts with the bigger labels hosting those bands in order to get them on the show for interviews, even the odd live in-studio interview whenever they’d come over to the States for a rare run of American shows. The Doc’s playlists were bursting with bands I’d never heard of, whose albums I couldn’t easily find in any stores over here. But he introduced me to countless artists, not only Edguy, but Sonata Arctica, Nightwish right before Wishmaster exploded in Europe, Rhapsody, Labyrinth, Masterplan, Falconer, Royal Hunt, I could go on and on and on. It was a treasure trove of a show and the station offered the show as a mp3 download that would be replaced every week off their FTP server, a proto podcast type of thing. I remember hearing a very young Tobias calling into the Metal Meltdown for an interview promoting the Savage Poetry re-recording in 1999, and how amused he was that any American interest was happening for this nascent German power metal band. I listened to the songs the Doc played on that interview episode over and over again, cuts from the re-recording as well as their 1998 opus Vain Glory Opera. When I stumbled onto a import copy of Theater of Salvation in a record store soon thereafter, I remember feeling genuine elation that I got so lucky and wasn’t going to have to pay shipping for it.

It really felt like Edguy was for awhile there, a hidden secret known only to power metal fans in the know in the States, they didn’t have the distribution deal that Blind Guardian scored with Century Media, their albums were hard to find, they didn’t yet have the cachet that Hammerfall did on the heels of their very successful first three albums. I was an avid metal magazine collector then, and it was rare to see the band mentioned in those early days. When Tobias announced the Avantasia project, it helped crack open the window a bit more because names like Henjo Richter and Markus Grosskopf certainly made heads turn in the power metal world, and when that project’s debut album took off, and soon neither Avantasia nor Edguy were well kept secrets anymore. It’s also worth noting that until 1997, the term power metal as we understand it today wasn’t being applied to bands such as Helloween and Gamma Ray. When this new young crop of European bands such as Hammerfall, Rhapsody, Stratovarius, and yes Edguy burst on the scene, the term began being applied retroactively to those aforementioned foundational influences. Edguy was cut from the cloth of both of those bands in terms of the hooks, melodicism, epic majesty, and humor — and so their early albums really did feel like they were weaving together a part of the fabric of what we now think of as the golden era of power metal from 97-04. It would be honest to say that in the early millennium Edguy was one of my favorite bands going, and when we were all bathing in the glow of Iron Maiden storming back with Brave New World, and reveling in this absolute flood of incredible albums being delivered to us from across the ocean from so many awesome new bands, I was still listening to Edguy probably way more than anything else just as a general rule. They are still one of my favorite power metal bands ever, even above Avantasia.

But if you’ve bothered reading this far about my feelings about a band called Edguy, you likely already knew that, and I don’t need to go into why their records were titanic, epic, soaring affairs filled with unforgettable songwriting (maybe I’ll do this in some way in another piece down the line next year). To be honest, I feel like I’m writing this whole thing more for myself, maybe in a vain hope of coming to peace with it. But all those Edguy albums, the classics and the uneven ones later on, were the soundtrack to my life during fun and happy times, but also kept me going as comfort listens during the dirge and doldrums of the everyday grind of work and school, of commuting and being stuck in traffic. When I needed inspiration to face the day, I could count on “Babylon”, “All the Clowns”, and “Under the Moon”, and fist pump along to them. When I needed to plaster a grin on my face, I could count on “Love Tyger”, “Save Us Now”, or the absurd silliness of “Lavatory Love Machine”. Their music could complement a range of emotions, and my effusive feelings on Tobias as a ballad writer should be well known by now, and when I was feeling down and depressed, tunes such as “Painting on the Wall”, “Scarlet Rose”, “Forever” and “Holy Water” genuinely did lift me out of that dour state and leave me feeling better. I mean, I could say this about a good number of bands as well… in due time I suppose. For now, I’ll come to terms with saying goodbye to these particular five German dudes from Fulda.

May 17, 2026 2026, Iron Maiden, reviews Post a Comment

Maiden’s Burning Ambition + New Myrath & Power Paladin

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.

March 25, 2026 2026, reviews, Uncategorized Post a Comment

Where Great Records?!: 2026’s Sluggish Start

Remember that song “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum? The jangly acoustic ballad one with the music video that featured milk cartoon-esque missing kids and became a socially conscious moment in the height of alternative rock in the early 90s? Do we need to remake that music video in a way that raises awareness of all the missing great metal records in the first chunk of this year (How would that even work — Future Pigeon)? Am I being dramatic and quite possibly a petulant baby? Maybe! But we’re about to hit April here, and I’m a little concerned that we don’t have anything… correction, that I don’t have anything on my list of 2026 metal releases that I can legitimately consider as a great record, and only a few that are somewhat barely scratching the category of “very good”. This lack of quality metal in this year has not only paled in comparison to the blistering start that we had in 2025, but its birthed aftereffects such as a meandering, contemplative state that leads one to looking up old alternative rock bands remembered from childhood such as the aforementioned Soul Asylum because I’m listless and uninspired by most new releases. I even caught myself admitting out loud the other day that I now can appreciate “Lightning Crashes” by Live, a band that I hated with a passion back in the day for what I still deem are legit reasons. I need help. Metal help!

So lets be positive about this situation and at least look at what’s scratching that “very good tier”, and straightaway I’ll bring up the new Greyhawk album Warriors of Greyhawk, a very Manowar-in-spirit titled new album that introduces their new vocalist Anthony Corso. He is replacing of course, the celebrated but short tenured prior vocalist Rev Taylor who has gone onto pursue an opera career to apparent success (congrats on that). Taylor was a huge reason why those first two Greyhawk albums were celebrated releases within the power metal community, and his departure is an enormous loss I believe for the band and for the power metal scene as a whole, because he really did have a unique, smooth baritone thing going for him. Apparently, that lower register was at odds with the demands of some of the material on those two albums that required a higher reach, but I never got to see them live so I can’t attest to those problems. This is so similar to Falconer’s Mathias Blad dipping out after his first two albums with that band in the early 2000s that I can’t help but wonder if like Blad, Taylor will eventually return to the Greyhawk fold in the future. Regardless, Corso is a fine vocalist in his own right, his vocals more naturally suited to a higher register no doubt, but he has enough midrange to somewhat modulate between the old Greyhawk sound and this newer, updated version.

Do I love this new album? Not quite, but it is relatively enjoyable for what it is, and “Land of Ashes” is a pretty rockin’ song that reminds me of material from the first two albums. Corso hits the right notes on this one, balancing a Euro metal soaring Kiske-ian approach with enough weighty midrange to prevent this from sounding entirely too much like Dream Evil at times (I mean I get serious vibes on a couple songs throughout). I also really enjoyed the album closer “Eternal Quest”, an epic built with mortar equal parts Maiden, Scorpions, and Hammerfall, and Corso’s midrange, reigned in vocal approach here is something I would like to see him employ more often than the prototypical higher register stuff (again, he’s fine at it, but we’ve got enough bands doing that). My larger concern is that the best song on the album is “Chosen”, with guest vocals by none other than, you guessed it, Rev Taylor, and hearing him again for maybe the last time in this context is so awesomely bittersweet. The contrast with Corso on the track itself isn’t as dramatic as you’d expect, but it does highlight that Taylor’s unorthodox approach really gave the band a unique flavor that they just don’t have anymore without him. Dammit. Its the hallmark of any transitional album for fans to not be entirely onboard with a new vocalist change, but maybe they should’ve avoided calling attention to what we’re ultimately losing.

Another very good release was the new self-titled album by Temple Balls (yeah), a Finnish hard rock/trad metal band who has been releasing music since 2015 but I’m only just hearing about now. The bio on Spotify cites Van Halen and Aerosmith as influences, and for sure you can hear that stuff there, even splashes of something more obscure (to American audiences anyway) such as Thunder. I often get flashes of Tesla and even Cinderella’s swagger and strut when hearing tracks such as “Lethal Force” and “There Will Be Blood”. These are very catchy tunes, and there’s no respite throughout the album of hooks in your face and some fairly awesome riff sequences courtesy of the band’s late guitarist Niko Vuorela, who sadly passed away in 2025 after a three year battle with cancer. The band have released and promoted this album in accordance with his wishes but have hinted at being uncertain about what their future holds, which is understandable, but still a bummer to consider given just how much I’ve enjoyed this introduction to them. I’ve craved a good newer hard rock band like this for awhile now, and Temple Balls seem to strike the right balance between joyful exuberance and frivolity paired with a precision metallic undertone pinning everything together.

Similarly I thought the throwback classic metal approach of Tailgunner resulted in a pretty strong record in Midnight Blitz, and though the Iron Maiden derived name would speak to that band’s strong influence, this UK band has a tinge of pop metal in their sound that does prevent their sound from being predictable. I was introduced to this on the last MSRcast episode we recorded, and it’s been in consistent rotation since then, hitting that spot of something that sounds classic and comforting yet still has a fresh, exciting spin to it. There’s a really solid vocalist within this band’s ranks in Craig Cairns, sort of a Sebastian Bach meets Theocracy’s Matt Smith in his vocal approach, merging some serious lung capacity with a knack for deft melodies. Points for solid production on this album too, it sounds like something from the late 80s without the reverb-y drums, in a way that I’ve always wished Enforcer would aim for sonically. And before I forget, I wanna throw some minor praise to Aeon Gods, a band I previously regarded as yet another entrant into the high stakes game of gimmicky power metal. Don’t get me wrong, they are guilty of that, with vocalist Alexander Hunzinger and keyboardist Anja Hunzinger choosing to leave their two decades long underground symphonic metal band Aeternitas (does anyone else remember these guys?) in the dust in favor of choosing the Victorius route (Sumerian mythology instead of ninjas and dinos is an improvement I’ll admit). That being said, their new album Reborn to Light is decent, it even has one really excellent tune in the opener “Birth of Light” with a chorus that is epic and infectious. A decent symphonic metal record worth checking out at least, just don’t watch the music videos.

The new Vandor album The Ember Eye Part II: The Portal of Truth is a damn good substitute for anyone missing old Edguy, because their vocalist Vide Bjerde has a real Tobias Sammet tinge to his vocal tone that is startling in its similarity. The songwriting throughout is sometimes hit and kinda miss, not quite reaching that level of satisfying melodicism across the board that they nail in their best moments. I will say, it took Edguy some time to figure that one out as well so there’s hope for the future. At this point it’s one of the most listened to new albums of this year just by virtue of that heady nostalgia rush its dragging in its wake. Finally on the extreme metal front we have Finnish melodic death metal Deadvoid Inc, with their debut album Chapters, and its built on equal parts Swallow the Sun / Amorphis style melodic death but with a noticeable splash of Gothenburg musicality, particularly in its usage of clean guitar parts. Its a compelling listen, and vocalist Jonne Saarinen is both a talented screamer and pretty good clean vocalist, but guitarist Tuomas Torikka kinda steals the show here with his guitarwork. I know a guitarist whose main influence is Jesper Stromblad when I hear one, and Torikka clearly pays homage to the Swedish living legend with some very classic In Flames-ian lead melodies and clean passages. That ear candy is part of the reason I’ve been coming back to this album repeatedly, even though the songwriting overall could be tighter… I’ll give them a debut album pass on that front, surely they will grow into their own.

The last one I’ll mention is that it was an unexpected delight to have For My Pain… back again with Buried Blue after twenty years of thinking it was a one off project, and seemingly picking up right where they left off with that particularly Finnish strain of gothic metal that I’ve missed so much. No Tuomas Holopainen this time around, he’s been busy doing some other band, but Troy Donockley makes a guest appearance oddly enough and it’s actually a stellar tune in it’s own right (“Windows Are Weeping”), a marriage of gothic romance and Celtic folk stylings. But its that familiar, keyboard infused gothic metal sound in “Child of the Fallen” and “Time Will Heal Our Wounds” that bring me back to the icy soundscapes of contemporaries of the band’s debut such as Sentenced and Charon — a familiar, comforting sound as strange as it is to describe it that way. I was caught off guard with this album, not having heard any mention of a reunion until recently, so this is easily the biggest surprise of the year so far, and perhaps the album with the most potential to linger long into the year as we continue on. Speaking of which, I’ll wrap it up here… I was going to discuss some of the disappointing albums of 2026 so far, but eh, everything else around us is downright crap at the moment with the state of things, so maybe its better to just stick to the meager positivity we can scrape up. C’mon metal, get it together, you have nine months left to turn things around!

March 4, 2026 2026 Post a Comment

Megadeth’s Final Album: The End of an Era

It has been, frankly, surreal to behold the reality of seeing Megadeth’s newest, and final self-titled studio album debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart recently. I realize I’m just jumping right into things here, but consider it with me for a moment… it upheaves and closes the book on one of the longest running narratives within mainstream metal. A story that nearly every metalhead who has been passingly aware of the histories of both Megadeth and Dave Mustaine’s previous band Metallica has known about. Megadeth was always second fiddle, in popularity, sales, and even when they were having their moment in the sun with 1992’s Countdown to Extinction, it could only bow at number two on the Billboard Charts, unlike Metallica scoring their own first number one record a year prior with their self-titled black album. Maybe no one else is thinking this hard about something seemingly trivial like this, but for me, it feels like one part of a fitting send off for Megadeth, if indeed, this is the last album (and Mustaine’s comments in interviews seem like it very much will be). I say this because not only does it grant Mustaine an elusive career long ambition for his band, it does justice to the tenacity of Megadeth fans organizing in a concerted effort to make it happen. Now granted, I was only made aware of this campaign well after the album hit the top of the charts officially, but that’s more my own tardiness showing than a lack of the fan campaign’s efforts at awareness I’m sure.

My history with the band goes back to before I was even a metal fan, because it was via a poster of the cover art for Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying that I got my first impression of heavy metal imagery before I had even heard a single note of thrash metal. I detailed this story in the biographical piece I wrote a long time ago, because it was a singularly catalyzing moment for me, making my younger self aware that such stuff existed. Later on when I was becoming rapidly immersed in hard rock music and buying cassettes myself, it was quietly in my mind that heavy metal was a thing and was just a tiny jump to make. Thanks to a lack of anyone parental paying attention to my purchases, I was able to satisfy that spark of curiosity at what music this band’s provocative artwork was presenting, and a gateway began to be opened. It is an actual fact that I owned a Megadeth album on cassette before owning any Metallica album (that being Countdown to Extinction). Although in truth I had a hard time enjoying it until I got acclimated with Metallica, and went back to the Megadeth album when I learned that Mustaine was a former member thanks to some older metalhead in the neighborhood mentioning it off hand. That slight nudge that got me to go back and revisit that cassette may have been the pivotal moment between being a casual metal fan in passing, and the lifelong devotee that I am today.

Getting into the technicality and abrasiveness of Megadeth became the key to the gateway through which I was able to embrace those qualities in extreme metal, first coming in the way of being introduced to Carcass and Death while watching MTV Headbangers Ball at a friends house who was able to record the show on VHS. After which it was the floodgates opening, Morbid Angel and Sepultura, Obituary and Deicide, whatever I could come across and make copies of from friends’ albums (or copies of copies that they had acquired themselves). By that point I also owned every single Megadeth album up to that point, I was even aware of the release of Youthanasia being advertised at the local Sam Goody with a poster of that surreal artwork at their new release display (sadly they did not give me the poster when I asked). I bought Cryptic Writings the week it came out, and it might have been my most listened to album in 1997 because I was one of those odd ducks who loved the songwriting that their mid-paced, less frenetic approach was inspiring. In the late nineties/early aughts era I was also a frequenter at the message boards over at the band’s official website, Megadeth being early internet adopters and one of the first bands I remember having their own dedicated UBB message board, the Total Anarchy subforum being a goldmine for me regarding recommendations for other metal. In being a fan of Megadeth, I became a bigger fan of metal in general.

So it’s been admittedly a little disheartening to witness, online anyway, the relatively cynical and somewhat muted reaction to this final album on a critical level from metal fans in general. I’ll be the first to admit that on it’s own, I find Megadeth to be a good, while not quite great Deth record. There are parts that are really damn good, my favorite cuts being “Tipping Point” which is vintage Mustaine vitriol in a sharply cut album opener, and I love the recurring riff in “Another Bad Day”, that song harkening to that aforementioned love of the band’s mid-paced approach when its done right (“Hey God?!” also rings the bell in that regard). On the opposite end of the speed dial are absolute bangers in “I Don’t Care” and “Let There Be Shred”, the latter’s nearly cringe inducing lyrics overridden by a really satisfying riff progression. The rest of the album is decent to good, there’s nothing particularly terrible on offer, although the album finale “The Last Note” turned out more clunky than poignant (perhaps better to have gone the Sentenced route and end on an instrumental track but alas). Then there’s the bonus track, this being the Metallica cover of “Ride the Lightning” (I say cover although I know Mustaine was a co-writer on it), which is really the only thing I’ve seen people discuss at length about the album. It’s a great cover, I prefer it to Metallica’s version, but it should’ve been released as a standalone single long before this album came out because its dominated the conversation surrounding this release, and that’s a shame.

Originally I was writing a lengthy career retrospective piece on Megadeth, kinda going over all their albums as my own tribute to their career, but I shelved that a month ago because it was so unfocused and rambling that I was boring myself. Maybe I’ll clean it up and finish it one day when the band stops touring as a final sendoff, but for now I decided that I just wanted to write something short and simple to express my appreciation for the band amidst all the blasé opinions directed towards them and particularly Mustaine lately (maybe I’m not seeing the positive opinions thanks to algorithms, who knows). I’m not going to admonish people for feeling how they feel, but I wonder if most of us have become so jaded that we can’t tip our collective hat to a institution of metal that did a lot for the genre, influenced a ton of musicians we all love, and made some of the genre’s greatest records. Megadeth was a big deal to me as a developing metal fan, and even though I haven’t loved everything they’ve done (The World Needs A Hero might be one of the worst metal records ever), I loved much of their music and it really did shape my direction as a metal fan into all things intricate and abrasive. In beholding their last album, it’s the end of an era, a part of my childhood that’s going to permanently go away, which is a starkly sobering thought as well. So I applaud those Megadeth fans who helped the band get to number one, it was a fitting gesture to a band that meant a lot to likely more people than social media would have us believe.

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