Germany (part 2/4) - Always reinventing Power Metal

One of the main genres of Metal music in Germany is Power Metal, and many of the great musicians and bands in that genre come from there.
In the veterans chapter we talked about Helloween, that set the rules of the genre with Walls Of Jericho and Keepers Of the Seven Keys (part 1 & 2), but many excellent bands followed, many of them capable of adding something unique to those standards. I'll talk about some of them.

Founded in 1984, Blind Guardian is one of those bands. For one, there's the voice of Hansi Kursch, one of the few metal singers that I can clearly identify by his voice when he appears as a guest in other bands, and also the music as a distinct sonority in it, that makes pretty easy to identify a new Blind Guardian song for someone familiar with their music.



Gamma Ray was the band founded by Kai Hansen, after leaving Helloween. The sound is more epic and more complex, with choirs sometimes. They have some pretty catchy songs but, in average, I still prefer early days Helloween.



And then appeared the one I call the Mozart of Power Metal, Tobias Sammet. Currently with 33 years old he has 14 full length albums released.
Nine of them, with his band, Edguy, that he founded with schoolmates at the age of 14 and where he was in charge of the vocals, bass and keyboards. They released the first full length when he wasn't 18 years yet.
This one is from their 2004 album, Hellfire Club, and is one of the best Power Metal songs I have heard. Edguy is definitely one of my favourite bands.



The other five albums were released with his solo project, Avantasia, that debuted in year 2000, when at the age of 23 he managed to assembly a superb cast to record a two CD epic work called The Metal Opera, which was launched in 2001 and 2002.



In 2001, a group of experienced Power Metal musicians that wanted to give a more progressive sound to their music started working together. In 2003, the project called Masterplan saw the light with a first album with the same name. They were an immediate hit, and since then they have edited another three full lengths.



Besides these great bands, much more could be mentioned, but I don't want to make this series of posts a band catalog, so I will just mention two more bands are really worth listening: Freedom Call and Iron Savior.

Next: Germany (part 3/4) - Kings of Folk Metal.