Rhapsody of Fire at Rockharz Open Air 2025: a guitarist leans back over his instrument at the left, the drummer plays at the centre under the band's painted backdrop, and the singer holds the microphone at the right.

Essential Albums

The Power Metal Concept Albums

A concept album promises events in an order, and the music of this genre is built to come back identical. So what actually carries the story in the audio? Five devices, one hard test, and the three records that survive it.

By Julien Vasseur 25 October · 10 min read

From the Magazine

Histories · Biographies · Essentials →

Avantasia at Wacken Open Air 2022: Tobias Sammet in a top hat and long dark coat points sharply across the stage, mouth open, with a guitarist playing behind him on the right.

Essential Albums

The Longest Power Metal Epics

A fifteen minute song cannot be a four minute song played four times, so it has to find something for the time, and the supply of answers is short. What the numbered parts printed on these s...

By Julien Vasseur

Stratovarius on the Wacken Open Air stage in 2022: the singer throws the horns at centre, a guitarist and a bassist flank the drum riser, and a crowd of raised hands fills the foreground.

Essential Albums

The Power Metal Ballads, and What They Do on an Album

A power metal ballad is a position before it is a song. Where it sits decides what the two tracks touching it can do, whether it was written for the album or for a radio station, and what a...

By Julien Vasseur

Gamma Ray at Dong Open Air 2015: two guitarists stand side by side at the front of the stage, one with a Flying V and one with a white guitar, in blue stage light with the drum kit behind them.

Essential Albums

The Best Power Metal Songs

A power metal song tells a listener how it ends while it is still in its opening bars, so the only craft left to it is subtraction: what comes out of the arrangement between one chorus and t...

By Julien Vasseur

From the Team

The whole team →

Eirik Solvang Black Metal The Black Metal Records Collectors Chase

Andrzej Sawicki Blackened Death Viking, Folk and Everything Else Death Metal Absorbed

Rafael Quintero Death Metal The Death Metal Records Collectors Chase

Gareth Llewellyn Grindcore The Underrated Sludge Metal Albums

Ilse Brandt Doom Metal What Doom Metal Actually Means

Declan Rourke Heavy Metal Heavy Metal vs Rock

Reviews

All reviews →

8.0 Hypocrisy A Taste of Extreme Divinity

8.0 Blut aus Nord MoRT

8.0 Devin Townsend Order of Magnitude: Empath Live Volume 1

7.0 Leaves’ Eyes The Last Viking

8.0 Dark Tranquillity Where Death Is Most Alive

8.5 Armored Saint Punching the Sky

On This Day

25 October

15 years Carnifex Until I Feel Nothing 2011

15 years Insomnium One for Sorrow 2011

15 years Russian Circles Empros 2011

SNW

20 years Deftones Saturday Night Wrist 2006

TVC

15 years Deftones The Vinyl Collection 2011 · Compilation

22 years Behemoth Demigod 2004

Release Calendar

Full calendar →

Date	Band	Album	Type
26 Oct 2026	Herzog	Mugwort	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Enslaved	Mið	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Ministry	Hate to Go - Take Out or Delivery	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Cirith Ungol	All the Shadows	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Blind Channel	Painstream	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Blind Channel	Painstream (24-bit HD audio)	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Acherontas	For the Blood of Tiamat - Praxis I - XXX Years Anniversary of Magick and Metamorphosis	EP
30 Oct 2026	Scarblade	Guardians of Time	Full-length
30 Oct 2026	Darkest Hour	Suffer Divine	Full-length