Let's check out the mellow side of rock and metal again, shall we?
This is Elegy, a power metal band from Holland with currently eight albums to their credit. This is from their last-but-one, 2000's “Forbidden fruit”, and a great ballad called “I believe”.
Staying in Europe (and quite close, geographically, to Holland), Avalon are a German progressive metal band, who unfortunately share their name with a Christian rock group. Gaah! Anyway, this is from their second album, “Mystic places”, a nice little acoustic number called “Prisoner of my mind”.
Nightwish can always be relied upon for some decent ballads. Here they are with a track that seems only to appear as part of the single “Amaranth” (what we used to call a B-side, though these days singles can have almost as many tracks as small albums: they're not EPs, dunno what they're called) which itself is from the album “Dark passion play”. This is apparently the theme to a movie, though I've never heard of “Lieska”. Anyway, it's called “While your lips are still red”.
Always found Manowar something of a joke, myself, though I did buy their first three albums. Seems they may have reinvented themselves though, in somewhat the style of Virgin Steele. This is a lovely piano ballad taken from their album “Louder than Hell”, released in 1996, it's simply called “Courage”.
And to close, we'll bring it kind of full circle. Therion are another band who, like Manowar, have successfully reinvented themselves, changing from death metal beginnings to a more melodic, symphonic metal, and this is from their album “Vovin”. How does that bring things full circle? Well, the song “The king”, featured here, is actually a cover originally written and performed by Accept, who kicked off this whole section at the beginning of the month.
