Unknown Soldier

Sounds like Korn, but in Korn`s case each album got worse and worse.

I had to turn it off after 3 mins, but I liked the cliched piano section

Salami

Yeah, it gets soooo cheesy. How long is that bloody quest of yours going to take???? Four albums so far, apparently. They'd go so much quicker through all that snow and rain if they STOPPED WRITING @#!*y songs about everything that's happened to them.

I wish they'd have a new idea.

Unknown Soldier

Another German band who are worth a mention are Rage, not strictly power metal, but imo have enough power metal influences to qualify on the thread. After several previous albums of which 1988`s Perfect Man was the best, they put out this hugely Metallica inspired power metal album in 1995.

Unknown Soldier

Rage - Days Of December - YouTube

Salami

Out of interest, could anyone educate me as to why metal album art tends to be much more elaborate and intricate than other genres? Is it something intrinsic to metal artists, to be more imaginative when it comes to the art side of production, or do they have much more time on their hands?

Unknown Soldier

Good question and I`ve never really given it any real thought, but I hazard a guess and say that really elaborate album art started with prog bands such as Yes and Rush, whose subject matter was often focused on out-wordly topics, hard rock/heavy metal band Budgie were also very imaginative on these style of covers too, but in terms of heavy metal firstly Rainbow set the trend on their early albums with swords and scorcery inspired covers, but I`d say the really elaborate heavy metal covers that you`re referring to really started with Iron Maiden. Since then depending on the type of metal act, these elaborate covers have either focused themselves on swords & scorcery and gory horror style covers etc, often one look at the cover can often give you an idea of the band, the quality of those covers usually depended often on the finances the band had at their disposal as well. A genre like power metal will have covers related to the works of Tolkien and fantasy type worlds, thrash and death metal will have the gory or violent style covers that you probably already know of and black metal covers often evoke bleakness. Because image is everything in metal, album covers usually mirror this.

Salami

This is very interesting. I am indeed referring to the tendency started by Iron Maiden, particularly what impressed me was their cover for the album "Powerslave" (from which the only song I can remember is "Aces High...")



That started off my general interest in this subject. It looked so elaborate and interesting. Sadly, I regret to say I enjoyed the art far more than the actual album!

And with reference to Tolkein, a power metal band I know called Battledore are a good example of a band very heavily influenced by the imagery in his books. All their songs have direct references to his stories. Here's the album cover from their fourth or fifth album Evernight:



Look familiar? Falls of Rauros I think, I'm not an expert on the subject....

Unknown Soldier

Thats one of the great Iron Maiden albums as well, When these albums of Iron Maiden came out the artwork was just as essential as the music and it was actually a way of attracting people to the band and a lot of people actually bought Iron Maiden based on the artwork!

Tolkien has always been a heavy subject matter especially with Rush and a huge amount of metal bands have used Tolkien style imagery and references in both artwork and lyrics, I`d actually say Blind Guardian were the biggest Tolkien fanatics. I`m also a Tolkien fanatic

Salami

I used to be very into it myself. I stopped halfway through the Silmarillion because I didn't understand a word of it!

Unknown Soldier

After the excellent Night of the Stormrider, Iced Earth departed with John Greely and in stepped Matt Barlow (without doubt one of my fav metal vocalists) and gave a great vocal performance on the album, even though some of his later vocal performances would be even better. The fiery cover suggests some hellish fighting fantasy type concept, but in reality the subject matter of the album was about the band being in dispute with their record label, hardly a great power metal subject. Like most North American power metal bands Iced Earth continued the harder hitting style, but this album displayed a lot of European power influences, showing the growing influence of the European bands.

Iced Earth Burnt Offerings 1995