Trollheart

Well, either a list of bands considered power metal (as opposed to other types of metal) or the criteria used to decide when a metal band is considered power metal. I'm just not all that clear on it myself.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Unknown Soldier

Well the very first post though does mention some general key features but I'll add some more after the footy has finished.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

jawbreaker

A lot of prog metal bands have a strong power metal dimension :
Eldritch
Superior
Vanden Plas
Dream Theater (the first two albums)
Shadow Gallery
Fates Warning (JOhnArch-era + Parallels)
Queensrÿche
Adagio
Royal Hunt
Ring of fire (w/ Virgil Donati on drums)
some projects with Jorn Lande : Masterplan, Millenium, Jorn, Beyond Twilight, Allen/Lande, Ark (the 2nd album)
Seventh Wonder (a blend of DT's 'Images and Words' and mid-eighties Europe)

Other bands in strictly power metal league (besides the ones mentioned in previous posts) :
Rob Rock
Avantasia
Heavens Gate
Grave Digger
Axel Rudi Pell
Sabaton
Manilla Road
Edguy
Shaaman (the other project of André MAtos, besides Angra and Viper, previously mentioned)
Artension

and among NWOBHM bands, Judas Priest's 'screaming for vengeance' and 'defenders of the faith' sound very powerish :-)

Someone was asking about instrumental power metal. I think the shredders of the eighties could answer this expectation : Vinnie Moore, Tony MacAlpine, Ritchie Kotzen, Jason Becker, Greg Howe, Paul Gilbert and Racer X...and in the nineties maybe the fusionesque (presence of Holdsworth oblige) 'Heavy Machinery' by the Johansson brothers and artists like Vitalij Kuprij.

Also, for our ears, an obscure band called Bride :

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Janszoon

I'm not generally a fan of super bombastic singing. There's something about it that really just takes me out of the moment. With music that has virtuoso playing in it, I like to hear the pure musicality of it, unencumbered by singing. This is not just for metal with me. I have the same feeling toward everything from jazz to flamenco to classical.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Janszoon

He has his moments but, yeah, I do find them few and far between. I do like some of the tracks on Rising Force though.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Unknown Soldier

I'd say the best way to define it is to take Bruce Dickenson era Iron Maiden from the early 1980s as the role model for style and execution, along with speed metal and the pre-thrash elements of bands like Anvil and Raven etc add in the neo-classical guitar styles of Randy Rhoads and Yngwie Malmsteen, also chuck in the fantasy element of bands like Rainbow and this basically gives you the ingredients needed for power metal.

Initially though, these ingredients really didn't always make themselves that obvious. As a lot of the early power metal bands often mixed in other styles of metal and therefore were often not referred to as power metal. They mostly fell in somewhere between the mainstream metal of bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, along with those of the thrash movement of the early to mid 1980s. Bands like Jag Panzer, Helstar, Crimson Glory and Metal Church best evidence what North American power metal sounded like in the 1980s and eventually Iced Earth became in many ways the first fully fledged power metal band from North America. Then there were bands like Riot, Savatage, Virgin Steele and Manowar that had more or less started out in a different style before moving into a power metal sound. Other key bands Nevermore (also one of the best metal bands of the 1990s) played power metal with a very strong thash influence making classification difficult.

Power metal really came into its own though when it kicked off in Germany with Helloween, whose landmark releases Keeper of the Seven Keys, really laid down the criteria for European power metal, which differed from its North American power metal counterpart as it was more melodic, more keyboard driven and less macho and generally softer on the ear, that' s not to say that they didn't know how to play heavy when they wanted to and of course stacks of guitar riffs.

Since the late 1990s a lot of power metal bands have also gained the symphonic metal label to confuse us even more such as Angra and Rhapsody of Fire.

A few bands that could be regarded as wholly power metal:

Helloween (despite some of their silly pop experiments)
Iced Earth
Stratovarius
HammerFall
Blind Guardian
Rhapsody of Fire
Gamma Ray
Sonata Arctica

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Ah, I'm just the opposite, I very rarely like instrumentals without vocals. One of the few guitar virtuosos that I can actually listen to without much singing is probably Michael Schenker.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Eyrothath

Watch the Vh1 Metal Evolution episode on Power Metal.. It really goes depth into it's creation and how it evolved from Heavy Metal..

"Power Metal" ( Ep. 110 ) from Metal Evolution | Full Episode | VH1.com

Also.. Check out this radio station

Epic Rock Radio - Your Definitive Source for Symphonic Rock and Metal.

Unknown Soldier

Don't put that up, it'll make everything I've just said redundant.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Howard the Duck

*makes wanking motion with hand*

i was heavily into them at one point, got rid of all of them except for Racer X, which has some musical merit

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