Helloween, courtesy.

I, as you all should, enjoy metal.

Yes, various sub-genres of metal have a bad reputation, but most of it is unearned. If you separate your perception from the music itself, the best examples have a depth and complexity you can usually only find in things like symphonies or the Grateful Dead. Not all of it is that good, of course, but when it is, it’s really good.

I bring this up because power metal pioneers DragonForce have a new song out from their upcoming album (stay tuned for Tuesday Tracks, our new music column, for more!) and it got me back on a power metal kick. It’s a shame the sub-genre isn’t better known, so I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to these starters, including Helloween.

DragonForce — “Through the Fire and Flames”

You know this one from “Guitar Hero III,” it’s the one you could barely beat on easy. It’s the stuff of rhythm game legend. But in addition to being obscenely hard to play on a plastic guitar, it’s also an incredible song.

If you’re too young to have played “Guitar Hero III,” first off, get off my lawn. Second, you probably know one of DragonForce’s two founding guitarists from social media. Herman Li is prolific on TikTok, doing a lot of reaction videos to people attempting to or successfully playing his songs. Or in one case, the song above in “Trombone Champ,” which… yeah. Yeah. He’s a great follow, highly recommended.

Vicious Rumors — “Don’t Wait For Me”

Let’s flash back to power metal’s early days, before it was really power metal. But we’re staying in the Bay Area.

If you know about metal, you may have noticed this sounds like thrash but with prog rock vocals. You would be right, hypothetical reader who may or may not exist! Vicious Rumors are a Bay Area band that got their start in the early to mid-’80s, around the same time as Metallica and other thrash metal pioneers were getting their start and refining their sound. They definitely took a lot of inspiration from that scene, or at least got inspired by the same things, but obviously took it in a very different direction.

Why the nerds latched onto power metal and not thrash, I don’t know, but the video game and fantasy influences aren’t there yet. But that would come soon enough.

Helloween — “A Tale That Wasn’t Right”

While the Vicious Rumors song above is from 1990, the band actually started in the late ’70s and broke out in the mid ’80s. I stand by them being genre pioneers but, like I said, things weren’t solidified. It sounds like an embryonic version of what it would become.

This Helloween song, though? This sounds like the purest distilled form of power metal. And for good reason: The album this song is from, Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. 1, is considered the first true power metal album and the template everyone followed from here. This is the birth of the fantasy elements, for example, and the soaring grandiosity. Basically, a bunch of guys with dragons airbrushed on their vans heard this and went, “You know what, I want to do this too.” A genre was born. Thanks Helloween.

Best of all? It totally holds up. Good stuff.

Powerwolf — “Nighttime Rebel”

I lured you in with a song you might know, and started from the beginning. Now you may be wondering, “Is that it? Does it all sound like that?”

Well, no. There’s also Powerwolf.

Rather than being inspired mostly by fantasy novels and video games—which, don’t get me wrong, is awesome—Powerwolf is a bunch of Germans who look like a black metal band that learned the wrong style and didn’t feel like changing. There’s corpse paint, religious themes and organs (for some reason). It’s a lot darker than pretty much anyone else. But it still sounds like video game music, just a bit more, say, “Castlevania.” Definite vampire vibe.

Yes, this is pandering to fans of other branches of metal who found their way here before they make fun of me in the comments.

Exit Eden — “Separate Ways”

Finally, let’s go with a song that just came out last month. Gotta end in the present.

I have no problem with Journey. It very much sounds like its era, but it’s a good band. “Separate Ways” is a good song in the original version. But you know what makes it better? An all-woman power metal supergroup. The chorus, which was already my favorite part, is so much better in this version.

So clearly, power metal is still going strong, because stuff like this is coming out and this is amazing. Seriously, I’ve listened to this song like four times in a row. I might have a problem.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and send column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky. (He has some invites if you ask nicely).