I personally found Edge of Thorns unlistenable. I was advised against buying it and should have listened.

Having my first session with Mysterium right now! Not very far in but I absolutely love what Neudi is doing on Stand Your Ground. Nothing fancy, just finally an appropriately anxious style to match the faster riffs.

Man, I really don't care for Hellroadie trying to find his own style. Sing like Shark.

Mysterium and The Calling both really got ahold of me. I understand if it's just his personal preference but Mark sounds great on the title track and I think he could have handled every song. It's not like there were any shrieking histrionics or anything. The Calling surprised me, first for sounding a bit like Tangerine Dream touring a dungeon, and also how fast it went by.

Don't worry, child. Soon you'll develop something we call "good musical taste" and see the error of your ways.

Oh! And more people should listen to Zed Yago's Pilgrimage.

What, Jonpo had amazing taste, how dare ya!

Am I the only one who thinks that Edge of Thorns is a massively divisive album?

I think it rocks, by the way.

I'm not going to lie, that got under my skin. I don't know this guy enough to know if he was joking or actually being that much of a dismissive cunt.

Haha, my sentiments exactly, though I enjoyed the Unisonic well enough...frankly his voice hasn't changed much and I enjoy it OK, but I don't worship it much at all. Deris is the better singer by far.

And I love Edge of Thorns when I'm in the mood. It's not that metal except for a few songs, but I think it's a great piece of rock music, and probably their most complete album. I just love the variety on there, ballads, rockers, classical interludes and bluesy pieces, and Zak Stevens never sounded even close to that good ever again. Criss Oliva rules the whole thing though.

It's just a collection of utterly pedestrian, boring commercial hard rock with some good solos from place to place. I do not get the infatuation with it; it's mediocre at its best moments and dreadful at its worst (All That I Bleed? Shoot me now, please).

My obligatory grumpy old man "Savatage were never that good" post goes right about here!

Although "Holocaust" is a rad track.

Only The Dungeons Are Calling is real.

Sirens/The Dungeons are Calling are great, better than Hall of the Mountain King. I do like Edge of Thorns quite a bit, especially the second half.

Lately I've been digging stuff like Riot's Thundersteel, Savatage's The Hall of the Mountain King, Jag Panzer's Ample destruction, Satan's Court in the Act. I've been eating this stuff up a whole lot lately. I'm looking for more stuff like this. That pure metal kind of awesomeness.

For strong heavy/power in that vein, check out Overlorde's Return of the Snow Giant, Liege Lord's first three albums, Metal Church's first two, Omen's first three, Elixir's Son of Odin, etc. I can give you some more recs after you've chewed on that a bit.

Thanks! It will take me a helluva long time to look through those. This should be plenty.

Yeah seconding Liege Lord, and Omen is pretty much the greatest band ever. Also Vicious Rumors, Attacker, Brocas Helm, Cauldron Born...ahh, too many to name, really.

Yeah, that's definitely enough lol. I like listening to this stuff at leaser. It'd defeat the purpose to cram in a ton of albums at once.

It's not bad, but it suffers from being mid-paced... all the fucking time. C'mon don't give me classic 1980s metal without classic 1980s up-tempo numbers. 'Black Bone Song' is pretty fun, though, I guess. They're like Warlock meets Running Wild. But with all too much of Warlock's inability to deliver a consistently good album, hehe.

Don't let him get to ya'. Just another asshole hiding behind a monitor that shouldn't be paid attention to. What kind of jackass uses a Kansas song for a screen name on a metal site anyway?

...you're talking about this guy, right?

Seriously though, I like Edge of Thorns a lot and I can see why it might not be someone's cup of tea. It's just the utter disdain some people have for it baffles me. Then again, I like (early) Whitesnake and Life Among the Ruins, so maybe I just have bad taste.

Yeah. I didn't hate Unisonic either. It was listenable, and a few tracks stood out for me. And yeah. Kiske hasn't changed all that much. It's pretty much just that vibrato he has adapted over the years, and it sounds hilarious as hell on certain moments.

It's a coincidence that we're starting to talk about Edge of Thorns now. I just recently listened through the whole thing for the first time. I didn't think it was amazing, but I didn't think it was a bad album either. I do believe it's a grower, and I would like to spin it again soon. It's just that I have so much other stuff to listen to, so I don't even know if it will happen. We're just gonna have to see what happens.

Kiske always did and still does sing circles around Deris. I can absolutely understand "Deris is my favorite singer", he does have an interesting and endearing style and I can see how some may prefer it to Kiske's, but "Deris is the better singer" is only true in his fans' dreams. Deris himself more or less acknowledges that fact.

I like Edge of Thorns quite a bit. Unlike a certain overhyped mid-80s album, it's not trying to be Sirens, part 2.

Kiske is great from a purely technical standpoint, but he lacks the charisma and passion that was/is easily palpable in both Hansen's and Deris' voice. I like him, but nowadays he tends to fall a bit too flat for me most of the time.

As for Edge of Thorns? I think it's great. It has some of the best songs the band has ever written, and it's such a gracefully arranged and composed album..... Hell, the only thing that I can say against it is that it probably has too many ballads, and that doesn't bother me unless I'm not in the mood for something as mellow as EOT.

Yeah I can't stand him at all anymore. I'd still like to enjoy some of the original Keeper albums, but I seriously think out of all the wrong on those two HE is the worst part. He just sounds completely lifeless.

Yeah, he's basically Rage for Order era Geoff Tate sans all the charm and interesting melodies. The fact that he's also a hypocritical douchebag doesn't help him.

I think his vocals fit perfectly for the Keepers kind of stuff from a technical point of view, however I agree that he sounds just boring and dull. Some vocalists from that era (e.g Ray Alder, John Arch and Geoff Tate) with the same kind of vocal style sounded way better.

Whoooooo, Desolation Angels debut is even better than I had hoped for. It's hard to believe this was released in 86...so much about it harkens back to 76-79. I love the caveman aloofness to the riffs. Surprisingly articulate leads/solos given that.

They don't sound anything like Legend (UK) but they both illicit that "we're making metal by mistake" kind of primordial feeling. Post-proto?

I see where you guys are coming from, but to me Kiske's performance on the Keepers, especially on part II, remains one of the highest points of all of power metal. Even a song like the title track, which I condemn for its Santa chorus, sends chills down my spine to this day for the sheer power and majesty of his performance alone. Well, to each his own.

Never even heard of Desolation Angels. Thanks, Jonpo! This sounds interesting.

You and your Santa choruses, Legend

I'd like to know though..... How did you come up with such a term?

Damn, the first Hammers of Misfortune album is really, really good.

Kiske is technically better and I have no doubt his influence on the genre, and I even really enjoy him on a lot of things...but Deris on The Dark Ride alone is just so much better for me personally. I love the odd nuances and stylistic choices he makes, and how he completely throws himself into every performance and can sound happy on one track and dark and menacing on the next. On "Salvation" he proves he can power out a song without going super high, and shows a great restraint and subtlety with every line, and on "The Departed" and the title track, as well as others like "I Live For Your Pain," he just goes all out dramatic and theatrical. Personally Kiske was never at that height for me - he had the great range and the metal wail and he could sing some good choruses, but yeah, just not the dramatic metal thespian that Deris can be when he's really giving it his all.

Kiske sucks, and doesn't belong in a metal band at all. His post-Helloween anti-metal comments just make him that much more delicious to hate, too. Like it feels bad to look at what Geoff Tate is today and compare that to how great he used to be in the early days of Queensryche, but Kiske was always a big piece of shit. Unisonic was a big piece of shit too, even compared to the Keepers albums. At least they had some good Kai Hansen riffs/solos.

Damn Failsafe, talking about Kiske gets you on fire

I've never even heard of Hammers of Misfortune. Should I have? :{

Well, for many years, I was very very big on EuroPM in general and Helloween/Gamma Ray in particular, but there was always an insane number of almost fantastic songs that I felt were horribly spoiled somehow. At some point, I just noticed the recurring issue, and its name came to me almost naturally. Here's a little experiment: listen to this track, but only up to the 1'54'' mark (it's vital, you must pause it at that exact point); are you there? Good. Now, here's your goddman chorus. See? Just like "Guardians" and all the others that followed suit. Now go back to this beauty and let's all be thankful the gods gave us USPM.

@Empyreal: I respect that. At his best, Deris is as great as SL Coe, which certainly deserves praise. I just feel Kiske's legacy is untouchable, but the two are very different.

@failsafeman: Come on, since when does being a dick, even an anti-metal one, cancel out the greatness someone offered in the past? No matter how much Tate deserves to choke on his own ego right now, "Queen of the Reich" stands unscathed. To me, so does "March of Time".

I never said it canceled out the greatness. I meant it's hard to see someone whose early career I have so much respect for pissing all over their legacy. Kiske did the same thing...except I think his legacy sucks, so it makes me feel good instead of bad.

Yes. Noob, go back to your anime!

Check out The August Engine to start.

I've picked up an overwhelming amount of stellar albums in the last several months (mostly thanks to SKR), a lot of which I'm still digesting, but I have to say nothing has grabbed me and got it's claws as deep as those weirdo fucking brits Deep Switch. I guess most of the bands I really treasure tend to be quirky but these guys are what I might even call flamboyant. Still, I can't get enough. They sound like Mercyful Fate in drag spiraling down a K-hole.

Also, seriously, check out Desolation Angels debut if you haven't yet.

Yeah, the Desolation Angels debut is super cool. They're one of those rare bands that can write a riff that can carry a song for like 5 minutes, and the deep manly vocals are awesome too. And that atmosphere!! To be honest, I'd say Desolation Angels are probably the biggest "hidden gem" of NWOBHM. Hardly anyone seems to mention them, yet they actually have a pretty substantial body of work, much of which is really, really good.

I pretty much just knew them as "That obscure NWOBHM band with perfect aesthetics whose boxset I can't afford" until Tim restocked their s/t. I had high hopes from your review (Sabbath-heavy NWOBHM, c'mon!) but even those were smashed. It's still really new to me so I can only say so much but when I realized they had a song called Evil Possessor I knew we were going to be fast friends. Wonderful decayed guitar sound, and yeah those manly vocals really stand out from the pack (supposed pack...there wasn't much of one left by '86 I guess).

I like Kiske for what he did. And let's not kid ourselves here, all he did was wail. He wasn't exactly the most varied singer on the Keeper albums. I think he did reasonably well but the complete lack of grit in his voice always bothered me. He can't really carry a whole album on his own, a fact that him sounding very well utilized in Avantasia showcases.

Way too much Kiske/Helloween discussion in here. Let's get back to real metal

Like how good Enforcer's new one is.

Yeah. I was never impressed with Kiske's vocal performance. Not when I heard the Keepers albums, and certainly not the new stuff. It's listenable, and fun to put on once in a while, but I don't think he's nearly as good as some say he is. Tate is a million times better, and that's coming from someone who hasn't even listened all that much to Queensryche.

One thing I could use to compare Kiske and Deris is the precision. When Deris wants to hit a note (let's say a hig hone), he goes for it, and hits precisely where he wants to. Kiske however, uses some weird and weak sounding falsetto that doesn't even make the shivers flow when he hits a high note, and nowdays, it's all overshadowed by that god awful vibrato of his.

This is of course only my opinion, but I would say there's some facts to it.