His vocals were allright in the beginning, but then took a turn for supreme gayness. If these are your favourite vocals, you puzzle me.

They're definitely up there. Not sure what's so "gay" about them, I found them ridiculously awesome.

You know how sometimes you can use the term "over the top" as a compliment? Well, this isn't one of those occasions. Guy sounds like a cartoon mouse.

Okay, dunno if I was drunk when I heard it or I'm just a weirdo, but I find it pretty cool.

EDIT: Listened to it again, apparently I was drunk. My bad, guys.

So, Crescent Shield are done. They're going to release what material they have with Grant singing on it (re-recording guitar parts and whatnot), and that'll be it. Damn. There's a demo of one of the songs that'll be released up on their website right now, it's pretty cool.

In better news, Vicious Rumors say that there will be details for a new release "soon."

Thanks for the Pagan's Mind recommendations fellas!

Probably the right thing for Crescent Shield to do. Just hope they start another band up and don't abandon making music.

Yeah, best they move on I'd say. Pretty cool we're getting one more album for the most part.

JUST checking out Crescent Shield, and loving it so far. The speedy, Iron Maiden-esque melodies and riffs are sweet as hell, and this Grant guy surely had a distinctive voice. Sorry to hear he just passed away.

I'm wondering: are Pagan's Mind any good? What do they sound like?

Pagan's Mind (especially during the Celestial Entrance era) have quite a bit of Dream Theater influence, although they don't emphasize instrumental virtuosity nearly as much (I could count in one hand how many long winded instrumental passages they have), focusing instead on catchy yet surprisingly complex songwriting and power metal-esque hooks. I in particular like to highlight the way they use keyboards; not so much as an active instrument the way, say, most Europower or prog bands employ them, but more as a means to creat textures and atmospheres. Don't get me wrong though; they're extremely capable players.

PS: An exception to the "catchy yet surprisingly complex songwriting" bit I said up there is their last record, Heavenly Ecstasy, which is much more to the point and, let's say, "rocking" than the rest of their disco. Still a fun album though.

Dude. Just go to youtube and sample a few songs or something. Asking what a band sounds like will never be as good as actually just randomly sampling their stuff.

So, good news from Crescent Shield, they apparently managed to record 8 new songs with Michael Grant before he passed away, which they will be compiling into a final album after re-recording the instrumental parts (and the vocals of the 8th song with a guest singer, as they were apparently fucked up during recording). They have one song up on their website, and it sounds quite good.

http://www.crescentshield.com/296/micha ... -new-song/

It's nice to know that the work Michael Grant put into writing those songs won't go to waste, and it will be a fitting epitaph to Crescent Shield (which is breaking up after its release) and of course Grant himself.

Flags of Thunder is sounding pretty neat. As said in the article though, it's meaning is sadly ironic now..... Will eagerly await for the release of the new album. For the moment, I'll listen to their other two records. R.I.P. Mr. Grant

Oblarg already covered this a few posts above.

But yes, excellent news. That's straight up enough material for a full new album, so that's awesome.

Ah, you're right, I missed it in the Pagan Mind circlejerk. C'mon guys, leave that crappy Euro power/prog aside and let's get back to the USPM circlejerk!

Just curious, would the song "The Sentinel" by Judas Priest qualify as Speed Metal?

Don't you tell me what to do!

You know, I was all ready to call you wrong, but as I listened to it again I realized the riffs are actually very much the template speed metal would go on to use. Judas Priest wrote quite a few proto-speed songs back then, like "Freewheel Burning" (and of course later wrote some actual speed metal songs, like "Painkiller"), but I guess I just never thought of "The Sentinel" as one of them.

Holy shit, I'm loving this vocalist, and the music is just as great. I just downloaded the demo and it's borderline mind-blowing. Really long, prog-oriented songs but fully energetic and the production is excellent. I only see Fates Warning t-shirts in the photos and videos of this band; no surprise that they're great. Thanks for posting this.

Yeah I liked it too. I didn't find the singer all that annoying. A little over the top and trying very much to be the next Geoff Tate but basicly a good delivery.

Been listening to this album a ton lately and I'm just gonna say "The Sentinel" is one of their best songs ever.

CONDEMNED TO HEEEEEELL

Indeed "The Sentinel" is one of the greatest Judas Priest tracks. A mini-epic if you will.

And Warlord totally rules. After re-listening to their material I find absolutely NO whiny or sappy moments. Sure there are melodic tracks but they have a desperation and a dark edge to them and they rule. Plus there are killers like "Black Mass", "Child Of The Damned", "Lucifer's Hammer" and especially "Deliver Us From Evil". They all slay!

One by one, to the swords, to the guns!
Two by two, and away we go!

I actually like Jawbreaker and The Sentinel the most off that album. They are absolute classics.

Well, I bought Celestial Entrance, along with Black Hand Inn, Port Royal and By the Hands of the Devil. It's worth mentioning that I got these as part of a deal on Amazon UK, 2 for £10 on MP3 albums. There's some good stuff there, especially happy with the Running Wild album, as the discs are nigh on impossible to get for a good price. They seem to be reissuing Gates to Purgatory, and I noticed a couple of Manilla Road albums are getting reissued as well (Open the Gates and Court of Chaos). Interesting stuff.

Edit - Seems that the Running Wild albums are missing the beginning of every track. Please avoid, hopefully I can get something sorted with Amazon. Also, the Satan's Host album has a twisted cover of Norwegian Wood on it. What the shit.

Imo, the only real speed metal song on Painkiller is Metal meltdown. It has the tremolo riffing in spades, and the necessary 4 snare hits per 16 bar sequence that, for me, separates heavy metal from speed metal. painkiller is just an upbeat metal tune with fancy, but slower than speed metal drumming. FIGHT!!!

I dunno how people can rag on albums like Defenders and Screaming for Vengeance. They still have so much unrelenting balls and red hot speed metal crunch to them with killer tracks like Jawbreaker and Sentinel.

Defenders destroys Painkiller!

Stained Class owns all!

Defenders is still my go to priest album. Still, Painkiller is enjoyable now and then. Its a shame the albums in between those two were so inconsistent. A couple bangers, a few to many duds.

I'm a guy who likes Turbo. Nah, fuck that, I LOVE Turbo.

You're right, Turbo's pretty sweet.

This is really cool, I'm glad that they got some material down before Michael's tragic passing. There was too little material with his excellent voice on it and I'm sure this will be a excellent farewell performance to a fantastic singer.

I'm currently listening to Stormwitch's debut. Funny, this guy sounds exactly like Kai Hansen during his early days. Music seems to be pretty decent.

The difference being he can sing, whereas Kai Hansen really couldn't in his early days. Also I like Stormwitch a hell of a lot more, haha.

Actually the lack of Hansen's singing ability does not really spoil early Helloween for me. It's all about the energy and the speed metal riffage. On this front it delivers and delivers in a masterful fashion. I say that out of the early German speed metal bands I only like Blind Guardian's first two and Angel Dust's first two albums more than "Walls Of Jericho".

Also the first two Hanker albums rule. Does anybody know anything that resembles "Dead Ringer"? But spare me the classics of Manilla Road and Fates Warning.

I don't think Hansen's vocals on Walls of Jericho are lacking in ability. Some of the stuff he's doing is actually quite impressive (the vocal climb into the pre chorus on Ride the Sky, numerous screams he employs). Yeah, there's quite a few bum notes, but he has the basics of a good vocalist. It's kind of cool to see the difference between his vocals on this and Land of the free. Not sure many people would agree with this, I think he's good to sometimes great on Walls, but on LotF, he's pretty much perfected.

Well, I got refunded on those albums. A bit annoying, but apparently there's reissues happening for practically all the Running Wild albums, so I can wait till then.

Land of the Free is one of my favorite German power metal albums. I don't think it ranks quite as high as Hypertrace or Running Wild's classics, but it's up there regardless. Yeah, Hansen rules on that one. The whole album is just glorious in that thoroughly goofy way that only German bands seem to be able to do.

There's probably a thousands posts in this thread of me talking about how I like Kai on WoJ. I'll leave it at that this time.


Gotta be honest I checked out the self titled track when you mentioned it and man, I just fucking love how Rob sings in the old stuff. There really is a huge difference. He's consistently amazing, but his style has kind of changed throughout. Seems way more versatile in the old stuff... due to his younger age and higher ability I'd guess.

Stained Class is certainly a record that has a lot going for it. Amongst the metal elite it's very commonly regarded as "the best" record. I mean, it's way up there for me, maybe even my favourite, but it's pretty tough picking from Priest's relatively flawless (barring Nostradamus, Ripper-era) catalogue.

Yeah, it's tough to choose for sure. If I had to pick just one, though, I'd go with either Unleashed in the East or Sad Wings of Vengeance. Their 70s stuff was a lot more serious, but the 80s material was just so goddamn catchy and fun.

I wish Sad Wings Of Vengeance was actually a thing...