Who Invented Power Metal? 🌈 (Metal Documentary)

Rainbow, most definitely had a lot of influence, but probably the very first "proper" power metal band as we know the definition now was Helloween.

I have to drop this Hansen quote here as I just read it: We heard Queensryche, the first album that they did, and we thought wow that would be cool to have a singer like that I still think Power metal started with Rainbow, but Queensryche surely deserves some credit too.

Helloween. Hands down. Nobody sounded like them when the Keeper albums came out. To me all the previous were just heavy metal / speed metal ( although Running Wild was almost as distinct as the pumpkins) Manowar did sound different with a more bombastic marching style... But imo the Barbarians were a different heavy metal band. Blind Guardian was once called Elf metal by one of my friends...

Glad you've mentioned Ogre Battle and The Sails of Charon!!

Ruthless, thanks for this series. You've done it the best way possible I think. Many other series have 95% yacking and seconds of clips illustrating the theme, you've gone the opposite route and let the music speak after a few well-chosen summarising comments. Thanx for getting it right!

I'd say Helloween and Manowar are the most influential. Where Helloween laid the groundwork for EU power metal, Manowar paved the way for what we now know as epic and viking metal. I also think Manowar is criminally underrated and wrongfully ridiculed today, but their contribution is enormous.

Power Metal is my most favorite metal subgenre of all. Great musicianship, powerful vocals, soaring choruses, epic feel, it's lyrical themes like they're telling stories (be it fantasy, sci fi, history, various themes), many things that makes it amazing and gives power, majesty, magic and might. I like playing a number of RPGs and like some fantasy series and animes, so this is one of the reasons I'm drawn to it.

I think malmsteen deserves a mention here. The Trilogy-album has lots of the elements later being defined as power metal.

I think people tend to confuse a little bit of power metal with epic metal, and for me they are different styles. In the early 1980s, bands considered "Power Metal" were bands like Anvil and Exciter, and it had nothing to do with the lyric themes, but with the rhythm of the drums that was faster than tractional metal, so the first factor to define a band as "Power Metal" was the speed of their songs, then Iron Maiden-style guitar melodies were incorporated into the style, but said nothing about lyric themes. This story of power metal being characterized by lyrics about dragons, legends and epic battles came much later. I noticed that many of the songs mentioned in the video tend more to Epic than to true Power, since many of the songs mentioned in the video do not have the characteristic primal speed of power metal, so in fact several of the songs mentioned can even be inserted in what today convinced himself to call it "power metal" but I don't think that's right. Especially because musically these songs apparently show little power. Real Power Metal as a style came up with Helloween's EP in 1985, months before Walls of Jericho. Anyone who listens to this EP will find in all of its 5 tracks the rules and foundations of what was conventionally called power metal, the sound was like a mix of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, but with much more speed, and with the melodies of even more worked guitars, besides that the "heavy" of this EP compared to any Maiden or Priest album until 1985 was much bigger, almost bordering on Thrash Metal. Keeper 1 was just a "lapdening" of the raw style that already existed on the EP.

The mentioning of the song Warrior from 1977 (Riot) and the Destroyer from 1979 (Legend) was the top point of the video! I was familiar with both songs, but only recently, just around 5 years ago, from youtube.

Twilight of the gods is the resume of Power Metal in the first albun with Kiske

"Eagle Fly Free" is The Greatest Power Metal Song of All Time!!! 🤘🏼

Halloween is of course the first!!! The idea is mixing the classic harmony and singing style of Judas Priest, Rainbow and the NWOBHM (especially Iron Maiden) with Extreme Metal techniques like palm muting riffs and double bass drums.

Great 70s picks, Queen and Uriah Heep are indeed great influences to power metal and early metal in general, they also had epic lyrical themes. I'll probably ad "Emerald" by Thin Lizzy too and "caesar lxxi" by Sir Lord Baltimore.

the original sound of "power metal" and the one that started the movement of Power Metal was RAINBOW (with Dio as lead vocal) while Dio was in the band, RAINBOW kept the sound and the style they created, but once Dio left, RAINBOW was just another melodic rock band. As power metal was played in the middle of the 70s and RAINBOW was the band that put the images of dragons, dungeons, wizards and magic in the songs, after that other bands like HELLOWEEN, MANOWAR, BLIND GUARDIAN and many more carried on with the sound but really and truly RAINBOW created the sound of power metal.

OSTROGOTH from Belgium also had a massive influence on power metal with early 80's tracks like Full Moon's Eyes, Sign Of Life, Halloween etc....Blind Guardian for example has the FME album in their 'relaxing corner' of the studio to this day for when they need inspiration, Michael Amott of Arch Enemy owns all the albums on vinyl, James Hetfield (although not power metal) is a huge OG nut and even made his own T-shirt 😉

I am just happy that you mentioned also Uriah Heep.

The first album by Europe (1983) with songs like "In the future to come" should be noted. I think:D

Conclusions : Lyrical influence : Wishbone Ash, Ulriah Heep, (early) Queen, Legend. Musical influence : Iron Maiden, Heavy Load, Manowar, Warlord, Judas Priest. The band who Define It : Helloween The first band who create it : Riot & Rainbow

Man my metal listening list has just doubled on the past 30 mins after watching this video! Thanks for the level of depth you went into and for showing me so many bands that I'd never heard of!!!