Nerd Metal Fridays

Nerd Metal Fridays – DragonForce

I like these guys way more than they probably deserve. It’s the combination of old-school speed metal virtuosity, soaring melody, clean vocals, and really, really beautiful men (I’m looking at you, Herman Li) that just plain makes me happy whenever I listen to these London-based fantasy rockers (OK, mostly it’s the beautiful men, I’m married, […]

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Nerd Metal Fridays: Kamelot

So, I promised you Americans this week and with Florida’s Kamelot, I deliver (well, mostly, lead singer Tommy Karevik is a Swede).  They combine extremely melodic tunes with super clean vocals (both from current lead  Tommy and previous singer Roy Khan) and full orchestration for a symphonic style that’s distinctively their own. And they did […]

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Nerd Metal Fridays: Blind Guardian

Going old-school today with Germany’s Blind Guardian. For over 30 years they’ve been turning high-concept ideas into heavy-duty tunes and helping to define what today’s artists mean when they talk symphonic metal. Nerdy? Well they managed to make an entire concept album out of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (Nightfall in Middle-Earth). If unironic songs about hobbits, […]

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Nerd Metal Fridays: Hammerfall

So after a crazy week here, I’ll leave you with some crazy music.  While HammerFall isn’t necessarily one of my favorites, they can certainly be bombastic fun if you’re in the right mood (they can’t swing a beat to save their lives though, making their cover of Detroit Rock City the most wrong-footed I’ve ever […]

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Nerd Metal Fridays: Sabaton

Like all native Virginians I’m a bit of a history wonk. Add to that my military background and love of loud music and it was inevitable that these guys would eventually pop up on my radar. Because history metal is awesome! Interestingly, I nearly rejected Sabaton entirely on first listen. I was out running the […]

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Stuff I Like: Van Canto

Boy, does this ever fall firmly into the “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” file. Many, many moons ago I was a young voice major with two obsessions, early polyphonic a capella and theatrical metal. It never once occurred to me to combine the two into something epic. Van Canto is a German […]

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Stuff I Like: Korpiklaani

I suspect part 2 of the Wonder Woman series may be a day or two late due to the vagaries of this ‘real life’ stuff, so a little something fun to hold y’all a couple of days. You just can’t not love a Finnish folk metal band whose best known songs are odes to drinking. […]

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