Originally Posted by Trollheart

I've of course not heard all PM bands, nor even all the major ones, but the ones I have heard do unfortunately tend to sound quite interchangeable. I guess a good test would be to take a bunch of them - Stratovarius, Helloween, Rhapsody of Fire, whatever you're having yourself - and make a playlist, and then see if you can identify who is who, and see if any are different. Ideally, the thing would be to use songs you're not familiar with. I feel, accents and stuff aside, it would be hard to tell them apart.