HammerFall - Renegade






I'd rec Crimson Thunder as it is simplistic, poppy, '80s Dio-style arena heavy/power/AOR metal at its most brilliant (whose influence is possibly their most explicit, aside from Iron Maiden, who every power metal emulates because they're ****ing god damn Iron ****ing Maiden... fuck fuck fuck), but Renegade has the most songs from my Return of the Kings of Metal epic, so I'll go with that. It's also the only HammerFall album I actually, physically own, so it's the album that means the most to me -- I bought it when I was around 15/16, before I had a job with a regular paycheck, or the limitless, high-speed internet access to music which made discovering music as simple as searching Spotify, or entering *band and album name* into Google (think song-by-song, virus-baiting searches of Kazaa and Shareaza). I've listened to every track on it more times than I can count, so I'd love to hear your opinion on every single song. Especially "Way of the Warrior", which is quite possibly my favorite power metal song ever recorded, as exemplified by that chapter about the Dune sandworm.

There's a reason why I used it to express the pure, innocent love for metal that brings me back to that feeling of childlike wonder at listening to heavy metal as a young teen, in love with every metal album I could find, almost regardless of quality. HammerFall is the only band -- metal or otherwise -- who can make me tear up on command. Cheesy as they may be, they capture an emotional love for metal that even Manowar can't quite evoke. Even if all of their albums sound alike, I love them for their nearly unrivaled passion and for metal, and they just bring back that feeling of innocent wonder, when everything was new and magical.

Like I said, they make me cry, even occasionally weep (just a little bit) -- as in getting physically choked up and misty-eyed and intensely passionate -- in a way that any more serious-minded band simply can't, no matter how expressive or emotionally relevant they might be. They just bring me back to that truly and unironically reverential place when music was new and magical and transformative to me, somehow even more than Metallica and Megadeth and Slayer and Iron Maiden and Saxon do, though those bands were my gateway to the form of music that has and likely always will evoke that sense of love of music in a way that no other genre ever will, no matter how much I might love, love, love it. HammerFall are for some reason just an expression of my love for music in a way that no other band can come close to. Again, even more than Manowar, who are the other band who captures that poignancy like not two other bands.

It's also the HammerFall album that's right in the middle of their weedly PM phase and their anthemic, arena phase, so it's probably their most representative album (their third), even if it's not quite as revered as their first two, or as mindlessly catchy as their fourth, Crimson Thunder (relatively speaking of course, as it's anthemic as all ****ing ****, just like all of their classic albums.) If you love this album as much as I think you will (should) then I'd highly, highly, highly recommend all four of their first albums.

Every one of their albums is really a celebration of 80s metal in the vein of Maiden, Priest, Dio, and Accept. From the stories I've heard the mastermind behind the band -- Oscar Dronjak, as in the second-in-command guy featured in Return of the Kings of Metal as the knightly masturbationist (think chapter 2) who speaks in quasi-courtly, high fantasy literature language -- he tried as hard as he could to emulate the production of Accept's Restless and Wild due to his love for "metal for metal's sake". HammerFall are less a band attempting to move the genres of heavy and power metal forward as they are trying to capture the magic of classic heavy metal as a form of worship and reverence for their influences as a tribute to all that is ****ing metal. I think of them in the same kind of mindset as Manowar, trying to exemplify the metal mindset and lifestyle to the Nth degree, regardless of how cheesy and myopic they might sound.

HammerFall kind of sound the same regardless of what album you listen to, so it's slightly pointless to choose between their four truly classic albums (though they've released no truly bad albums, with the possibly exception of Infected), but I just dig Renegade more than all of their others just because I've listened to it over and over and over again. I kind of see HammerFall as the kind of band that you can just listen to one album and appreciate them just as well as if you listen to any other album. And assuming you've played their Youtube songs while reading my Return of the Kings of Metal story then you'd probably appreciate it the most if for no other reason than familiarity and nostalgia. But "The Way of the Warrior" is one of my favorite songs of all time, so, there is that. Go back and read that chapter to know just how much the song means to me...

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