Now I'm even more confused as to what to post since now people aren't even focusing on what they were focusing on when the thread started. Haven't gotten an actual definitive answer as to what Mic is looking for either. So here's a website that gives you some bands since I legit don't know what to post here.

https://www.spirit-of-metal.com/en/style/Melodic_Metal

Not that Psychotic Waltz aren't awesome but what do they do that all other melodic metal doesn't?

Hard to say but they are really pretty much the only non-extreme metal band I listen to.
Buddy Lackey's fantastic and non-cheesy vocals are a big plus.

Cool, but not exactly non-cheesy.

Pretty non cheesy for that style though.

Ja.

And the music is so savage and cool that how the **** can you hate, you Slav scum?

I don't hate, it is cool.

Melodic metal isn't extreme metal and it isn't the middle ground of much of thrash. Power metal, trad metal, symphonic metal, melodic death metal, and the lighter side of thrash are melodic metal. You all know exactly what it is so stop being elitist ***gots pretending to not even know how to interact with the plebs.

Congrats on understanding the idea by reposting my easy to understand post.

people seem confused

You and Frownland seem confused.

Maybe we should call it karaoke metal instead.

Mondo Frownbungle

Oviraptors know what melodic metal is. They think it's eggcellent.

Wayne Barlowe again, I love that guy!

Armored Saint - March of the Saints

Pretty good. Based on this song, I'm not sure if I would love this album, but this is not bad at all. The solo had all sorts of old school cool going for it.


Metal Church - Hanging In The Balance[Full Album]

I know that I've listened to Metal Church albums that I thought were quite good, but this one is sort of half-and-half.
80's heavy metal bands didn't always handle the transition into a more "90's" sensibility super gracefully. This album seems to be an example of that trend.
The cover makes it looks a lot worse than it is, but I'm still not really sold. Like I said, I know better than to judge the band on this album alone.
For the record, I did listen to the whole damn thing.


Armored Saint - Symbol of Salvation[Full Album]

Honestly a little more glam metal in it's vibe than I'd prefer, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Good, solid metal!
I like the flamboyant guitar work and twin guitar harmonies a lot. I also liked that the singer had a slighly more "grunge" type of vocal approach than 80's metal bands would usually have.
This is a 90's album for this band and the singer has a noticeable touch of Chris Cornell about his delivery. This helps give the band some character, along with their particular brand
of guitar pyrotechnics.

I'm also getting Tony Martin era Black Sabbath vibes. Mostly due to the voice and singing style of the vocalist (he gets a bit bluesey at times), but also a little bit because of a few
of the vocal melodies. I don't consider this a bad thing. Black Sabbath's "Eternal Idol" was a good album and you need to listen to it again if you think that's crazy talk.

Nerdy side note: One of the tracks starts with a bassline that sounds like a particular track from the soundtrack of the original Wolfenstein 3D game. It was very common for game soundtrack
composers back then to be absolutely shameless in stealing from the artists that they liked and it is also common knowledge that the Doom soundtrack ripped off several tracks from
- among others - Slayer and Morgana Lefay (might be misremembering that last one, but point is there were more metal bands than Slayer being ripped off in that game).
Further bolstering my theory that the Wolfenstein 3D composer ripped off Armored Saint is of course that Armored Saint is metal, from 1991, and Wolfenstein is made by the team that
made Doom... and is from 1992. Not saying I'm right. I'm just saying that it seems quite possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfle0dYTKKc

^Should be interesting. I have no idea what the **** that is!

They were a Chicago based band that I used to listen to. They only put out 2 albums, and I haven't heard the other one yet from '99. I used to hang with the band Zoetrope and the singer, who I'm still good friends with, just reminded me about that album last week. Him and the rest of the band members were all friends with the Slauter guys. Been meaning to post it up here since it fits the criteria.

*cough*

Nevermore is aight

Death Angel - Act III 5."Discontinued"

Good pick. I had honestly dismissed this band as just being another faceless modern thrash metal band out of a thousand. This is way more interesting than anything I must have ever heard from the band. Reminds me of some of the proggier stuff Flotsam & Jetsam did in the 90's. Like for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxVOnNVhxwY<--- My favorite song from that band, btw.

If you've got any other recs for this band, then I'm all ears.


Queensrÿche - Neue Regel


WARNING, major unedited ramble incoming. Love it or leave it!:

I've known about this band for years and years. They're prog metal giants, so how could I not? But, while I've given them a listen here and there, I've never really connected with their music. Part of that is because of Tate going by that particular "yelping" style of singing that several prog and thrash band vocalists did back then.
Like with most things, there's exceptions. For the second time in this thread, I want to bring up Flotsam & Jetsam. I quite dig the album where this song is from
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxVOnNVhxwY), despite the vocalist going for that exact style of singing.

If I may be allowed to go on a tangent here, that specific vocal style was always a bit weird to me. I generally like singersto be credibly expressing some real,
relatable emotions or states of mind.
This Geoff Tate style "yelping" thing is... a bit odd to say the least. It seemed to downright dominate some avenues of metal at a certain point in time, but I never really connected with it. James Labrie (of Dream Theater fame) is the main bad guy in this story, since he took this vocal style to an extreme, where absolutely NO LINE HE EVER SUNG could possibly register as being truly "felt". He always comes off as being fake to the maximum possible degree. I'm wise to the fact that most vocalists have to pretend to some degree, but that's not really the issue. I'm okay with knowing that the singer is acting, but I want that acting to be convincing. That's the difference.
To me, Tate and his luminaries are B movie actors, acting in films that could benefit from something more real (or at least a convincing lie (which is how actress Juliette Lewis once descdribed acting in an interview: It's not hard. You just have to lie.)) Now, for sure, B-movie acting can be great. I ****ing adore Brad Dourif in the cult movie classic Spontaneous Combustion. That's B-movie acting, but with a heavy load of energy and charisma. Geoff Tate doesn't quite pull that off.
He's not an active detriment to this music, but apart from having good vocal range, I'm not really sure why he's so adored by prog metal heads. He's better than James LaBrie.
Let's leave it at that.

Cool riffs, nice melodic progressions. Good stuff. I'd like to check out more from this album. I'll probably just listen to the whole thing. It's good, even if I don't love the Tate.


Queensrÿche - Empire lyrics

Yeah. See above. Good stuff.


Eyes Of A Stranger- Queensryche

Not the first time I'm hearing this, but the first time I'm really getting into it. I feel like I've been ignoring this band completely unwarranted. Shameful. The Tate is what it is, but this is basically quite good music.

I'm taking these strictly chronologically. Your pick is either next or quite close.

That's cool. What kind of band is Zoetrope?

Ayreon - Welcome To The New Dimension (Into The Electric Castle) 1998

The track Zhanteimi chose here is basically an intro with some synths and a narrator. Doesn't do a lot for me to be honest.
Bit of a strange choice (accidental?), so I went ahead and picked a random track from the same album:

Ayreon - Isis And Osiris (Into The Electric Castle) 1998

Ayreon pretty much always has a bunch of vocalists guesting as various characters in these cheesy scifi-prog-concept-album-stories. Anneke Van Giersbergen figures fairly prominently in this song, so that automatically makes me like it more than I otherwise would have, but overall, it's not exactly up my alley. There's just something about how Ayreon usually approaches the telling of these stories that is, frankly, dorky as ****. If you've got a strong musical stomach, try listening to the entirety of that Dream Theater album named "The Astonishing".
Couldn't do it? Well, I thought so. This Ayreon album isn't quite like that, but it's the same problems that plague it, just not to the same extent. There's some legit good riffs and musical themes peppered around. I like this better than other things I've heard by Ayreon. It's just not really my thing. I don't hate it. At least it's got a dash of Giersbergen <3, and the production is pretty good. I like how the bass has some good presence and weight to it. Some of the guitar sounds and keyboard sounds play together quite well too.
Also, **** Russell Allen.

Thrash Metal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope_(band)

Sorry, didn't notice that you handle it that way.

Fair enough. Just remember that, especially on Rage For Order, Tate is expressing more abstract ideas about mankind's evolving relationship with technology. It's a reoccurring theme throughout the album and so when he sings he takes on a role similar to a prophet. I like Flotsam & Jetsam too, but as you mentioned they're very similar at times to the prog-metal approach that QR cultivated, so I'm not sure what they're doing different that you like more. Glad you generally enjoyed things overall though. :thumb:

Psychotic Waltz - Butterfly

I feel like this is basically Nevermore for people who don't like Nevermore. Which means it's for me, sincee I think Nevermore is kinda meh.
This just seems more exciting and less overbearingly melodramatic. I also feel like the guitar playing has comparatively more purpose and less widdly-widdly-wee.

Of course I'm being simplistic here, as it doesn't sound that much like Nevermore, but there are a few ways in which I think Psychotic Waltz seems like a similar band.
Cool rhythm section btw. This becomes obvious when listening through the whole thing.
Seems like they probably wont fall in the trap of being too one note. There's several kinds of dynamism to this particular track.

Definitely a band I'd like to hear more of.

I like several things with Anneke Van Giersbergen, including the Gathering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi6J4f3MjTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX9nHYj95gw

Mammatus - Dragon of the Deep Part Three (Excellent Swordfight)

Never heard about these guys before. Is it really metal though? I know it gets kinda muddy when you go back to the genesis years for the genre, but my personal metal-o-meter wouldn't be moving at all if no one had told me it was metal. I Googled the band and see that they formed in 2005. Damn convincing retro artwork and music style/production. Almost had me fooled. Which shows you how little I've been listening to proto-metal, probably.

Either way, I gave it a few listens. Maybe a bit too stoned for my tastes at times, but it's pretty good. I liked some of the grooves and there's a lot of neat things going on in terms of how everything sounds. I've checked out loads of modern metal bands with a retro style. This band has more personality than the vast majority of them. When the singer finally comes in during this lengthy track, I felt reminded of anotehr "modern retro metal band". Haven't listened to them in a few years, but the obvious Ozzy-aping made me think of Count Raven.
To a lesser degree, maybe Pagan Altar. They're both more directly Sabbath inspired though. This band feels more well rounded than most bands who just rip off one aspect of another band.
Now that I think of it, I should really listen to Count Raven and Pagan Altar again. It's been years! Maybe I'll like them better now.
If anyone here likes them, let me know!


Flotsam and Jetsam - I Live You Die

Bungle posted this one. Didn't work in my territory, so I had to find another version. This one is remastered, but I don't know what difference it makes.
I've owned the Flotsam and Jetsam album "When The Storm Comes Down" for years, but for some reason, I never went out of my way to get any other albums.
I've listened to the album this rec is from ("No Place For Disgrace") before on YT in the past, but never really had that moment where I felt impressed.
The thing is, I'm just not more of a thrash metal guy at the end of the day. This is pretty allright, but I prefer how the other album I mentioned is a bit more proggy and
less thrashy. I don't know. I feel torn. This seems like good music, but I just feel so much like this particular boat has sailed for me in some way.

A few others came to mind for this thread recently.



These guys have lost their edge over the years, but in the late 80's and early 90's they were a force to be reckoned with in melodic metal.




Radakka were a weird band who formed in the mid 90's in Chicago who had elements of progressive metal, funk, thrash and some groove metal. Malice And Tranquility is a hidden gem IMO. Might be up your alley if you like the Flotsam & Jetsam's proggier side.

Dude wtf. The video hadn't loaded and I was reading this and Pretty Maids popped into my head. Good ****.

Böc
 

Does Blue Öyster Cult count as heavy metal?

BÖC were making melodic heavy music way back in the early 1970s.