I am a HUGE fan of Iron Maiden. I totally love the way they blend metal with good melody into their music. I also love the fact that Bruce Dickinson has such an awesome, almost operatic voice. So. . . I'm looking for new stuff that includes some melody and a frontman who can actually sing and not just scream. . . I've stumbled across Five Finger Death Punch and they seem interesting probably too much screamo for me. . . anyone have some recommendations?
From the other music thread I mentioned: Five Finger Death Punch Bullet For My Valentine All That Remains Slipknot http://www.xoohq.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9890 These bands might be too hard for your tastes so I'll try to come up with some others. While I would not consider my self an Judas Priest fan the newest cd (Nostradamus) is very good. So if for some reason you don't have that one, get it. Red is an amazing band. I own both "End of Silence" and "Innocence and Instinct" Both albums are very good start to finish. Vocals won't be like Iron Maiden, but it does have that sort of Rock Symphony feel that I got from the latest Iron Maiden album. Red - Death of Me For music I can not define you could check out Fair To Midland.
Breaking Benjamin. They're one of the few bands out there that don't bank on guitar riffs, being loud and screming these days (well, that aren't country or pop or whatever). I second All That Remains, although that is fairly scream-ish (or whatever), Bullet for My Valentine is quite emo, but not bad (I've only heard a few songs). I do NOT agree with Dragonforce. The guitarist relies solely on power chords, and most of their stuff, IMO, just sounds bad. They do have a couple of really good songs though, its just surrounded by crap.
a band I rediscovered recently was Fates Warning. I had a couple of their albums from the early 80's but found that they have made music through '04. not the dual guitar awesomeness of IM, but the vocalist is bruce-like, which I think is important. I've heard a couple bands that do the dual guitar-ness like IM, but weak / soft vocalists make the music feel like whiskey-dick. not hard enough to get busy, but too soft to ignore. and you probably wont get your rocks off. maybe we should all collaborate and make a list of some of the good and great 80's / 90's metal bands that are still kicking so that we can rediscover some of their music, as very few of the newer bands do it for me. I will say that breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, Alter bridge are some more recent bands really do it for me, they seem to be a mix of grung and metal. Alter bridge is probably my favorite of the three. good lyrics, meaningful, yet they never stop pounding with the guitars. my brother who is a music producer went to the concert with me, and while not into the metal / rock like I am, he left the show wanting to go back to playing drums and rocking the sh!te out of them. if you haven't explored them yet, listen to em, they are good musicians and know their craft fairly well.
Wait! Iron Maiden has a new album? Nostradamus!? Are you sure that's right - can't find any mention of it anywhere. . .
Let's see... decent metal bands I've stumbled upon... Elvenking (Folk Metal, note The Scythe Album is very different from their normal stuff but it's all pretty decent, I'd say Winter Wake is a good starting point about mid way through their albums) Nightwish (Ok, two singles of their early stuff is good in my mind, I wish I had an angel from Once, Over the hills and far away, which is a cover, and then their latest album Dark Passion Play is fantastic as they dumped their Diva lead vocal for someone who can actually sing, check out the song, The Islander on their latest album, it's a particular favorite.). Domain (I rather enjoy their music which is kinda classical epic fantasy metal, but good vocals) Masterplan (Holy hell why didn't they put out more before their lead singer left... the first two albums are fantastic things, you deserve to hear them... songs of choice are "The spirit never dies", and it looks like the lead singer actually is back for the 4th album comming soon! yay!) Try those and let me know. -KM