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Battle Beast is pretty good but The Sword is REALLY good. I'm gonna have to get some of that stuff! Mastodon, of course, is already a favorite of mine. 

Big fan of power metal I hear. 

And KnightDriver, The Sword is from Austin, TX and they are AWESOME. Had no plans to stay and watch them live at Ozzfest '08 in Dallas, but they were SO good. I think my favorite of theirs is How Heavy this Axe.

I love me some power metal, so I enjoyed much of this list, Michael! Particularly Battle Beast and Mastodon (I know I just praised them, but Iron Swan isn't my favorite from The Sword; prefer their slower, heavy-hitting groove stuff to their thrashier joints).

Glad you enjoyed the list Joe! I like the slower stuff from The Sword as well. This year I've been getting into slightly more doomy sounding rock and metal. Thrash and death are usually where I'm always at, so it's been a nice change of pace this year.

The Sword is pretty fantastic, I love how huge the guitar sound is.

I'm sorry man, I REALLY cannot get into Power Metal. I mean I dig Sabaton and Blind Gaurdian, but not much else in the genre really interests me. I did dig the new Mastodon album though, and that The Sword track was pretty awesome too.

Lol, no harm done, I knew the power metal wouldn't jive as well for you. I kind of lied in the first part of the blog when I said there was a variety of genres. There was in the first part but the second part was mostly power metal.

When I first made my list of songs there was mostly progressive death metal, thrash, black, etc. I had some older Mastodon stuff that was super nasty, some Meshuggah, Death, Cynic (which you introduced me to earlier in the year), Hellcannon, and some other stuff. When I decided to redo the list and cut out the heavist stuff to make it more palletable I ended up leaving the interesting progressive stuff out and a lot of power metal filled the void. I know you've definitely listened to all the bands I mentioned above but have you heard from Hellcannon before? It's a newer thrash band of kids from New York. Nothing progressive and no trends, just brutal evil old school thrash. I'm not sure what their newest album is like but their album "Infected With Violence" is really satisfying if you're feeling thrashy.

My favorite song from that one:

You fucking sellout :p

 That Hellcannon song is dope!

Lol.

Hell yeah, glad you like that song. There's a few other really solid ones on that Hellcannon album. Love the album art too.

happy birthday man!  I hope it was a good one.  

SO MANY BANDS!!!!!

Thanks Matt! I went and generated a doge meme just to fit this situation, it'll make more sense if you see the comment I left you on the other music blog lol.

Aww yiss, this was seriously an excellent collection of songs and I don't know which one I liked the most.

I do have some observations. Sabaton is one i'm starting to really love and i'm interested on the many historical war songs they have. Turisas is also one I should check more, though curiously the first song i've heard of them was their parody cover of Rasputin. Loved the voice of the singer in that Dark Moor song. The Sword is a band I knew for quite the years and they are incredible. Of course there's no question that Mastodon became a favorite of mine.

I really enjoyed both blogs Mike. Now i'm curious for what you'll post in the future music wise.