Features aimed at helping introduce and provide points of reference for a specific scene and/or genre
With so many quality releases released over the last decade, we decided to collectively compile our favorite albums. You can find our top 30 traditional metal albums of the 2010s here!
For over 15 years, Athens has been hosting one of the most important Traditional Metal Festivals in the world, Up The Hammers! This guide will provide you with information about the festival, the bands, and the city itself, hoping to make your visit more pleasant and get you ready for the Greek Heavy Metal marathon.
Although popular during their prime and revered by some metal fans, Riot never achieved their rightful due. Founder, guitarist, chief composer, and sole consistent member of Riot, Mark Reale, suffered a tragic death due to life-long Crohn’s Disease eight years ago. This band formed around the same time as Iron Maiden, Rainbow, and Motörhead, their album catalog is consistent, and released one of the best USPM records ever. However, even with all this, they never achieved the popularity the deserved.
We recently published our Best of 2019 article and a few weeks ago we made a post urging you all to vote for your own favorite album of 2019. Well it’s time to take a look at how you, the reader, voted for the best albums of 2019 and compare!
When Mark Shelton passed away over a year ago, I was at a loss for words. For months I struggled to offer his shades tribute in my own way. I then recalled a brief exchange with him about how I played the song “Fall of Iliam” for a Latin Poetry class I had recently taught, and how it was in his music that I first felt that my passions for both heavy metal and classical antiquity truly came together as one.
It’s hard to believe that the year (and decade too!) is over in just one week. As far as traditional heavy metal goes, 2019 has been an exceptional year with one fantastic release after another from the get-go. Now it’s time to look back at some of the Ride into Glory author team’s favorite traditional heavy metal releases from the past year!
Southern California had a great run with heavy metal in the 80’s. A veritable horde of bands from that time and geography legitimately earned top shelf status in true metal lore including Cirith Ungol, Savage Grace, Omen, Armored Saint and Agent Steel.
Hallows Eve is upon us, when people gather around and fable about scary stories of witches, undead monsters and The Headless Horseman, set loose on the streets instilling horror and fear to the hearts of their audience. Taking its origins from the Gaelic festival of Samhein, which signified the end of the harvest period and the start of the long, cold winter, Halloween is the time of the year that mankind explores its “strongest emotion – fear” as HP Lovecraft famously said.
When someone exchanges musical opinions within the heavy metal circle, it is not uncommon to hear expressions like “too rough” or “too melodic”, and more recently “very old school” or with a positive spin “very refreshing”. So if an album had exactly the correct ratio of melodic and rough riffs and sounds refreshing even it was released in 1986, that would mean that it will top the charts and everyone would speak about it right?
True Traditional metal, while never as hugely popular as hair or thrash, has been a field in which California has yielded an embarrassing amount of riches. While often not appreciated enough back in the day (much like Cali’s doom pioneers Saint Vitus, the number of people claiming attendance at early shows for many of these bands has inflated far beyond what the actual attendance was) names like Cirith Ungol, Brocas Helm and The Lord Weird Slough Feg are now rightly hallowed and revered in the metal underground. There is still a lot of good stuff happening.