As with all my posts, this one is subjective.  This list doesn’t aim to categorize “the best albums of Metal” because such a feat is just not feasible to me.  This is based on just my taste.  They’re not even in order by my favorites because what is considered my favorite is highly based on my mood.  I just made a master list and narrowed it down to the 20 that are important to highlight my taste.  It should give readers a better sense of what I listen to regularly and just personal taste.  Let me know about your favorite Metal albums below in the comments, I would love to see if any of these albums resonated with anyone else the same way they did with me.

In part one of the series, the first six albums were all by Devin Townsend. Part two highlights a favorite album from my favorite Metal bands.  It was incredible to go back and listen to these.  I listen to them often, but not in this context. Active listening has always been my preferred writing method, but I’ve never done it so personally in depth.  Listening to these albums whilst actively picking out why I love them cemented my admiration.  The whole process was very cathartic and interesting.  I don’t think I ever thought about these albums on such an introspective level.  Each album and its songs have distinct meanings to me.  They even have vivid memories attached to them.  Writing this proved to me how integral music is in our lives.  

7. Apex- Unleash the Archers (2017)

I refer to Unleash the Archers as my favorite band of all time.  I’ve been listening to them since about 2015.  Growing up with Iron Maiden, Metallica, Whitesnake, Dokken, and Judas Priest, I look for similar music.  High octane, dueling guitars, speed Metal, and killer power vocals never fail to grab my attention.  No surprise to me that I’ve become such a fan of Unleash the Archers.   They have all the qualities of those Power Metal/Heavy Metal 80s bands and ooze with the magic of Iron Maiden.  The guitarists Andrew Kingsley and Grant Truesdell are masters of dueling guitars, Thrash riffs, and Melodic Power licks.  They are two of the best technical guitarists I have ever seen.  The sheer speed and accuracy with which they play are miraculous to me.  It’s like Adrian Smith and Dave Murray on a massive amount of Monster Energy drinks.  It is insane to watch them play live and in the studio.  The same goes for drummer Scott Buchanan, who I think is the most underrated drummer of all time.  This guy seemingly effortlessly plays at 150 beats per minute and faster for an hour and a half.  Buchanan looks as if he’s barely moving behind what looks to be a basic Rock drum kit.  I do not understand why he is not recognized as a fantastic drummer.  Nick Miller is also a fantastic bassist, showing his strong presence on the last two UTA albums.  He chugs the hell out of the bass.  As a bass player, his tone and speed captivate me.  He is just so good without being too loud, too low, or too flashy. 

And then, there’s Brittney Slayes:  Where do I even start with the incomparable and iconic vocals of UTA?  It’s hard to sum up her contribution to the band and the Power Metal genre in a paragraph.  She is larger than life in vocal presence.  Her range truly defies everything I knew about vocals. She can sing in many styles and voice types, but it fits perfectly with the music.  The brilliance of her note choices, her ability to sing in the pocket, and her storytelling are the strongest aspects I love about Brittney.  In some ways, I feel like she’s the closest vocalist to Ronnie James Dio in spirit, style, and range, but she also stands on her own.  All of these virtuoso musicians make perfect chemistry in UTA, and are what make the band so special.  There’s nothing out there like them that I’ve heard.  They pull from a plethora of genres and influences to create meaningful, energetic, and technical Power Metal.  

Apex is undoubtedly my favorite album from UTA.  Apex is a once-in-a-lifetime concept album.  It is incredibly emotionally compelling in different ways on each track.  The story of Apex is heart-wrenching.  It follows the story of “The Immortal” and his curse to serve whoever wakes him on Earth.  Over 1000 years, The Immortal sleeps and wakes multiple times.  This time, the evil tyrannical witch queen “Matriarch” wakes him for an evil task.  Her evil knows no limit, and she has power over the entire planet.  She orders the Immortal to bring her four sons back to her to sacrifice them for her own immortality.  Through the story, The Immortal shows his immense power to summon an army of ten thousand to subdue and chase out the sons.  He also shows morality and introspection, trying to decide if it’s all for nothing or if the ends justify the means, and he considers what the good in it all is.  This concept is interesting because, to me,  it reflects the acceptance of Good and Evil in the world and the balance it upholds in the right hands.  Everything about Apex astounds me.  The story, the instrumentation, the composition, the structure of each song, and how it flows together seamlessly.  I love everything about this album, especially the guitars and vocals.

I connect so personally with Apex.  The aspect of The Immortal slumbering in a mountain with this curse and his acceptance of his curse struck me.  I was born and raised in Colorado, and the end of Apex with the title track tells my story in a way.  The curse I view as my disability, Cerebral Palsy, and my acceptance of this thing I cannot change. , being born and raised in Colorado, “The mountain, my home” reminds me that the mountains are my haven.  Apex, the song, is truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard in my life.  The whole album echoes this beauty to me.  Apex is a masterpiece in both written and sonic form to me.  It’s music that means something deeper.  You can interpret the story to mean different things and take what you want from it.   This is why I think Brittney is brilliant.  It’s a well-composed story, but its meaning is ambiguous and mysterious in a way.  This allows fans to attach to it personally on a possibly deep level, like so many of the best Fantasy novels.  I don’t think Brittney gets enough credit for creating and crafting the stories and concepts of their three-album run.  Apex deserves much more credit for its concept and musicianship.  It is truly unmatched and will always remain an important album to me.

My favorite songs are Apex, False Walls, Earth, and Ashes

8. Ategnatos- Eluveitie (2019)

I’m going to be honest: I wasn’t entirely sold on this album initially.  The heaviness was a drastic change from “Evocation II”, and I wasn’t ready for how hard this band came with Ategnatos.  I’d been listening to Swiss Folk Death Metal band Eluveitie since 2012, so I knew they were pretty heavy in the past.  Some albums take time to grow on me.  After I sat down and was in the mood for something heavy, I listened to this album three times back to back.  The experience was intense, spiritual, and tear-jerking.  This album is an experience from start to finish and is larger than life.  It combines old-Eluveitie with Death Thrash riffs and their signature blend of Folk Instruments and Celtic/Gaulish sounds.  It’s Melodeath meets Ancient Pagan music, and I love it so very much.   If a Metal album could ever sound Alpine, Ategnatos is the prime example.  It’s like walking among your ancestors in the valleys of the Swiss Alps.  It’s so unique and specific to Eluveitie.  While many Metal bands are incorporating Folk inspiration into their heavy music, Eluveitie stands out from the rest to me.  Maybe it’s because I experienced this in concert when I saw them in March of 2023, but they just feel so different from any other band to me.  The first time I’d ever heard of a hurdy-gurdy was in Eluveitie.  It’s such an unlikely instrument for Metal, and it’s almost a comic and unbelievable mix, but it works so well.  They’ve crafted a truly unique sound that is all their own.  With Chrigel’s signature harsh vocals, the Folk instruments, the speedy fiddle riffs, and epic guitar riffs and breakdowns, it’s undeniable that this band is one of a kind.

Ategnatos is a difficult album to stop listening to once you start.  There’s an addictive “Beauty and the Beast” quality that I’ve been hooked on since 2008.  The riffs are catchy on any instrument. Like on Blackwater Dawn, the pipes intro has been in my head off and on since it came out.  Somehow, they packed in heavy chunky riffs, Speed Metal drums, Folky diddies, and Nightwish-like choruses sung by the incomparable Fabienne Erni.  I will never get over her powerful voice and incredible range.  She is yet another Metal singer who can sing anything.  Her performance on Ategnatos is sensational with every note.  She is one of my favorite vocalists of all time. Ambiramus is the Eluveitie song to date.  It was a last-minute addition to the album, and yet it fits the anthemic nature so well.  This song is unbelievably beautiful.  Experiencing it live was a truly spiritually cleansing moment of my life. How she delivers such notes and Alpine calls with volume and clarity is mystifying.  The whole album is a spiritual trip.  Her voice is a pivotal aspect I love about the album.  The riffs and the chanting on The Raven Hill are so epically catchy, along with the unique groove.  It’s like listening to an ancient Celtic celebration with a death growler.  It scratches my brain and satisfies the Scot-Irish in me like I’ve never expected.  I grew up listening to Celtic music, but Ategnatos raised the bar.  The darkness of The Slumber and Worship imprints on me.  The acceptance of one’s fate comes into play, the Death Metal and depth of these songs are eerie, and it’s an interesting feeling.  Breathe is another track where Fabienne’s range shines on, and it shows why she’s considered the heart of Eluveitie.  She sings her heart out on every song, but especially on ” Breathe.  This song reminds me of long road trips out of Colorado and being severely homesick for the safety of the mountains.

I can’t talk about this album without fanning over Rebirth.  Rebirth rounds out the journey of someone who converts to a tribe, becomes a powerful figure, and ascends.  This is one of the best Metal tracks I have ever heard in my life.  Alainn Ackerman is a favorite drummer of mine, and his speed, use of flam, and interesting fills are the backbone of this album.  But my god, his blast beats on Rebirth paired with the shredding of Jonas Wolf and Rafael Salzmann is a stroke of brutal virtuosity.  The first time I heard this song, I was genuinely blown away.  I restarted the song over before it even ended because the intro is insane.  I thought my YouTube playback speed was up by two clicks, but it wasn’t.  I will never forget the first time I heard this song as long as I live.

This album is also personal to me because it spawned quite the saga of dreams.  I began having these dreams in the Spring of 2020.  They were the most interesting dreams I’d ever had.  One dream in particular remains.  The dream began with walking through a valley of the Alps, lush with green native grasses and herds of sheep below.  It was in Switzerland, and it was, of course, beautiful.   I was walking along with members Fabienne Erni and Jonas Wolf.  Fabienne explained to me in detail about the tribes of people from a millennium ago that walked the same path that we walked.  She told of riches, tragedy, triumph against armies, and how Celts and the Gauls were related.  The two led me to a waterfall with a sizable pond below it.  In the pond, they performed a ceremony of sorts, and I was baptized back into my Celtic roots.  When they had me plunge into the pond that was barely deep enough to stand in, I saw seven “beings”.  These seven beings were grey and green, with cloaks.  They had no face or discerning features.  They repeated the words of Ambiramus to me.  I was then pulled out of the pond and was cleansed of bad energy.  It was a “Rebirth” you could say.  The dream was very cinematic and beautiful.  I am known to have very detailed and epic dreams, but this has to be one of my best.  I will always remember it and think of it when listening to this album.

My favorite songs are Ambiramus, Breathe, Rebirth

9. Delirium- Lacuna Coil (2016)

I have been a fan of Lacuna Coil since I was around thirteen or fourteen years old.  My older brother discovered them on the College radio station after we moved to Colorado.  While I remember seeing the Heaven’s A Lie video on a music channel, it was two or three years after I started listening to them.  “Comalies” lived in our car CD player for a good three years after that.  Experiencing the 20th anniversary of Comalies was the biggest wave of nostalgia.  This album has impacted the Metal market in the US and influenced Metal more than people realize.  Before this album, “Beauty and the Beast” style vocals weren’t exclusively done on an entire album, I don’t think.  This concept was only done in passing on songs.  Now, it’s one of the most interesting music concepts that shaped Symphonic Metal and more bands than I can count.  Comalies is an album that will be immortal, much like the Evanescence album that brought female vocals in heavy music into the mainstream.  I’ve loved everything Lacuna Coil has released since (Yes, even Shallow Life).  The moment I became a mega fan of LC was upon the release of “Delirium”.  This is when LC became one of my favorite Heavy Metal bands of all time and Maki became one of my favorite bassists.  

“Delirium” is a deep delve into the human psyche with all its dark manifestations.  It’s heavy, moody, cinematic, atmospheric, catchy, beautiful, and brutal all at the same time.  It could easily be a soundtrack to a miniseries about a serial killer, and I mean that in a good way.  The thematic elements swallow you up and take you into the eerie depths of catharsis.  Delirium is incredibly deliberate and perfectly constructed.  It flows from each song and doesn’t break the tension and dark elements.  It’s an experience as much as it is an album.  It takes you to the literal edge of sanity where you’re losing control of yourself, your relationships, and the perception of things around you.  This album is brilliant in how spot-on it captures its theme.  Rarely does an album concept hit as hard as Delirium does for me.  It’s so literal, which is refreshing in Metal.  I don’t find a lot of albums that speak about a subject so clearly, and I commend LC’s dive into the dark world of Mental Health issues.  Delirium takes me back to toxic relationships, anxiety, and feeling as if my reality was going dark, but in a good way.  It reminds you of how you can live through all the darkest parts in your life and rise above the darkness in your mind.  I love that message.

The sounds on this album are unlike anything I have ever heard.  I don’t like comparing artists too much, and this album is incomparable.  Despite not having an official guitarist at the time, Maki, the bassist and a founding member of the band, constructed some of the hardest-hitting riffs on both bass and guitar.  It’s a rhythmic onslaught of heaviness, but it also drops out to highlight the insanely beautiful tone of Cristina Scabbia.  Cristina is one of the most unique singers in Metal.  This dark and light balance is evident on “Live To Tell”, a solo track for Scabbia’s unique, soulful soaring vocals.  The riffs offset so perfectly, and yet pummel your senses to a pulp on “Blood, Tears, Dust” and “The House of Shame”.  Maki and guest guitarist Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge created Nu-Metal nostalgia with a punchier bass sound, and I love it.  The drums are also technically perfect.   Every hit matches the riffs so exactly, it sounds like a machine.  The musical chemistry on this album is spectacular.  Everything just flows so well together, A sign of a band that’s been together for so long; they work in exquisite harmony.  Andrea’s screams are a highlight of the album.,  To me, his transformation into a death growler is one of the best decisions ever made in music.  He went from an “okay singer” to me to an absolute guttural god on this album.  It’s the extreme of “Beauty and the Beast” vocals, and I love it so much. 

Lacuna Coil keeps defying the constructs of Rock and Metal and extremifying their concept.  They evolve, change, and grow while remaining unique to them, but I don’t think the perfection of Delirium will ever be topped for me.  

Favorite songs: Ultima Ratio, You Love Me Cause I Hate You, and The House of Shame

10. Seventh Son of A Seventh Son- Iron Maiden (1988)

I’ve mentioned this album in previous posts but never delved into it quite like this.  Iron Maiden is undoubtedly one of my favorite bands of all time. They are one of the most influential bands in Metal history.  I have memories as far back as I can remember of this band.  They’re a band my family loves and has loved since long before I was born.  My late uncle was responsible for my love for Iron Maiden.   He was a traditional Metalhead that brought these bands to my Mom and eventually my brother and me.  Bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Rush, Pantera, Van Halen, and more came from my Mom and my Uncle.  That sharing of music was crucial to me.  That’s probably why I have a compulsive need to share music with everyone I know.  Sharing music was the purest form of love I had from my uncle, who was otherwise a problematic person in our family’s lives.  That sentiment is one I wish to pass on to other people.  I’d like to be known by the bands I share and whether that discovery meaningfully impacted someone else’s life the way Iron Maiden impacted mine.  Without my Mom and Uncle exposing me to this music, I probably wouldn’t be a Metalhead and a pretty different person.  There are many weekend memories tied to this album: Packing up the house, going on a road trip, working on a car, or just sitting out on the back patio. I remember listening to this album.  Music is a powerful thing when it is tied to happy memories.  It can remind you of who you are when you’re at your best or happiest.  This album always does that for me.

I haven’t always been a huge Metalhead.  In my childhood, I was exposed to Rock and Metal and generally liked it.  During my childhood, I chose Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, The Cranberries, Fleetwood Mac, and Celine Dion more than anything.  As a teen, I rebelled for a while against what other people were listening to and chose more pop-punk like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory, Incubus, and more of that mid-2000s style.  It’s normal to go through phases, but I think, deep down, I always truly loved Metal.  Iron Maiden was one of the bands that cemented my dedication to Metal when I was 18.  While I credit Iron Maiden, it was more specifically Sam Dunn’s Metal Evolution that made me realize I had an innate passion for Metal.  Watching this anthology in full on VH1 made me realize how deep and scholarly Metal could be.  The theme of the Metal anthology was The Trooper. I had heard the song many times before, but hearing it on this documentary truly reignited my love for Metal.  All of Iron Maiden’s albums are impactful and nearly masterpieces, but I had to go back in time.  The Trooper may be my favorite song of all time, but my favorite Maiden album is undoubtedly Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

Some consider it a miss or just a mini album of 80s ideas, but it impacted me more than any album.  I will never understand the discontentment for this album.  This album was an experiment, and I love experimental music. While people perceived it as Maiden trying to go Mainstream, I think they were trying to do the opposite and rebel against the Sunset Strip of Hair Metal. Iron Maiden took what Fates Warning was doing and combined NWOBHM with Progressive Metal.  This combo engrained itself into my brain forever.  It is the most influential album to my music taste.  I think many albums on this list have a taste of this record at heart in some way.   Unleash the Archer’s albums remind me so much of this record, and that’s probably why I love them so much.  Seventh Son is a mix of soaring atmospheric synths, melodic dueling guitars, and insanely Proggy drums from the incomparable Nicko Mcbrain.   It sounds like a mix of King Crimson, Deep Purple, Manowar, and Vangelis while still keeping the Iron Maiden grit and epicness.  The technicality of it is staggering.  They keep their anthemic sing-along style but add time changes and syncopated rhythms and flashy ’80s sounds.   In my book, it’s one of their best works and my absolute favorite album from them. Every song is just so memorable without relying on hooks.  It’s creative, emotional, cinematic, and badass in its guitar work and aggressiveness on songs like the title track, Evil That Men Do, and The Clairvoyant.  Oh man, and Steve Harris’s bass playing on this record is just sublime.  The bass could’ve been much louder on this album, but it still impacted my playing, as all Maiden albums have.

Seventh Son of A Seventh Son is one of the most unique Metal records I’ve ever heard.  I will always cherish its technicality and the memories that go along with it.

My favorite songs; Moonchild, Infinite Dreams, and Seventh Son of A Seventh Son

11. Moonbathers- Delain (2016)

While Symphonic Metal is more of a part of my past, Moonbathers is an album that will forever remain special to me.  It’s not the biggest, technically perfect, or cinematic Symphonic album ever made.  It’s not the best mix or engineering on a Symphonic Metal album.  It defies all the things I normally look for in a great album, and yet here it is on my favorite album list of all time..  Moonbathers is an anthemic, moody, dark, masochistic record with more soul than 99% of any Symphonic album ever made.  This album is a whole experience of emotions, thematic sounds, and epic guitar hooks. It’s an eclectic mix of traditional elements of the genre and sounds that are so unique to powerhouse vocalist Charlotte Wessels.  It’s like The Cranberries, Within Temptation, Kate Bush, Nick Cave, and The Birthday Massacre combined into one really neat package.  It’s the rawest Symphonic Metal album I have ever heard.  It’s unapologetically loud, jarring, and campy all at the same time.  Moonbathers is a vocal astonishment and put Charlotte Wessels on the map forever, along with her incomparable performance on Burning Bridges, Masters of Destiny, and her solo work The Obsession.  Moonbathers feels like Charlotte’s Delain, and it is my favorite version of the band that ever was and that ever will be.  

Moonbathers is the moodiest album I’ve ever heard.  It’s an explosion of emotions: anger, pain, love, sadness, and elation to be alive to experience it all.  It’s a concept album in that it holds the same dramatic theme throughout.  It’s more of a vibe than a story for a theme, which is unique in and of itself.  It’s a love letter to those suffering in life in such an epic way.  It’s a little bit Pirate and Hans Zimmer with Hands of Gold, a little bit of 90s Alt-rock, a little bit of soul Vocals, a little bit Queen, and Poppy hooks like on Fire with Fire, Turn the Lights Out, and Suckerpunch.  Pendulum is a Machine Head/Trivium one-two punch with Epica thrown in there.  It’s a crazy record.  The mix of inspirations is unlike anything I have ever heard.  It just hits you right in the chest, like a suckerpunch that stays with you forever.  It’s catchy while remaining musically interesting and progressive.  I’ve never heard anything like it. Despite all the comparisons I’ve made attempting to describe how this sounds to me, it’s a Mason’s Mark all on its own.  Glory and the Scum is one of my favorite tracks of all time.  It’s a “Beauty and the Beast” vibe, with Charlotte and bassist Otto combining for the compelling bone-chilling growls.  Her voice on this song is one of the most mesmerizing sounds to me.  She embodies the idea of a Siren and succeeds in captivating every single time, but especially on this song and power ballad, The Hurricane.  These two songs still astound me today and are some of my favorite performances on any album to date.

Moonbathers is special to me for more reasons than I can even say.  This record inspired me to write books about my two alter egos.  It’s inspired poems, countless riffs, whole songs, short stories, and more dreams than I can even count.  This album spoke to me on a philosophical level in ways words cannot articulate.  It’s a unique nostalgia, a throwback to one of the only bands I have ever loved with my entire being.  It reminds me of all the hard work I put in on myself with meditation, running, soccer practices, and self-actualizing.  This album signifies self-acceptance for me.  It also is the first album I’ve ever bonded with someone outside of my family.  My best friend and I experienced this album for the first time together.  I will never forget writing tens of paragraphs foaming over this album.  It was a very special time in my life, and it cemented our bond forever, I believe.  It’s an album that will always remind me of her and also everything we’ve been through together.  She’s the reason I have continued writing, besides the absolute necessity to express words on paper in which she understands and celebrates more than anyone I’ve ever met.   Moonbathers helped us solidify this connection, and that is irreplaceable. 

Delain with Charlotte will always be one of my favorite eras in music, and Moonbathers is the keystone album for that time to me.

Favorite songs; Glory and the Scum, The Hurricane, Fire With Fire

12. Omega- Epica (2021)

One of the newest albums on this list. I felt odd picking the most recent Epica album.  I have listened to Epica since 2011.  Hearing this band for the first time was a religious experience.  It was as if I was hearing a choir from heaven and an orchestra only fit for cherubs.  As cheesy as that sentiment sounds, it’s the best depiction of my connection with Epica.  There’s a supreme feeling to their music.  It’s all-encompassing and incredibly emotionally moving but also deeply philosophical.  There’s no instrument, topic, theme, or height of technical excellence that this band isn’t afraid to tackle.  This band creates gargantuan albums..  Tackling them in a critical sense is way above any music reviewer’s pay grade.  Talking about the impact this band has had on music and myself is more in the realm of tangible.  Epica is what my brother and I like to say, “a band of all time.”  They just are what they are, and that is massively, unfathomably talented.  People often complain that the days of Classical Composition and the greats such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel are dead.  To me, those days of completely perfect and epic music are far from dead.  Classical Music isn’t dead or gone; it just evolved into Symphonic Metal.  And Epica is the pinnacle of that sentiment.  Epica creating an album called “Omega” is possibly the aptest title any band has ever used.

Omega is an expansive record.  The album contains all of Epica’s typical sounds and ideas compressed into a well-produced package.  It is the omega-ist album they could’ve done, whilst still showing mature restraint.  While Quantum Engima was chaotic, unrestrained, and unfiltered, with a wall-of-sound production with a hundred layers of choirs and orchestras, I loved it.  Omega is massive, but it’s carefully constructed with more beauty and dynamics than past albums.  To me, Epica is at its best when you can hear Simone without constant layers of loud choirs.  Simone is too incredible of a singer to overshadow.  I think Epica got this message loud and clear on this record.  The balance of Metal, choirs, orchestras, keyboards, and vocals is sublime on Omega.  It is my absolute favorite album because of this perfect balance.  It’s fresh and new for Epica, but echoes back to the days of “Sahara Dust” with Middle Eastern instrumentation and Thrashy-Speed guitars.  The melodic inclinations remind me of Design Your Universe and the b-sides of The Quantum Enigma.  The drums are straight from the more Fear Factory-influenced The Holographic Principle.  Not only do Simone’s perfect Operatic belts and trills shine on this album, but every member is quintessentially audible.  

I can finally hear everyone and their styles and influences equally.  Each member creates the capacious illusion that Epica has a hundred members, and it’s so great to hear all six of them as individual musicians.  The members on their own are genial musicians, and together, it’s a cataclysm of the best Metal this generation has to offer.  You need not look further to understand the power of this band than Kingdom of Heaven Prt 3.  This song is among the greatest pieces of Music I’ve ever heard.  Out of all the composers over the last eight hundred years, I think Coen Jansen is the most underrated.  This song is angelic and pristine.  You go from crying to feeling as though you’ve faced your judgment.  It’s genial in every movement, all 17 times and key changes, and all the moments it switches between Classical and Melodeath to a 70’s Prog keyboard solo.  “You get a solo, you get a solo, everybody gets a solo!”.

Epica is the sole reason I began this blog nearly twelve years ago, so it’s a given that this band is sentimental to me.  My brother took me to a headlining Epica show in 2012.  This show was a turning point in my life.  The fact that bands like Epica weren’t huge in America was a travesty to me.  I created “Metal Valkyrie” to be a promoter for European bands like Epica.  My goal was to greatly increase their fanbase here, but the journey expanded into a review site.  It has been a grind, but it has improved my writing, created friendships, and maybe exposed some to these amazing bands.  Epica took the minspration that Iron Maiden and Sam Dunn’s Metal Evolution started, and ignited it to the stratosphere for me.  I’ve quit reviewing and switched entirely to promotion.  While it hasn’t been as successful as I’d hoped in viewership and interaction, it’s a pinnacle journey for me and has benefited my life in ways I’ve not delved into yet.  Epica’s music is immensely inspiring.  The epic atmospheres they create can truly get me through anything.  Their music is forever inspiring.

Because of Epica’s everlasting contribution to music, I will continue this journey with Metal Valkyrie and forever share this band’s incredible music.

My Favorite Songs: The Skeleton Key, Kingdom of Heaven Part 3, Code of Life