A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: Son of a Wolf by Powerwolf

2023 was a solid year for power metal.

New albums from Elvenking, Twilight Force, Bloodbound, and Powerwolf (as well as a live album from Freedom Call), several EPs and singles from Sabaton, Rhapsody of Fire, and DragonForce, with album announcements set for next year from several of these bands, among others.

As to which one is my personal favourite, the answer is all of them. Hear me out for a moment.

Singles and EPs by way of Sabaton

Starting with the singles and EPs, many of them are very solid. Sabaton exemplifies this with a very strong set of EPs continuing the theme of their previous two albums, in heroes and stories of World War 1.

All the new songs released with these EPs were very solid, as well.

Father, released in 2022, was a very solid start to the trilogy of EPs, with a darker sound than most of their music and with lyrics based in the story of Fritz Haber, an German chemist most known in the modern day as the father of toxic gas and one of the fathers of the process of synthesizing fertilizer.

The First Soldier, released in January of 2023, was a very solid song, giving a slightly more 80s disco pop vibe to Sabaton’s style. The lyrics of this one are based on the story of Albert Severin Roche, a French soldier who ran away from his family and his life as a farmer in order to join the military and fight in the Great War.

The band’s third EP in the trilogy takes a bit of a sad turn. The song released with Stories from the Western Front was a cover of the song 1916, initially recorded by, and written by members of, British heavy metal band Motörhead. This song focuses on the perspective of a 16-year-old boy and his friends faking their ages to get into the military and fight for their country, looking at their feelings in both life and death as a result of war.

All three of these singles bring the classic Sabaton style that fans have come to love and expect with elements of something different, something new. Even if they don’t fully stick with some of the newer elements they’ve been bringing into their sound, it will still have been refreshing to have something different, and their music will always have a signature sound that fans have come to love.

Albums, by way of Elvenking and Twilight Force

I’ll go into the albums from these two bands in more detail in their own posts, but I’ll go over them briefly here too.

Elvenking had a new album release, as the second in what seems to be a series of albums, with their second latest album being Reader of the Runes – Divination, and this one being Reader of the Runes – Rapture. They also announced a new album that is currently in the works, and they are going on tour with Alestorm starting in mid March.

Reader of the Runes – Rapture is a very solid album from a band with what is, in my opinion, a history of very solid albums. While not all of their albums have the same sound and it definitely took a bit of time to fully solidify what they were going for in their music, what connects all of it is this underlying sense of enjoyment in the music and cohesion between band members. I would have to be in a very specific mood to skip a song from this album. (Also, pagan metal. Fuck yeah.)

Changing gears a bit, Twilight Force released their latest album in January of 2023. This album stays true to their theme, telling stories of the Twilight Kingdoms in their trademark style of epic symphonic power metal. The fact that this album was only their fourth studio album, and the second to feature Italian vocalist Alessandro Conti, better known by his stage name, Allyon, goes to show that they are talented in a way that I’ve found many metalheads are: though the music may be corny and almost comically absurd at times, they have a very strong understanding of music that lends itself to making it feel like so much more. (Note that when I say understanding of music, I don’t mean music theory. Read this post to understand what the fuck is up with that.)

This isn’t even all the music I could have gone over. I was just a little busy and didn’t have time to listen to the rest of the new releases enough to be able to give a more full opinion, between the volunteering with ADF (Ar nDraíocht Fein) to translate their site to French, dealing with school and classes and exams, and a whole bunch of other random chaos that sometimes comes with the territory of having a military partner. Either way, music will always be a part of my life and will forever interact with all other aspects of who I am. It is the core of my being and I wouldn’t have it any other way.