Power Metal: Yes Please or Too Much Cheese? (This One's For Neil)

Confusing title you may think, but it will become clear. My friend Neil is not a metal fan, in fact he's much more Belle and Sebastian than Cannibal Corpse. But he and I found a strange connection in our love for uber cheese power metal. You know the kind: Rhapsody, Lost Horizon, Dragonforce and the like. He became a fan when I listened to Rhapsody's Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret album in his presence. With Christopher Lee providing the narrative to tales of ancient kings, wizards and dragons, its a perfect example of what I want to talk about; is the super cheesy, dragons and wizards style power metal really to be looked upon as ridiculous, or is it actually a flag bearer for 'true' metal? I believe that it definitely incorporates parts of both arguments. Yeah it can be ridiculous, just one look at the cover of Lost Horizon's Awakening the World, above, will show that there is much to deride. The chains, the facepaint, the swords and shields, dragons, magic, mystical times and places, its all very Warcraft/Dungeons and Dragons and of course bears little or no resemblance to problems that the real world face. And surely, as grown men or women, why wouldn't you have grown out of such things? The other side of the coin answers this entirely. Power metal is there to be the lighter side of metal, it's normally a guilty pleasure for most metal fans, they like to hide their Blind Guardian or Rhapsody albums from their more kvlt friends. But we all love a bit of fantasy now and then, we can't all go through our lives dealing with real issues without some form of escape. Why do you think Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean were so hugely popular? Because its escapism. Plus probably Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom as well. But mainly escapism.
The point is that power metal albums are normally brilliantly over the top, and reminds you that metal is still allowed to be fun. Many of them are classic additions to metal, such as Blind Guardian's Nightfall in Middle Earth. So me and Neil will keep listening to our Rhapsody, our Luca Turilli, our Dragonforce, and we will be proud of it. And all other power metal fans should be proud of it too, because lets be honest, its THE most metal genre of them all!