Where did you start with power metal?

What got you into power metal?
For me, it was Hammerfall. My brother got me into heavy metal, then, knowing I'm nuts about guitar rifts and dudes with high voices, he burned me a powermetal CD which had some pretty good stuff on it. I was loving Hammerfall so I looked them up on wikipedia and found that there were other bands that had a similar sound, in fact, a whole genre of it called power metal. So I began searching youtube for more awesome bands, which is how I came across Fairyland. And that is my story of how I found good music.
I have loved Dio for a long time before that too, used to listen to him while roleplaying, now every time I hear Dio it brings back some good memories.

My love for Tolkiens litterature made me look for music with lyrics inspired from it.
The first song got me stuck it was The bard's song by Blind Guardian.

For me, I started with a mix of Blind Guardian and Rhapsody, some songs that a friend had given to me.

And after listenning Valhalla-Majesty (of the BG's Live album)... my life turned power metal \m/

My first taste of power metal was also Hammerfall, and I was around 17 at the time. Before then, I was a huge nu metal freak. One day, I was downloading music video torrents from peer-to-peer sharing programs (I don't download anymore), and some of them came in a sort of "package". That is, a small collection of videos based on the sharers' taste. I downloaded a particular package because I had heard of Nightwish from some fellow Evanescence fans, back when I was a big fan of theirs, and wanted to check it out. I liked it, then I decided to check out the other vids. There were two Hammerfall vids, one Sonata Arctica vid, a Within Temptation vid, and more that I don't remember. I liked them all, but as soon as I saw the "Hearts on Fire" video, I was instantly very in love with Hammerfall. I raved about it to my mom a bit, and then watched the "Blood Bound" vid, and fell in love with that, too. I thought, "Wow! Here's something new! THIS is metal right here!" I ate up power metal for a long time after, and still do.

The first folk-ish band i listened to was Moonsorrow, and they still reign today as my favourite band in history.

Then i came across power metal which i love too, but nothing can beat the almighty Moonsorrow!

But Fairyland comes close!

dont know realy always listent to metal anything my mom got in her collectie i listent and she dont got much else then metal but she got alkinds of metal apart from black/death metal but he you cant have everything

Dragonforce.

I won't touch them now, obviously. There are far far better bands out there. Fairyland only being one of them.

Well, I started Metal with Rammstein and Within Temptation.

but my love for metal comes from the combination of being a keyboardplayer en love to play fast. en the agression of guitars is cool i think.

What's wrong with dragonforce? I've heard several people say they don't like the band and that it's not really powermetal, how come?
I'm not trying to defend them, just wondering why they're disliked.

I started with metal in general with Metallica. I didn't listen to music that much, I didn't have a liking to music in general, but listening to Metallica in my early 10s opened my mind to the world of music.
I started listening to Power Metal almost 10 years ago, I was like 12 or so. I started with Rhapsody as recommendation of an acquaintance, I listened to Emerald Sword, Land of Immortals and Warrior of Ice.I liked it and started from there.I think Dawn of Victory came that year, but the first Power Metal album I bought was Legendary Tales. I was on a CD store and alone in a corner I saw that masterpiece, and I went OMFG! Rhapsody! I've got to buy this.
From there, I started listening all kinds of metal, but I have to say that what really got me, after Rhapsody of course, was Helloween and Gamma Ray. How could you not like the creators of Power Metal!?
I listen to many things now, mainly metal, but what I listen to the most is Power and Death/Melo Death Metal.

One more thing, offtopic,regarding to Dragon Force. I remember hearing them from a friend, it was their first album. I listened to it, and it thought it was mediocre, not bad, but not good, always the same. Some time later, the game Guitar Hero 3 came out, and some told me it had some metal tracks, like Number of the Beast and One, and they told me that the hardest track was one from Dragon Force. I thought "I think I heard about them before" so I gave It a try, and remember what I felt the first time I listened to them. One thing I can complain to, is that all you hear is extremely fast music, but it has no melody or structure, that's what I think bothers must of the people that don't like Dragon Force, and the fact that they suck live, as I've heard, I don't want to see them live honestly. Other thing that caught my thought was that the people that mainly know, adore them (fanboys) are the ones that heard of them thanks to GH, and, in my case, hate them for their senseless comments on internet. For Gods sake! they compare Dragon Force with other bands on another completely different genre! How can you compare Dragon Force to Burzum!? or Carcass!?

PISAGER wrote:What's wrong with dragonforce? I've heard several people say they don't like the band and that it's not really powermetal, how come?
I'm not trying to defend them, just wondering why they're disliked.

zande has good points on that, especially the internet comments and Guitar Hero. From my standpoint, I like DragonForce, but I'm annoyed as hell by how trendy they are/were. It's a household name, yet most people couldn't name any songs except for the ones that were rotated like crazy on Headbanger's Ball. So, when I tried to talk about other DragonForce songs, and their first two albums, my schoolmates blew me off and thought I was nuts. And now I hardly hear about them anymore; it proved to be a passing craze, which sucks because they WERE better than most metal fads. And I don't know about anyone else here, but I am personally also a little annoyed by the fact that my metalcore-loving peers raved about DragonForce, but don't know any other power metal bands. I tried talking to some schoolmates about, for example, Kamelot and Helloween, but they look at me like a deer at headlights. (But there IS one guy that likes Iced Earth. )

Other than that, I hear complaints that they're too repetitive, their riffs are too simple, they suck live, the last two albums are too commercial...etc. I've never heard the one that they're "not really power metal" before, so I can't speak for that.

Ah, now I understand. I'm not a big fan of guitar hero... at all.
What's really funny is that most people who walk around with dragonforce t-shirts (I want one) or claim to be a big fan, have never heard of demoniac, lol.
That was dragonforce's original name.

Power Quest is better than Dragonforce. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, all those games suck; more power to Activision for being able to market it all so well though.

And I got into power metal when I heard Crimson Thunder, Infinity, and Elements Pt.1.