I started this blog about two years ago now, with the intention of listening to various power metal albums, year by year, from the late eighties (Helloween) onwards. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, and it was to depend on how much I continued to enjoy the genre, as well as to whether I continued to feel like writing about all the different artists.
Well, two years down the track, I've listened right up until 2006, and now I think is a time to take an indefinite break from this blog.
Certainly, I am delighted with how things have gone. Power metal is indeed a wonderful subgenre of rock music, and it has not let me down in the slightest. Naturally, come artists have been considerably better than others, and there have been highs with lows, but there's been so much to love, I know there are plenty of records I'll be going back to time and time again.
However, as I suspected, I've struggled with my enthusiasm lately, largely because of a need for something different (it's certainly not because of quality - I think 2006 might have been the best year to date). I have wide tastes, and even as I've been going through these power metal years, I've been tempering them with other acts from time to time, particularly ones I have been longtime fans of, like Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, Suzanne Vega, The Human League, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode and others. But power metal has dominated, and it's wearing me down a bit.
Having said that, I'm in a bit of a bind, because I'm only up to 2006, and we're about to enter 2014. I want to catch up, and there're heaps still to listen to! I've had a stronger and stronger desire to go back to the music of the eighties and earlier for a while (the eighties will always be my ultimate musical passion), but it's silly to be forever being behind the times with at least some bands as the years go on (I couldn't care less with being behind the times as far as charting music is concerned - I pretty much gave up on that years ago).
So what I'm probably going to do is narrow things down a bit and persist with the power metal bands I have grown to love (as well as those other artists), trying to get up to date with them as much as possible, as well as attempting to investigate earlier acts whom I would like to try (largely, but not only, metal).
I don't know if I'm going to keep writing about them. The thing is, while I know one or two people have at least read all this (thank you, Alltime Records), it's obvious I don't have much of an audience, which is fine. :-) I wasn't really sure if anyone at all would care about this. But my writings have proven useful to me, as I have approached some bands' music with rather vague memories (if that) of what of theirs I've listened to before, and going back and reading what I've written of their earlier work has helped me better appreciate the album on which I am currently focusing.
I do need to mention Alltime Records, a new record reviewing site which contacted me earlier this year, having read my writings on this blog, and asked me to contribute to their venture, with was both flattering and surprising to me, as I don't think my writing is really all that great. Sometimes I get on a roll and out comes some really good stuff, but at others I don't write a very long review at all, and that is sometimes because I simply can't think of a lot to say about the album I have listend to - it might be bad, good or very good, but so unremarkable, there just doesn't seem to be much to speak of.
But also because my brain does not always like to co-operate. I am the son of a man who has over a dozen books published (mostly religious/historical writings, under the name of either David Bennett, or David Malcolm Bennett), and of late, the brother of a girl who has just started getting young adult romance/science fiction books released (Lynne Stringer and her Verindon series), and I am hugely proud of them both. I would dearly love to find the same success, most of all with some kind of children's writing.
But I find it so hard to do. :-/ Sometimes words flow, but at others it's like my brain is just screaming at me to stop. I go through almost pain and deadening effort to just get myself going. Some might say "sure, everyone gets writer's block", but for me, it's the rule, not the exception. I think it's fair to say it's one reason why I struggled so much at school.
Anyway, I am continuing to contribute to Alltime Records, and I would like to recommend them - they can be found at http://www.alltime-records.com/index.php - and certainly want to keep that up, as well as putting some up at Rate Your Music, a site I have been going to for some years now.
But I might put this blog on hiatus for a while, depending on how I feel in the coming weeks.
However, something I would like to do is make a list of the power metal bands I have grown to love, and am definitely now a fan of, as well as other lists of ones of whom I've given up, etc.
I love lists. :)
So I thought I would write all this as an explanation of what is happening, to whomever might be reading. I want to thank anyone for taking the time to read this stuff, and I also want to thank so many of those great bands out there who have provided me with what I have to say has been a new lease on my music-loving life. :-)
I might be wearying of it for now, but my love for power metal will never die, and I know I will be approaching much more of it with just as much love as I have in the past.
Power metal rules!
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