General Heavy Metal Music Thread

Few bands have cited Motörhead and Lemmy Kilmister as an inspiration quite as loudly as Metallica. Whether that meant dressing like Kilmister to perform as "The Lemmys" at his 50th birthday bash, recording a medley of Motörhead songs or simply welcoming the gravel-voiced bassist onstage to play any number of his songs, they always waved Lemmy's flag high. Lars Ulrich — long fabled to be the president of the U.S. chapter of the Motörhead Fan Club ("Let's call that an unofficial title," he says, laughing) — was first struck by the power of the group's music when he heard them as a teenager. Here, he looks back on the influence Lemmy Kilmister had not just on Metallica but also on him personally.



When I heard Lemmy had died, I was home at the tail end of a family Christmas celebration. I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday who knows Motörhead's manager very well and he told me that things were not well and maybe I should consider going down to L.A. to see him and pay my respects. The cancer was very aggressive, and it was end stage and there probably wasn't a lot of time left. That was at 1 p.m. and then I guess I heard the news around 6 p.m. That was crazy.



Lemmy is probably one of the absolute primary reasons that I wanted to be in a band. It's that simple. I got introduced to Motörhead's music in 1979, when Overkill came out. I was in a record store and the double bass intro to "Overkill" started, and I never heard anything like that in my life. The subsequent ride that this music took me on was to a place I had never been. It was really exciting and really invigorating. It felt fresh and different.

In addition to fronting the band Edguy, Tobias Sammet is also the mastermind behind the power metal all-star project Avantasia. For the past 15 years, the band with a rotating cast of guest vocalists and musicians has been delivering epic albums. That continues with their latest opus Ghostlights.



The core of Avantasia is Sammet and guitarist/producer Sascha Paeth along with keyboardist Miro Rodenberg, who also handles the orchestration, a vital part of the band’s sound. For this album, Sammet’s Edguy bandmate Felix Bohnke played drums on all the tracks.

For Ghostlights, there are a wide variety of guest vocalists. Some are Avantasia mainstays, others returned after an absence of one or more albums, and several appear for the first time. Perhaps the most surprising guest is Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, who wouldn’t seem to fit the bill for a power metal band. He shows his power metal chops on “The Haunting,” alternating between subdued crooning and full-out belting.



Another Avantasia newcomer is Geoff Tate (Operation Mindcrime, ex-Queensryche). “Seduction Of Decay” has a definite Queensryche vibe with a really good performance from Tate, who uses his trademark vibrato and has no problem hitting the high notes. The most epic track on the album is the 12 plus minute “Let The Storm Descend Upon You.” It features the return of Jorn Lande, who didn’t appear on 2013‘s The Mystery of Time. The other vocalists are Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids) and Robert Mason (Warrant). The song is symphonic and dramatic, but also very catchy.