Over the years, the term power metal has been used to describe everything from NWOBHM bands to hardcore-tinged thrashers like Pantera. As a movement, though, power metal crystallized during the mid-'90s, mostly as a reaction against the harshness and lack of melody in death and black metal.

Over the years, the term power metal has been used to describe everything from NWOBHM bands to hardcore-tinged thrashers like Pantera. As a movement, though, power metal crystallized during the mid-'90s, mostly as a reaction against the harshness and lack of melody in death and black metal. Though it sometimes incorporated the complexity of progressive metal, or the menace and growling vocals of death metal, power metal was essentially a classicist style, paying unabashed tribute to its influences. Its tight sense of groove was rooted in the NWOBHM and early-'80s Teutonic outfits like Accept; it also drew from the flashy technical chops and pseudo-operatic vocals of NWOBHM mainstays Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Power metal was primarily (though not exclusively) a continental-European phenomenon, with a handful of '80s veterans reviving their careers, plus a number of newer bands who'd started out playing death metal but wanted to sound more like the music they'd grown up with.