Symphonic power metal
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
In short
Power metal with orchestra, choir and a fantasy libretto. The more, the better.
How it sounds
- Full orchestra and choir, often recorded live rather than sampled.
- Film-score structures: overtures, interludes, recurring themes.
- Operatic or lyrical vocals carrying a narrative libretto across the album.
Hear what that means
- An orchestra at power metal tempo from 4:21
Rhapsody - Symphony of Enchanted Lands
Strings and brass carrying counter-melody over continuous double kick, which is far harder to arrange than at symphonic metal's slower pace.
Open on YouTube at 4:21 - Where a real orchestra shows from 4:03
An arranger writing for real strings voices things a keyboard player would not, and the lines survive at tempos where a pad would turn to mush.
Open on YouTube at 4:03 - Speed and melody together from 21:38
Keyboard and guitar trading runs under a chorus built to be sung by a room.
Open on YouTube at 21:38
Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. Every second here is the uploader's own, read from the recording's tracklist.
The specifics
- Tempo
- 150-200 bpm
- Song length
- 4-8 min
- Tuning
- D or E standard with a full orchestral arrangement over it, and the guitars mixed below the strings more often than metal usually permits.
- Production
- Cinematic and enormous, with real orchestras where the budget allows and very good samples where it does not. The mix problem is the same as symphonic metal's and the tempo makes it harder.
- Written about
- High fantasy, Battle, Love, operatically, Narrative across multiple albums
What each part is doing
- Orchestra Strings and brass carrying melody and counter-melody at power metal tempo, which is far harder to arrange than at symphonic metal's slower pace.
- Guitar Fast harmonised riffing underneath, frequently doubling an orchestral line rather than leading — the guitars are a section here.
- Drums Continuous double kick under orchestral hits, with fills timed to the arrangement rather than to the riff.
- Vocals A high tenor or a trained soprano, multi-tracked into choirs on every chorus, and expected to carry operatic material at speed.
- Choir Real or sampled, used as an orchestral section rather than as backing vocals.
What it isn't
That the orchestra is a keyboard patch. On the records that define the genre it is not, and the difference is audible: an arranger writing for real strings voices things a keyboard player would not, and the counter-melodies survive at tempos where a synthesised pad would turn to mush. The genre's weaker records are exactly the ones where it is a patch.
Told apart from
- Power metal Symphonic power metal adds an orchestra to power metal's speed and choruses. Power metal proper uses keyboards to imply one.
- Symphonic metal Symphonic metal is slower, mid-tempo and frequently female-fronted. This is fast, and the orchestration has to keep up with double kick.
- Progressive power metal Progressive power metal adds rhythmic and structural complexity instead of orchestration.
- Pirate metal Shares the production polish and the enormous choruses, with a comic subject in place of a fantasy one.
The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.
History
Rhapsody, working out of Trieste, built a formula in which each album is a chapter of a fantasy saga, with a narrator — Christopher Lee, on several records. Nightwish added operatic female vocals and became one of Europe's biggest bands. The genre is maximalist by definition and offers no apology for it.
Descended from
Siblings on this branch
Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree
- NWOTHM 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Heavy metal
- Easycore 1.7 apart by rating · no shared ancestor
Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.