Better response than I expected, thanks everyone.
17. Hate World HeroI'm a heeerrrrrooo! Another song that's quite good prior to the chorus, and then excellent once it gets there. The tempo and feel of the song are a bit different for Firewind, not matching their older of newer stuff, a nice change of pace.
16. The Fire and the FuryFrom Royal Hunt's "Martial Arts", to Maiden's "Transylvania" I'm often a sucker for a good instrumental that gets its kicks from a lot of wankery. Solos, leads, cool riffs, the song has them all and throws them at you hard. I'm sure a lot out there find the song lacking a bit on tastefulness, but I love it.
15. Steal Them BlindThere is only one Firewind album with an opening track that won't make this list. They generally know how to get an album off to a great start, and this is no exception. Just great riffing and strong vocal melodies throughout, really gets you pumped up for the rest of the album.
Seeing how much our musical interests seem to intercept, I'd like to know more about this band. Can you describe their musical style a little more and offer similar bands so I can get a better feel of what they do before I check them out?
They are closest to power metal, genre wise, but I don't really want to just call them that. An important thing to remember when checking them out is that they have two very distinctive eras. I like both equally, but a lot of people have strong feelings one way or the other. Their older material is more guitar oriented, heavy, crunch riffs, and a rawer sound in general. Their last two albums have included a vocalist who is a lot cleaner in some ways, keyboards are more prominent, but not in a prog way, but often not in a very power metal way either. It's actually kind of neat what they do a lot of the time. The newer material also has much cleaner production.
In general if you like power metal with a strong melodic core, lots of well rounded guitar work, then you'll really enjoy Firewind, and in general I definitely recommend checking them out.