David DeFeis

David DeFeis — American vocalist and keyboardist — is the founder and the voice of Virgin Steele, one of the most singular bands in American heavy metal. Virgin Steele emerged in New York in the early 1980s, at the moment American metal was splitting between thrash and glam. DeFeis took the band in a third direction: epic metal with operatic structure, mythological subject matter developed across entire records and arrangements including keyboards, choir and piano alongside the guitars. He called it "barbaric-romantic metal". His voice is the central element of that project. DeFeis sings across a very wide range, from dramatic low register to strained highs, and uses timbre theatrically — closer to an opera performer than to a conventional metal singer. It is an approach that divides opinion and has no obvious imitators. The concept records of the 1990s, especially the two-part The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the saga based on Greek mythology, are the work the band is remembered for. Few artists in metal have sustained so specific an authorial conception for four decades.