German Power Metal Scene

What the academic literature calls the "West German power metal scene" began in Hamburg in the mid-1980s, when Helloween crossed the speed of speed metal with wide choruses and high vocals. The two volumes of Keeper of the Seven Keys fixed a sound so characteristic that it became an adjective — the "Teutonic" sound. The scene organised itself around a handful of studios and producers, and musicians circulated between bands: Kai Hansen left Helloween to found Gamma Ray, Tobias Sammet built Edguy under the declared influence of his countrymen, and Blind Guardian took the formula toward the epic and the literary. The late 1990s brought a second wave — Freedom Call, Primal Fear, Masterplan, At Vance — that reignited the genre just as it was being written off as dated.