Hello Heathens, All week I’ve had Valley of the Damned by DragonForce stuck in my head. Even listening to the song a few times couldn’t get rid of the earworm so I decided to try to see if I could listen to some other power metal classics to clear it out. Some of my favorite tracks made it on to todays show and it’s always nice to visit the classic stuff.

Hello Heathens, A lot of new metal on the show this week and it’s been pretty damn refreshing to be listening to new stuff. Visiting the classics is always nice when you are just in a mood for some good stuff. 2020 was a great year for metal, and 2021 also seems to be a good year for new metal. Some of these bands should be no strangers to fans of the show by now.

Hello Heathens, I had a lot of fun putting together a last minute playlist for the show this week based on a conversation that I had a few weeks ago with a coworker. I was talking about the sub-genres of metal that I really enjoy and how it impacts my non-metal listening. I got onto talking about how post-metal and post-rock got me into shoegaze and my coworker had never heard of the genre shoegaze.

Hello Heathens, Short update this week as I have finals coming up. It’s spring time so we all know what that means… that’s right it’s grilling season. Looking forward to being able to grill with my friends now that the weather is nicer. Personal updates aside, it’s been nice to listen to metal that isn’t Nightwish this week. I had a lot of fun this week listening to new 2021 albums while I try to think about what I want to do with the show website.

This is it, the big post. Nightwish is a band that’s been around since 1996 and has released 9 studio albums, 1 ep, and 6 live albums. Their catalog can be split into 3 distinct eras with their 3 singers. Last week I talked about their first 5 albums with Tarja Turunen and played some of my favorite tracks off each album for the show. Tarja will forever be the singer that I most associate with the band as her vocals played a large part in their rise to fame in the metal world.

Well we are getting closer to the end of the semester, but I am still not tired of the opener for the show. Next week will be my first planned show in awhile which will be interesting. I’ll be covering all the Nightwish albums and trying to find the best albums for each of the three singers the band has had. I haven’t been listening to a lot of new 2021 metal this week so expect a lot of 2020 metal in the playlist.

Had a lot of fun this week listening to new and old power metal. The first metal album I ever bought was a Once by Nightwish which I think you could argue if it was or wasn’t a real power metal album. Since I got into metal I’ve always loved the cheesy lyrics, licks, and styles of power metal. It’s nice to see a group of people in metal who don’t take themselves as serious as other subgenres in metal do.

Todays show is going to be a lot of black metal. I’m not sure what exactly it was that put me in the mood for black metal, but today when I was trhinking of what kind of music I wanted to listen to to make a show playlist something about black metal relaly stuck out to me. I think that a big part of todays show was having The Serpentine Offering by Dimmu Borgir stuck in my head.

Hello Heathens, Well this is the first blog post on the official site of The Heavy Hymnal. Thanks for coming to the website to check out what is going on here and hopefully I will be able to update the site regularly with cool ass content and the show will finally have a real repository. The opener for this semester is still Proud to be Loud by Pantera off their first album to include Phil, Power Metal.