10 Greatest Power Metal Albums Of All Time

Staying with theme of albums around incredibly ambitious concepts, Finnish metal legends Stratovarius delivered one hell of a power packed, philosophical journey, on their 1997 album visions. As the name partially hints at, the album was based on the works and beliefs of Nostradamus.

Noted for the unique nature of the theme, the songs are somewhat more constrained to power metal norms compared to their other albums, especially Tolkki’s guitar work. However that is more than compensated by the sheer quality of the music.

The instrumental Holy Light gives us some wonderful guitar-piano combinations between Tolkii and Jens, the ballad Coming Home is a bundle of raw emotion, and then of course, there is the main highlight of the album, the all-time classic, Black Diamond.

One downside of the album is the title track. For a song that runs over ten minutes, the music doesn’t entirely justify or warrant the over-extended length.

With that aside though, Visions definitely provided us a glimpse of what the very best of power metal can look like.