Video Review: The Metal Shakespeare Company - To Bleed or Not to Bleed

I love power metal in a completely straightforward and non-ironic fashion. I enjoy Shakespeare a great deal. I think the marriage of the two - as personified by The Metal Shakespeare Company, seen performing in the video above - is absolutely brilliant in its simple logic: power metal is full of guys running around in tights singing about warriors. Shakespeare is full of guys in tights acting as warriors. Convergence is almost primal in its necessity. In the case of The Metal Shakespeare Company, it doesn't hurt that their showcase song isn't half bad.

However, as is appropriate - theater being a performing art, after all - it's the video that really puts this band over the top. The mingling of tights and tennis shoes, the tongue-in-cheek posturing and goofy antics, the formal garden filming location; all might seem amateurish in the wrong hands, but The Metal Shakespeare Company has the stage presence necessary to make the video look fun instead of stupid. I'd love to see them replicate the act on a live stage.

Power Metal Original on Finnish Idol

Not to belabor the point, but Finland's version of Idol featured the above tune - sung by Ari Koivunen, the same guy who covered The Evil That Men Do in an earlier episode - as Ari's final performance. The same guy just sold 30,000 units of his debut album, making him a platinum artist (smaller population means lower relative numbers for sales, I guess) in Finland. The music in the video isn't particularly interesting (straightforward power metal offering nothing challenging) and I wouldn't call Ari a captivating performer - at least not at this stage of his career - but you better believe the same guy in the US wouldn't get nearly as much respect in American Idol, let alone on the album charts.
Via Latency Issues

The Most Metal Country

My buddy Seth just sent me a link to Finland's Top 40 chart, where reside a bunch of Finnish titles, some pop selections imported from the States and...most of Metallica's catalog? Confused, I asked him when the Finnish equivalent of Billboard released this chart. "It's current," he said. "I guess they don't use release dates - if Metallica is selling, put 'em up there!" We examined further and picked out at least four metal acts in the top 40, including six of the top ten. It is therefore my great pleasure, without any further ado (or additional research into say, the charts of Sweden and Norway) to name Finland the most metal country on Earth. They should really use this in promotional materials: "Come to Finland, see the lovely countryside and hear the power metal gracing the airwaves, because we're the Most Metal Country on Earth. Take that, Scandinavia."