Been on something of a prog bender recently...
Song: 'Where Dragons Rule'
Artist: Crimson Glory
Album: Transcendence (1988)
Genre: Power / progressive metal
Comments: This whole album is amazing, but that quasi-Asiatic lick at 0:40 on this track is what really bowls me over. Not to mention that the lyrics are dripping with cartoony cheese, but the fact that they are belted out with extreme sincerity at the top of the late lamented Pat 'Midnight' McDonald's lungs just makes them that much more awesome. 'We KILL for the Dragon!'
Song: 'The Killing Words'
Artist: Queensrÿche
Album: Rage for Order (1986)
Genre: Power / progressive metal / hard rock
Comments: Allow me to take you back in time, to those days of yore when Geoff Tate actually had a voice, could use it to effect, and wasn't a total yob. His vocals are actually what really make this song work so well, as it would otherwise fall into danger of becoming a slightly-better-than-average Foreigner-style album-oriented rock ballad. It's actually kind of a shame it took me so long to pick up Rage for Order given how much of a fanatic I am for The Warning and Operation: Mindcrime - but it is an album of very much the same calibre, and this song is one of my favourites.
Song: 'Ashes'
Artist: Threshold
Album: March of Progress (2012)
Genre: Progressive metal
Comments: I love Threshold and everything they have ever done, to the point where it's impossible for me to pick out a favourite album (though I'm particularly fond of Hypothetical, Subsurface and Dead Reckoning). Threshold have maintained a surprisingly consistent sound throughout their entire career, but the combination of deceptively-mainstream rock progressions with heavy instrumentation and tight harmonic choruses - equal parts Metallica and Yes - is an eternally-young one when Threshold puts it together.