Assorted Thoughts From An Unsorted Mind: The Metal Project: The Nineties part two

Ever wonder how many Metal songs there are that have "Metal" in the title? I did and that's why I set out to find as many on Youtube as I could. Welcome to The Metal Project.

The mid-nineties were not looking good for Heavy Metal. The LA scene had been comprehensively nuked, a number of major players were in a creative slump or trying to make the music they thought people wanted, and Judas Priest still hadn't got round to finding a new singer yet.
The legendary Monsters Of Rock festival drew its last breath in 1996 and "Kerrang" had morphed into an "Alternative" mag that was actively scathing of any metal band that wasn't downtuned and angry.
But as so often happens, Metal was about to make a bit of a comeback.
To begin with, since Ozzy Osbourne couldn't find a touring festival that wanted him, he created his own - Ozzfest - and that acted as a springboard for Metal's next wave of bands.
Whether the likes of Korn, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit are actually "Metal" is an argument going to rage long after those bands shuffle into retirement . But all of a sudden it was okay to use the "M" word in public and you have to wonder how many people rediscovered the Old Masters through Nu-Metal.
Now while the Anglo-Saxons were getting excited about bands with baggy pants and DJs, Sweden's Hammerfall and Italian loons Rhapsody were spearheading a new generation of European Power Metal bands. They were fast, they were melodic and they were not afraid to sing about knights, dragons and the glories of Metal. Expect to see lots of those bands popping up as I move on into the next decade.
I should also really mention that there's always a determined core of bands going "Screw fashion. Let's thrash"

So to sum up, the Nineties may not have been a golden era for Heavy Metal but rumours of its death were greatly exaggerated.

Well that intro turned out longer than I was expecting. Let's have some music.