Anniversary Series - 2000!

Once again, it's the middle of the month, so it's time for another anniversary article.  This time, 2000!  Once we got over the whole Y2K nonsense, what rocked that year?  I'm here to tell you!

Let's start off with some power metal, as the genre had really its stride by this point.  HammerFall would give us Renegade, with iconic tracks like the title track, "The Way of the Warrior," and "A Legend Reborn."  Nightwish expanded their symphonic stylings with Wishmaster, featuring another great title track, "Deep Silent Complete," and the dramatic number "The Kinslayer."  Other highlights include Rhapsody of Fire's Dawn of Victory, which gave us "Holy Thunderfoce," and Edguy's rerecording of Savage Poetry, which has the epic "Eyes of the Tyrant," a ten minute epic that goes through many different moods.

However, the one power metal album that stands out to me the most is Stratovarius's Infinite.  Building off of the sound of their successful trilogy of Episode, Visions, and Destiny, they add some thicker grit to their guitars and push to even greater heights.  Kicking off with the opening rocker "Hunting High and Low," the album moves through some great tracks.  "Millennium" is another great high-speed affair, "Phoenix" is a personal favorite with some massive riffs, and "Infinity" is probably their best epic track.  Full of speed and grandiosity, this album is pretty much peak power metal for me.

Of course, there were other metal bands doing work at this time.  Trans-Siberian Orchestra's third album gets away from their Christmas carols to give us a new story about the life and death of Beethoven in Beethoven's Last Night.  Melodramatic, but with some nice songs, and the references to classic music are weaved in quite expertly.  Other notable records are Helloween's The Dark Ride, Dark Moor's The Hall of the Olden Dreams, and Rob Halford's return to traditional metal with his first solo album Resurrection. 

Meanwhile, progressive rock was starting to come alive again, with new works from new bands.  While I admit I haven't listened to much from this time period, I did recently listen to Transatlantic's debut album, and thought it was pretty decent.

Finally, another genre that was big at this time was post-grunge.  While most of the stuff I'm familiar with didn't come out this particular year, one big album did, and that's The Better Life by 3 Doors Down.  This has to be one of the best debut albums I've ever heard, and I put it along side Boston's and Asia's first records as a solid rock album, from start to finish.  While "Kryptonite" would be the bit hit single from the record, the rest of the album is just a great, with songs like the crunchy "Loser," the driven "Duck and Run," the touching ballad "Be Like That," and the uplifting "So I Need You."  Honestly, I could have put all eleven tracks of this album on the playlist below, but I tried to keep it to the best.

So that's 2000!  Perhaps not as much variety as I would like, but I'm growing!  Also, if you think I've missed something, speak up!  These playlists are not set in stone, you know!