A few things. Cheesiness, fakeness, British pride and flag waving onstage (America ftw), the whole cartoony stage act. I'm not really a fan of power metal in general (aside from rare exceptions like SX) and I consider them to have many elements of power metal. Umm they're like if spinal tap took themselves way too seriously. The singer is cocky and not in a good way.
To be honest, I think I may have a higher tolerance for a lot of power metal's stuff than many others on this forum. Not a point of pride or anything but just an observation.
But it's awesome though. Their Powerslave live performances in the '80s were the shit, man! Jets of flame coming out of the stage, the stage looking like an Egyptian temple, Bruce going full-on Birdman, etc. It was pretty awesome. Cheesy but awesome.
i considered maiden overrated for 10+ years but then at some point they started sounding a lot more wild and tense and beautifully constructed to me and i had to eat my words. they contain a lot of qualities that i want out of music but it took a long time to really appreciate that, probably because i was already very familiar with them back when i was pretty exclusively into BM and DM.
I started with death metal as a teenager and didn't even like anything with clean vocals. In my 20s I started to realize I was being a fucking idiot and missing out on most of the good metal that exists.
I started with death metal as a teenager and didn't even like anything with clean vocals. In my 20s I started to realize I was being a fucking idiot and missing out on most of the good metal that exists.