This album has one bad song. All the others are so good that I keep giving “A Tale that Wasn’t Right” chance after chance, convinced that I must be missing out on its genius somehow. But it remains a bad song.

The rest of the tracks are classic German speed/power metal, with lots of riffs, huge choruses, and a pleasant sense of camp. Helloween is the band that can take you on a 14 minute progressive metal journey, and midway through, you get a lyrical reference to Charles Schultz’s Peanuts. The band’s childlike naivete and sense of humor is genuinely refreshing, and set them apart from a metal scene that was already becoming laughably self-serious.

Kai Hansen is a dominating songwriting force here. His high speed-cookers “I’m Alive” and “Twilight of the Gods” are very fast, the former more agitated, the latter more ambitious and story-driven. “A Little Time” and “Future World” are catchy midpaced rockers, the latter having its childlike melodies cut with creepy brainwashed lyrics – this isn’t power metal as much as Jim Jones metal.

“A Tale that Wasn’t Right” dull and sloppy, but Michael Kiske’s piercing voice is somewhat a point of interest. “Initiation” and “Follow the Sign” are little filler instrumentals that help add a little atmosphere between tracks. The Keeper albums aren’t concept albums as such, unless it’s possible to be a concept album without a concept. The only thing uniting them is the uniting them is the vaguely Nostradamus-like character of the Keeper, who has all of time and space floating within his cowl.

The final song is “Halloween” (A plus two E’s), an incredible recap of Helloween’s (three E’s) career to date: heavy Anthrax-esque thrash riffs, speedy tremolo picking, what seems to be several dozen harmonised guitar solos smashing together in a musical clown car collision, and Kiske nailing ungodly high notes. An astonishing blizzard of speed and technicality that pretty much set the bar on what’s possible with power metal – and yet the songwriting is clever enough that it can be condensed into a 5 minute single while still making sense.

The songs are great, and the lasting impression is one of grandeur, fun, and nostalgia. Sad, too. The Keeper of the Seven Keys diptych came too late to launch them to stardom. Come another couple of years and they’d be a band in ruins – destroyed from the inside by a depressed drummer and egomaniac singer, destroyed from the outside by the advent of grunge rock. By the time they recovered, the window of opportunity was gone. They’re still battling on, without Kai, Kiske, or Schwichtenberg, but they never regained what they’d had before.

With this album nearly twenty years old, its touching to remember the band that was king, if only for A Little Time.

If you’re a Nightwish fan in 2015, I have a question about your fingernails. Are they chewed ragged, or have you gnawed them away completely by this point?

The last four years have seen levels of melodrama and self-parody normally reserved for Manowar. An uninspired studio album. A failed feature film. A frontwoman who left the band so abruptly there’s still skid marks around the microphone stand. A drummer forced into retirement by chronic insomnia. The announcement that Richard Dawkins would feature on the new album. A concept album about Scrooge McDuck. Tuomas crying because people had the cheek to listen “Elan” on February 10 instead of February 13 like he’d planned.

The stars were aligned for Endless Forms Most Beautiful to be the most pretentious and obnoxious Nightwish album to date. It isn’t. Honestly, sometimes I think it could stand to be a bit more pretentious and obnoxious.

New vocalist Floor Jansen is kept in cruise control mode, and her performance lacks both Tarja’s emotion and Anette’s chest-belted power. The production is scaled back to match, with a less savage guitar attack and quieter drums. Into the gaps flow an increased number of orchestral parts, mixed with Celtic instrumentation from new member Troy Donockley.

“Shudder Before the Beautiful”, an animated uptempo rocker similar to “Dark Chest of Wonders.” There’s a quote from Dickie Dawkie, Pip William’s trademark orchestration, and then Emppu Vuorinen’s guitars crash in to heart-racing effect. There’s duelling guitar/keyboard solos…when was the last time a Nightwish album had those? A powerful start to the album.

Lead single “Elan” is a delicate and fragile song. This song about triumphant human endeavor seems more like a guttering candle that could go out at any moment. “Alpenglow” works the same formula to better effect, featuring the album’s strongest chorus. Songs in a similar vein include “My Walden” and “Edema Ruh”. The first is a chance for Donockley to go hogwild on his uillean pipes and so forth. The second is a tribute to the novels of Patrick Rothfuss.

The album’s heavier side has some of the deadness and dryness we’ve come to expect. So many bands have done the “Rammstein + orchestra” thing by now that it’s hard to muster much excitement, no matter who’s singing it. “Weak Fantasy” has an Latin-influenced middle section to break up the chugging. “Yours Is An Empty Hope” is the album’s fastest song, with lots of vocal hysterics from Marco Hietala and another nod to “Dark Chest of Wonders” in the riff development.

“The Greatest Show on Earth” doesn’t quite pay for its 24 minute lodging, but it’s a strong song, telling the story of the evolution of life via symphonic metal and spoken parts by Richard Dawkins. It’s a bit like “A Song of Myself” from the last album – the “song” gets in, does it’s thing, gets out, then we drift off into a land of pure symphony and sectional development, unencumbered by the need to restate a refrain or remind the listener of what has gone before.

At worst, Nightwish is holding steady – an achievement, considering the battering of the last few years. At best, they’ve exceeded Imaginaerium and are approaching Dark Passion Play in quality, although Endless Forms Most Beautiful lacks an epic as good as The Poet and the Pendulum, or radio fodder as good as Amaranth.

It’s clearly not a return to the band’s glory days, though. I think we all know what needs to happen if that’s to be the next step.

There are no rules. Legal battles. Turning forty. A new singer. Sophomore slump. The seminal monster punk band takes all these ingredients and turns it into their best album ever.

A bold claim, but Famous Monsters backs it up. It’s the same great Misfits songwriting, now with modern production, a more expressive singer, and an even greater attention to melody and violence. Where Walk Among Us fired a machine gun at random, Famous Monsters takes precise aim and scores a perfect spread at a duly licensed gun-range because safety is important and these guys have Roth IRAs to manage now, doncha know.

Okay, the early spontaneity is missing, but the band sounds so good now it doesn’t matter. Doyle’s guttural guitars merge with Jerry’s bass to create a crushing bulldozer of sound, with Dr Chud’s drumming being downright inhuman(oid?). Replacement singer is Michale Graves is an astonishing find. His voice is rich and gleamingly smooth, like punk rock’s answer to Caruso. The band really should have worked harder to hold on to him.

The run of songs that starts from track 3 and finishes with track 7 is incredible, from the cruising power and energy of “Dust to Dust” and “Scream” to the coked-up thrashing of “Witch Hunt” and “Crawling Eye”, this is the stuff the Misfits are all about. Essential!

The later songs aren’t as strong, but they show the band’s more diverse side. Nobody these days knows how to mix punk with anything except ska and pop, but the Misfits would always convincingly combine their signature style with genres like NWOBHM and surf rock. Here we get a mini doo-wop epic called “Saturday Night”, and a plodding Cure-esque album closer called “Helena”

It has a few too many songs with few too little ideas, but that’s something you get used to with punk rock. Grognards will never accept any version of the band that doesn’t have Danzig behind the microphone, but everyone else will probably find Famous Monsters to be the strongest and most consistent Misfits album.