Recently, we've received criticism for the following quote:

"Leave the corporate radio driven crap behind and experience the all new genre of dark power metal"

The criticism comes from the misconception that we claim to be the first dark powermetal band. We did not intend for that conclusion to be reached. We are only saying that we are a band in that new genre. I feel that we must set the record straight, because otherwise people could get the wrong impression about us.

Putting you in our shoes, here was the problem we were faced with:  We couldn't call ourselves "thrash metal". Nowadays people think Lamb of God or Skeleton Witch: bands which have growling/screaming vocals unlike us. When we called ourselves "powermetal", people we're imagining a NWOBHM sound like Iron Maiden or Helloween, and after hearing our music, people would tell us that we sound darker than they expected. Eventually, we just kept the "dark" when we said "powermetal".

The second misconception is that the dark powermetal genre has been around for years. This is not true at all! The bands considered to be the founders of this form of metal (Iced Earth, Demons & Wizards, Nevermore) have been around for years, not the genre. For example, Iron maiden and Judas Priest, bands that existed since the 70's, are considered by many to have defined the genre of powermetal, however they were not called powermetal from the start. The term "powermetal" was coined years later; a fact clearly evident by Metallica's 1982 "Power Metal Demo", which has become a staple of thrash metal, but by today's definition, it is far from being powermetal. As of August 2007, if you Google "Dark Powermetal", you'll get 52 entries. Not 52 bands; 52 total results….on the internet. Clearly, it has to be considered new, because it's not a widely used by any major bands or even by the bands in that genre.

The 52 results might fuel the argument that "Dark Powermetal" isn't a valid genre; for if a genre was unique enough to warrant a new definition, then that would have already happened. It is and was! The term "American powermetal" is commonly used in Europe to define this form of music (which I know from living in Germany for a year) and can be read about on Wikipedia. Now, what is the MAJOR PROBLEM with this title? Americans have no idea what it means. You can't be a band in America, and say you are an American powermetal band; they'll just think you're being patriotic, and it won't tell them anything about your sound.

Genres are defined from necessity. In metal music, there is a vast range of different everything. In the era of Myspace, people have literally millions of bands to sift through. Even the most metal metalhead can't listen to everything, so genres help people narrow down their search.

So, finally, while we do consider our music to be original, we in no way consider it to be genre defining, and we've never made that claim.  If you are curious about where this whole topic started, check out MetalReview.com's review of our first full length "Yesterday's Tomorrow":

http://www.metalreview.com/3790/Silver-Cypher-Yesterday's-Tomorrow.aspx

And thanks for taking the time to read this long rant! - Jon