Mods are drunk, post/comment your off-genre recommendations! ( youtu.be )

Dream Evil - The Book of Heavy Metal (Sweden, 2004)

In 2005 or so, when media consumption was a different animal, I found that sampler CDs were a great way to explore a bunch of bands at once without committing to a whole album of each. I went to my local CD Warehouse and Cheapo and snapped up a couple generations of Identity and Metal For The Masses - most of the stuff that resonated was metalcore and death metal (Heaven Shall Burn, God Forbid, Arch Enemy, etc.), but this weird power metal meta-track also stuck in my head. Also, it turns out the music video is way better than I could have imagined.