I've got a fun post for everyone. Lets take all the Headliners from the past and rank them by your favorites... but under one condition. You cannot count any albums or events that happened after the band's PP performance at the time. For example, when Edguy headlined, you have to pretend as if the Superheroes EP never happened. This may lower, or in some cases raise, what your ranking would have been for the band. This would include this year's headliners. I'm assuming most people will just use Angra's second performance in their ranking at VI and not count III.
We could also separately rank the headliners who have already played by who had the best performance. Only not all of us have seen every Prog Power, so it may not be a fair ranking. I've only seen III through VI. Thats still four years of Prog Power... wow, there was a time when Prog Power was a new concept people got excited about for its mere existence Now, it's so mainstream in the prog/power community, it's a staple, perhaps the center of the movement's existence. We've gone from hoping good prog/power bands will accept playing at Prog Power, to good prog/power bands being lucky to be chosen for the event.
Anyhow... I'm sure Glenn would be very curious to see how we'd rank the bands. Here's my pick. For grins and giggles, I'm also going to rank the best years for band quality (at the time) for each Festival.
1.) Blind Guardian
2.) Angra (although performance wise, this was my favorite headliner)
3.) Symphony X
4.) Stratovarius
5.) Pain of Salvation (in '01, PoS had better albums so far
6.) Nightwish
7.) Kamelot
8.) Edguy
9.) Evergey
10.) Nevermore
11.) Weapons of Mass Destruction (had Zak Stevens headlined and Sava played the newer stuff, this would have been higher)
12.) Rage
Every headliner so far, has been excellent, so I'm not complaining when I put Nevermore and Evergrey toward the bottom. I simply prefer previous year headliners a little better.
Festival Ranking (I've only attended III-VI)...
1.) III (although I was too smashed for most of this
2.) V
3.) IV and VI tied (I liked VI's top 4 more than IV's top 4; but preferred IV's bottom 6 to VI's bottom 6.)
The Michael
We could also separately rank the headliners who have already played by who had the best performance. Only not all of us have seen every Prog Power, so it may not be a fair ranking. I've only seen III through VI. Thats still four years of Prog Power... wow, there was a time when Prog Power was a new concept people got excited about for its mere existence Now, it's so mainstream in the prog/power community, it's a staple, perhaps the center of the movement's existence. We've gone from hoping good prog/power bands will accept playing at Prog Power, to good prog/power bands being lucky to be chosen for the event.
Anyhow... I'm sure Glenn would be very curious to see how we'd rank the bands. Here's my pick. For grins and giggles, I'm also going to rank the best years for band quality (at the time) for each Festival.
1.) Blind Guardian
2.) Angra (although performance wise, this was my favorite headliner)
3.) Symphony X
4.) Stratovarius
5.) Pain of Salvation (in '01, PoS had better albums so far
6.) Nightwish
7.) Kamelot
8.) Edguy
9.) Evergey
10.) Nevermore
11.) Weapons of Mass Destruction (had Zak Stevens headlined and Sava played the newer stuff, this would have been higher)
12.) Rage
Every headliner so far, has been excellent, so I'm not complaining when I put Nevermore and Evergrey toward the bottom. I simply prefer previous year headliners a little better.
Festival Ranking (I've only attended III-VI)...
1.) III (although I was too smashed for most of this
2.) V
3.) IV and VI tied (I liked VI's top 4 more than IV's top 4; but preferred IV's bottom 6 to VI's bottom 6.)
The Michael