Just a few years ago, nobody knew what power metal was at all apart from a few people in Europe (and if one more person asks if I listen to Rammstein when I mention that most of my music comes from Germany I'm going to throttle them). But certain little subsections of it have crept into popularity, and it's now likely that a lot of people will have heard of bands like Sonata Arctica, Dragonforce and Nightwish.

The trouble with becoming popular is that your increasingly rabid fanbase can give you a bad reputation as a whole (e.g. Nobuo Uematsu, most Squaresoft games). A practice among particularly manic listeners that's become fairly common thanks to Youtube is making "anime(/animated) music videos" of films or games set to music. Sometimes they can fit - one of the most overdone is Kingdom Hearts to Sonata Arctica's 'Kingdom for a Heart' due to the quite unbelievable appropriateness of the title, but usually it doesn't matter how stretched or non-existent the link is between them.

As Nightwish's "Wish I Had An Angel" is what I'd hazard as one of the most popular songs in the entire genre - possibly because it combines harsh and smooth vocals as well as a power metal sound and an almost Europop-like beat - it's now been attached to a variety of unlikely things. Such as:

• Alone in the Dark (I should probably point out that this is actually the official one, but it easily qualifies as a stupid thing due to being written by Uwe Boll)


• Final Fantasy VII


• Brother Bear


• Doom (the film)


• Final Fantasy VIII


• The Sims


• Sailor Moon


• Dragonball Z


• Final Fantasy IX


• The Lion King


• Harry Potter


• Final Fantasy X


• Final Fantasy X-2


• Starlight Express


• Rammstein


• Kingdom Hearts again


• An entire tribute to Tails or Miles or whatever his name is now


• Just put up to double speed


• Lip-syncing it through your silly hair


• And an entirely nonsensical custom-made 3D rendered film!

Oh, and as I mentioned KH AMVs before, putting it to Modern Talking's 'Witchqueen of Eldorado' has to have a mention. That one's going to be difficult to beat.