Heavenward - Teutonic classic you never heard about.

Yes, one of those bands that decided to play speed metal in the vein of Scanner and Mephisto - aka good music - just to fade into obscurity giving its place to all sorts of crappy power metal bands we know and can't get into today. But thats okay cause people never cared for pure speed metal anyway. Heavenward are re-releasing their debut "Within These Dreams" this December. Lonely review at metal archives points at Metal Church, besides already mentioned bands, as an influence rating the album as 82. "At that time Heavenward were compared by media and fans with bands like Queensryche, Helloween, Exxplorer and Blind Guardian" . Not sure about this, but the only downside of the LP I noticed is it's production, which hopefully will be fixed with reissue. Still the sound is far from being terrible. If such thing as progressive speed metal exists, this band is the closest you can get. Give them a try.

not bad. I like it.

That was really cool! Must try to remember to order the reissue, when it comes out.

Divebomb has some re-issues that are pretty cool too:

An okay band, although I'd take Scanner, Mania, and Chroming Rose any time of the day

stormspell wrote:

An okay band, although I'd take Scanner, Mania, and Chroming Rose any time of the day

Scanner can't be topped by anyone.

BearOnUnicycle wrote:

Scanner can't be topped by anyone.

In my books there are plenty of German classic power/speed bands above SCANNER, like but not limited to: RUNNING WILD, STORMWITCH, BLIND GUARDIAN, RISK, HELLOWEEN, GAMMA RAY, etc.