Quote:

You should play power (5th) chords on a heavily distorted guitar. Use all downstrokes because they're more menacing. (Advice from James Hetfield).




Yes, exactly.
That's where they've gained most of their prominence. With heavy distortion, a guitar chord loses a lot of its major-or-minor aspects and other tonal qualities and is brought down to its sheer essence.
So, with Heavy Metal bands, for example, the 1-5 power chord is all that's needed to play and drive the song along.

As I alluded to earlier, Pete Townshend is thought of as the "father of the power chord." Many of his guitar riffs for The Who were basic C5 type of things. And also a lot of suspended chords.

But don't be fooled. (No pun intended.) Pete was (is) very inventive in the types and ways that he used those chords.