I spent much of the 80’s and 90’s in a bubble musically and, as a result, missed some good metal. The sad thing is metal is probably my favorite genre and now that I’m getting back into it I’m loving it. I’ve been trying to purchase at least the classics and then expand from there so here’s what I’ve picked up recently:
Black sabbath: Symptom of the Universe: The Original Black Sabbath 1970-1978 Iron Maiden: The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son Metallica: Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, …And Justice For All Pantera: Cowboys From Hell, Vulgar Display of Power Opeth: Blackwater Park, Damnation, Deliverance, Ghost Reveries AC/DC: Back in Black Alice in Chains: The Essential Alice in Chains Black Flag: Damaged (not metal I know but I also missed punk…) Guns n’ Roses: Greatest Hits System of a Down: Toxicity Tool: AEnima, Lateralus
And that’s pretty much it. Some of it is clearly not “metal” (some are more punk & grunge) but is hard enough and I like it enough to put it on the list. I really am not a big fan of 80’s hair metal like Ratt but if something’s good enough I’ll pick it up. I understand no metal collection is complete without some Slayer and Megadeath but I don’t know where to begin there.
Feel free to educate me. What other great metal albums should I be picking up?
You seem to be into the heavier type of American bands, so I would suggest some Iced Earth, specifically Night of the Stormrider and Burnt Offerings.
I am not sure if you would care too much for the hobbit metal, but there are quite a few decent bands. If you chose to dabble, here are some things worth sampling, maybe on a per song basis:
Blind Guardian-Imaginations From the Other Side
Edguy-Mandrake
Helloween-Better Than Raw
Symphony X-Odyssey and The Divine Wings of Tragedy
Sonata Arctica-Silence
I see Opeth on the list so I am assuming you are ok with death vocals, so some of the better albums in my collection:
Children of Bodom-Follow the Reaper
Dark Tranquillity-Pretty much their entire catalog
In Flames-Jester Race
Add Powerslave to the Maiden list, and My War and Slip it In by Black Flag - My War especially is an exact cross between Sabbath and hardcore.
I tend towards the weird, obscure, stoner end of things with regards to metal:
Melvins: Houdini and Stoner Witch are two good ones to start with - heavy, sludgy and awesome. The Melvins tend to get into some pretty extreme territory, but these two are probably the most mainstream-sounding albums.
Electric Wizard: The self-proclaimed heaviest band in the universe - intense stoner metal of epic proportions. See if you can track down Dopethrone, a classic slab of loud.
Mastodon: The new one, Blood Mountain, is just stupidly great. It’s got the twin-guitar attack of Maiden, the crunch of and speed of Slayer-esque thrash, and some of the craziest drumming you’ve ever heard. Blood Mountain tempers things a bit with some slower, but still awesome, tracks. Seriously, no metal fan should be without this album.
Add Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven, Tool’s Undertow, Megadeath’s Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying?, and a good classic Slayer and Sepultura album. Oh, and some Anthrax.
Well sorta-kinda-not really. I can overlook Opeth’s vocals just because they stuff they’re doing musically is so damn interesting. I will check out the other death metal recommendations.
A lot of these I’ve never heard of. The Melvins sound like a lot of fun. I’m almost afraid to ask what “hobbit metal” is… fantasy-themed metal?
I’d recommend Blind Guardian over Iced Earth. Granted, “Nightfall in Middle Earth” is about the Silmarillion, but that’s more elf metal than hobbit metal. “A Night at the Opera” is probably the album I’ve listened to most from them, and is goodly.
The Blind Guardian singer and the Iced Earth folks collaborated on a side project, Demons & Wizards, which is highly recommended if you like the two ingredients in it.
The Melvins are also the wellspring of a bewlidering amount of metal and noise music. Aside from their ridiculously prolific output as the Melvins, King Buzzo (guitarist and vocalist) also plays in Fantomas with Mike Patton and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, former bassist Joe Preston has an insane doom side project called Thrones and also plays bass in the mighty metal outfit High On Fire, and the Melvins current bassist is in yet another Mike Patton band called Tomahawk. Oh, and they’ve also backed up Jello Biafra on two collaborations.
You can add to your list the three albums by Kyuss (Blues for the Red Sun, Welcome to Sky Valley and And the circus leaves town), and the first three albums from Queens of the Stone age. I’d add to that some Suicidal Tendencies (Lights Camera Revolution & The Art of Rebellion) and Infectious Grooves’s Violent & Funky.
And if I may, if you have to listen to System of a Down, Steal this album is way better than this Toxicity piece of shit, imho of course.
I forgot to put them down but I have Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze by Queens of the Stone Age. Both are good but I like Songs for the Deaf a bit more.
Mastodon is killer, and Blood Mountain is probably their most accessible release yet. Definitely check it out.
A newer band in the same vein is Intronaut. Their new one, Void, is brilliant.
If you’re willing to stretch out a little bit, Meshuggah is one hell of a band. The vocals are basically entirely “hardcore” screaming, but if you don’t mind that the band is beyond sick: crazy super-downtuned polyrhythmic riffs, blistering Holdsworth-influenced guitar solos, some of the tightest fusion/metal drumming you’ve ever heard. Start with Destroy Erase Improve, which is the LP with the clearest lineage to old school thrash, and go chronologically from there. Chaosphere and Nothing are my faves, but they’re all stellar.
Strapping Young Lad is also a good time. They’re not as experimental as Meshuggah, but they’ve definitely got their own thing going on. It’s Devin Townsend’s band (ex-Vai), and features the mighty Gene Hoglan (Death, Testament, Death Angel) on drums. City, Alien and The New Black are probably their best releases.
One of my favorite releases of the year is from a young English band called Sikth. The vocals are kind of in the screamo vein, and that seems to turn a lot of people off, but again the band is insane.
Samples are available from all of these bands on myspace, so you should be able to quickly get a feel for whether they’d appeal to you.
I did much the same. Rock/Pop when I was younger and then I was an early adopter of rap music (RUn DMC, LL, Big Daddy Kane, Beasties, et.al.) prior to the gangsta and pimpification. SO my 80’s and nineties were all rap until grunge pulled me back. SOme of the stuff folks are mentioning are hugely popular with metal folks, but the vocals are missing something. I occasionally like a bit of a break in the middle of the throat lacerating screams.
SO, here’s mine
Ditto on those plus:
Pearl Jam - Ten
Life of Agony - River Runs Red
Moving forward a bit to the late 90’s and stuff you may completely hate based on your above diet of rock as of late, but it is where my tastes swung with my Rap-----> Grunge----->Rock progression:
Korn - self titled debut
System of A Down - self titled debut
Godsmack - self titled debut
Slipknot - self titled debut
Staind - forget the 1st and 2nd ones’s
These guys have all been around now and are hated by many due to their success, I guess. I was on the bandwagon with each first album and have every one since. The material varies from their beginnings, as expected, but there is a reason they were all hits with a lot of folks and continue to be around.
Hobbit metal is just a term that people seem to throw around for the flowery Euro progressive/power metal stuff. Although, Blind Guardian do love their hobbits.
The 3 bands I listed for death metal are all similar to Opeth in musical style, having that Swedish melodic death metal sound. Aside from the band Death, I don’t care too much for the traditional death metal bands.
I’m thirding Mastodon, at least for “Blood Mountain”. They’re pretty solid overall but the new album is nothing short of outstanding. If nothing else, give “Sleeping Giant” a whirl, as I consider it the stand-out track. And be sure to download all the cover/liner artwork you can find on these guys.
For stoner metal in the vein of Kyuss (who are awesome), Monster Magnet has their moments. I always like Wyndorf’s lyricism and singing, but I haven’t been a fan of the group’s sound drifting towards nu-metal in recent years. I’m more of a fan of the spacier surrealism of “Superjudge”, “Dopes To Infinity” and “Spine Of God”. Particularly “Superjudge” - I’m not sure they’ve ever been better. At the same time, one might argue that the older sound isn’t nearly as METAL, so that might hurt its cause here.
I’m also a pretty strong fan of Soundgarden, but they’re another case of a group that might not be METAL enough to apply.
For mechanical-feeling industrial that’s precision-crafted for headbanging and screaming, I like me some Fear Factory every now and then. Bonus points for having hilariously bad lyrics more often than not. Be warned, though, they only have two consistently strong albums, “Obsolete” and “Demanufacture”. And if you’re more a fan of death- rather than industrial-metal, you might only enjoy their debut, “Soul Of A New Machine”.
