Recommend me some quality Metal

Get Sirius. Listen to Hard Attack. Buy accordingly.

Opeth is a good recommendation. I like some Gojira too. Look into Sepultura again. Some of their songs are pretty good. Others are too thrashy (and have death metal vocals, which I don’t normally like, though Opeth does that too at times).

If you mean older bands, I highly recommend getting just two songs from Faith No More to add to your collection: Zombie Eaters and Jizzlobber. Great tunes. My tastes are similar to yours. I like old Pantera and old Metallica but not a lot of the newer stuff from either band.

Nile. Start with Black Seeds of Vengeance.

Also seconded (thirded?) Opeth and Isis.

Sirius used to have a portuguese drummer(Daniel Cardoso). He then went to also play bass, keyboard, guitar and also become the producer of a couple of their albums ^_^

You’ve already shown great initiative in embracing all of Metallica’s catalog, since that is generally a big poser sneer moment. In keeping with that spirit.

Iron Maiden: Gordon’s recommendation is perfect. 7th Son is probably one of my favorite albums of all time, although I would also add A Real Live One as a good roundup of a lot of their best pieces, especially for a casual fan. Otherwise great songs really come to life with psychotic crowd chanting as an additional instrument, with Fear of the Dark being a great example.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also suggest Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter (not a live version). All done appreciating the song itself?

Now there’s a meandering NWS live one (4:53 has a great payoff). It took me a while to get past the YayIyayIyaaaay part he tacks on to the beginning in the Real Live One performance as well, that’s why I included the studio, and the audio quality is way better on the live album, but rest assured the later improv part intermission is not included in the album. It’s just worth noting that some people saw Spinal Tap and said “that’s ridiculous” and others…others said “we need to be even more like that, times 11”.

Coheed & Cambria: My entry point for their music was their 2nd album, conveniently labeled In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3, and that remains the one I return to even after I’ve learned to enjoy their other works. Favor House Atlantic is the traditional favorite, but I’d say the IKSoSE:3 itself is my pick (set to FF9 cutscenes, which I guess is as appropriate as anything else if you’ve seen the Favor video).

It’s worth getting physical copies, if only so you can be 100% sure it’s not your fault when you can’t figure out what the hell is going on in these songs. I’m 100% sure, myself, but you just have to take it as the surreal prog metal it is.

System of A Down: their first album is great. I don’t mind their later albums, and it would be a shame to let arbitrary genre snobbery based more on an accident of time and shitty marketing than actual musical quality. That’s my 2 cents on that.

Sepultura:Arise. The Arise album and Chaos AD (Refuse/Resist) are great, with the former being a little less immediately accessible but still great. Unless you don’t think songs titled “Dead Embryonic Cells” and “Biotech is Godzilla” deserve a listen. The Hunt (off Chaos AD) is probably my favorite song of theirs but it’s not what you would call an accurate representation of most of their music.

Slayer: I know, fake playing Raining Blood sucks. I’m not particularly fond of speed metal as a genre, but there is one album I always recommend to people that hate Slayer, and that is Seasons In The Abyss, sort of Slayer’s Black Album in terms of hitting a sweet spot between their subgenre conventions and marketability, and it still kept songs like War Ensemble for the purists. Why didn’t either of those two make it on to Guitar Hero? I don’t know. It kills me, though.

madkevin: thanks for the Baroness recommendation.

I like the very last song on Seasons. It might actually be called Seasons In the Abyss, for all I know. That and South of Heaven are my favorite Slayer songs. They are both very moody and accessible, even if you don’t normally like Slayer. Excellent songs.

Oh, and Dead Embryonic Cells was one of the songs I had in mind when saying Sepultura has some good ones.

For Maiden, just get Live After Death and Stranger in a Strange Land (Wasted Years is fantastic, IMO).

Seasons In The Abyss also features more attempts at singing, instead of just barking out the lyrics like Arroya usually does. That said, Reign In Blood is still a awesome goddamn record.

madkevin: thanks for the Baroness recommendation.

No worries. I don’t know why they aren’t better known, because they’re much more accessible than most of the Relapse Records lineup.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, any Dillinger Escape Plan fans should check out the amazingly-named Genghis Tron, who take the concept of “glitch metal” a step or two further. Relapse is also home to the mighty Cephalic Carnage, who were the highlight for me of last year’s Summer Of Slaughter technical death metal tour - Cephalic Carnage are as technical as any band can be, but they manage to work in some pretty disparate elements of free jazz and even some flamenco into the grindcore onslaught.

The other odd-man-out of the Relapse stable is Zombi, who score massive points for the Argento name-drop. Not even a little bit metal, Zombi is one dude playing racks of analog synths with another dude drumming. Think Echoes-era Pink Floyd, or those awesome 80s John Carpenter soundtracks, or maybe Rush if they never met Alex Lifeson. No vocals, just lots of atmospheric tracks that make you wish you were listening to it at a planetarium.

That is correct. The video is pretty classy, what with the pyramids and all. When I first saw it as a kid, it blew my miiiiiiiiind.

For Maiden, just get Live After Death and Stranger in a Strange Land (Wasted Years is fantastic, IMO).

Did you mean “Somewhere in Time”? And, Wasted Years is great.

Some random favorites of mine, with the recommended album to check out:

Sacred Reich (Heal)
Iced Earth (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
Fear Factory (Demanufacture - Might not quite be what you are looking for, alternates between melodic singing & screaming. Some of the fastest double-bass drumming ever).
Machine Head (Burn My Eyes or the most recent: The Blackening)

I think all of these would fit nicely for what you are looking for.

Holy shit, this thread is making me feel like it’s Christmas morning. I’m typing this while listening to that incredible live version of Fear of the Dark that L_K posted (thanks!) and thanking the gods of metal.

I’ve listened to Metallica’s covers of Motorhead and didn’t really get into them. Though I get amazing levels of guilty pleasure from their Mercyful Fate medley… Was Lemmy one of the original rock gods? I’ve never heard him mentioned with anything less than reverence.

Any recommendation that includes the phrase “the treachery of Loki” is an instant-win. And the south has some surprisingly good stuff coming out of it. Not an area I associate with ‘the Metal’ much, but there you go.

This and the other Manowar rec make me want to listen to their music just in case I ever run into one of their fans.

And I totally looked for this thread. My Google-fu is weak. Gods of metal, hear my plea…

Helmet! Prong! Holy shit! I haven’t thought of these guys in days! Helmet never really stuck with me, but I’ve gotten more ‘simple pleasure’ enjoyment out of Prong than a lot of the bands I recommend people; good reliable speed metal, nothing fancy. Like the Def Leppard of thrash.

God, now I have to spend tons of money.

I’m glad you liked it. I prefer the over-the-top evil Maiden work more than the kind of thing Robert was suggesting, but I think a really good balance between the two was struck in 7th Son. A Real Live One was a huge part of my youth.

Blind Guardian has Iron Maiden-esque moments and I think (though I’ve never been able to keep metal taxonomy straight) fall into the “power metal” branch of the tree of rock.

I’ll happily second The Baroness recommendation; I’m pretty sure it was madkevin pimping them in a past thread that led me to it as well.

Isis gets a strong nod from me too, though it may be a bit far outside the kinds of metal you’re after. But definitely try it. A similar(ish) sound is my recent discover of Moonsorrow–got the album “Viides Luku: Havitetty” (“Chapter Five: Ravaged” I’m told, but for all I know it could mean Lucky Values: Have a Kitten. Non-english vocals metal is nice because you don’t even have to try to understand any lyrics!) from the Amazon download store for 2 bucks. (It’s just two tracks, but each is about 30 minutes long.) I assume it’s about Vikings and whatnot, but see above. Certainly sounds good when turned up loud, though.

YES. Ire Works is brilliant. Their other albums are worth checking out too, but they get progressively noisier and more aggressively obnoxious as you go back down their catalog. I love it all, but it’s not for everyone.

Also, Protest the Hero is a good young band. Flashy chops, good singer, and songs about Genghis Khan totally fucking people up.

Also, I know I plugged them in the other metal thread, but it is critically important that I do it again: motherfucking Meshuggah.

There are two tracks from their upcoming release ObZen on the MySpace page. I’ve heard the whole album and it is absolutely blistering.

Chaosphere is amazing.

I can’t offer any recommendations, but I tend to agree with you about that video. Friggin’ awesome.

H.

Indeed he was. Lemmy was the bass player for Hawkwind, a 60s space-rock outfit that is usually considered to be the most excessive band of that generally pretty excessive era. I’ve personally never really liked them, but even I have to salute their general craziness. Michael Moorcock used to write lyrics for them, so that should give you an indication of their level of trippiness.

Anyway, Lemmy grew dissatisfied with where Hawkwind was going so he bailed and made the mighty Motorhead. Their early albums were serious hard rock of the AC/DC stripe, but they also drew from the energy of the punk scene that was just starting up in England at the time. “Ace Of Spades”, probably the greatest hard rock song ever, is the apex of this period - fast, loud, and dumb, with Lemmy’s strained vocals and bass chording driving the song. But because they did it faster than anybody at the time, and because they were so single-minded about the concept of the band, they were a huge influence on the metal scene that followed, especially the speed and thrash branches of the metal famliy. Eventually, Motorhead themselves moved into a more metal direction, but the album Ace Of Spades I think captures them at their best.

I’m really looking forward to ObZen’s release. The playcount on “I” and “Catch 33” in my library just keeps getting higher, and the rest of their stuff only lags behind by a bit (Contradictions Collapse is really the only album that’s never done it for me.)

You won’t be disappointed. ObZen is easily one of their best albums.

I’m debating on whether to catch them on tour. Tickets are expensive, and Ministry is headlining. Ministry is cool and all, but I’m not all that excited about paying $50 in addition to $15 in Ticketmaster fees to watch Meshuggah play a 40 minute set. Hopefully they come back as headliners.

The only thing I’ll add to this thread that hasn’t been mentioned already is Wintersun.

I heard about them somewhere on the intarwebs a while ago and thought it was great.

More stuff by them
And another

I was going to mention Wintersun, they’re awesome, and they might actually have a new album coming out this year.