GREATEST METAL ALBUM CUP - Winner: Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son!

Ooooooooh boy. Dirt vs Defenders Of The Faith. Defenders is one of Priest's best records out of the 80's (if not the best!). It's totally devoid of fillers, features some really well composed easy listening hard n' heavy like Some Heads Are Gonna Roll, Love Bites and Rock Hard Ride Free, pounding heavy metal tunes like Freewheel Burning, Eat Me Alive or Jawbreaker, a great anthem to close the album and spearheading it one of Priest's best tunes in The Sentinel. With a comfortable place in my Judas Priest top 5 this is a classic for the ages. Personally I prefer Dirt as an album so I gave my vote to Alice In Chains... but since this is a Metal game i'm 100% fine with the fact that Judas will win this matchup.

Once again I must stress how Cowboys From Hell was pivotal for 90's metal. But Rust In Peace? Arguably one of Thrash's best records? This is an absolute no filler intricate yet powerful as hell masterpiece and I won't even waste my time (or yours) to justify these claims. If you don't know it what the hell are doing here??? Go listen to it immediately! Megadeth.

And here's another matchup that will undoubtedly leave another amazing album outside this game. Master Of Reality is for many the best album out of the incredible first six albums by Sabbath. Personally I may risk to say that, despite being great is my least favorite (alongside with the debut). Don't get me wrong: this is filled with astonishing tracks. It all starts with my favorite track here, the amazing stoner anthem that is Sweat Leaf (Lord Of This World has its charm in this typology but not as much as this excellent opener), heavy riffage in Children Of The Grave (Into The Void and After Forever also second this more heavy metal vibe in a truly solid way) and the utterly beautiful and sad Solitude. Hey another excellent album by early Sabbath although I pretty much prefer the other four (Paranoid, Vol 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and sabotage). Taking that in account I'll go with Helloween on this one, since it's my second favorite by the band. I'll reserve my Sabbath votes for Paranoid and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (since Sabotage and Vol 4 were beaten) .

Although being an overall great record featuring some brutal tunes like Rapid Fire, Metal Gods, Grinder, Breaking The Law or Steeler I always thought British Steel to be uneven and a bit overrated. And despite featuring some fillers and the crappy Living After Midnight it surely deserves to be labeled as a classic. Plus Britsh Steel is an easy pick in a matchup against a snooze ballad fest. Judas Priest.
 
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Indeed. This is the album that did it all first. Priest did it on a song in 1977 (typical double bass, fast guitar harmonies; the double bass was done before, not the guitars), but Helloween made a style of it. They created the subgenre. They started rough, with Metallica-like rawness to the riffs and even voice. These rougher aspects make the album an a-typical power metal album, or proto power metal. Surely one of a kind.

Just play that track LC posted. Kicks so much ass. What a drive and aggression. The energy is relentless. Can't beat those awesome guitar melodies either. Perfect combination.
 
LooseCannon said:
Too much effort to fix now.
Click to expand...
I hope it will not be "fixed".
I have gone in great length (in this topic, but also in private message when I submitted the video links) advocating that the mini-EP should be part of it.

(Besides, it was already added in 1987)
 
Defenders Of The Faith is my personal favourite Priest album. I can live without the last two songs though but all the others are pure perfect Priest pleasure.
Dirt is the pinnacle of Alice In Chains. I still remember the first time hearing Would? on De Afrekening ,the hitparade of the more alternative Belgian radio channel. After a few weeks there was also Them Bones which I even liked more so I didn't have to think long on which album to buy. I listened to the tape over and over and over again in my room. For weeks! The tape is long gone but replaced by a CD which often finds its way to the player. And when it does, it takes me back to the 90´s again... So Dirt it is.
 
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Well, three run-aways and one matchup where a band (Black Sabbath) has a strong lead but a comeback is still possible.

If I had to guess, there won't be any changes. But we will see!
 
Defenders Of The Faith has some cool songs on it for sure. “Freewheel Burning”, “The Sentinel”, and “Night Comes Down” are all pretty great, and there’s a solid second tier of “Jawbreaker”, “Eat Me Alive”, and “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll”. The instrumental parts of “Rock Hard Ride Free” are also pretty nice even if most of the vocal parts aren’t. But that still leaves a couple of filler tracks, and even the second tier songs on this album aren’t quite as strong as people often make them out to be. When compared against the all killer, no filler wall of Dirt, the decision here should be obvious. Sorry, Dr. Kollatyndog Fordjeddie’s Saapoontangman, but your second cousin on @Collin ’s side Colliesel FTBantamaticoftheJerwickarus 10.857’s nominee came to snuff your rooster. Winner: Alice In Chains

Rust In Peace has 6 stone cold metal masterpieces on it — “Holy Wars...The Punishment Due”, “Hangar 18”, “Five Magics”, “Lucretia”, “Tornado Of Souls”, and “Rust In Peace...Polaris”. But then it also has the not-so-great “Take No Prisoners” and “Poison Was The Cure”, and the pure filler track “Dawn Patrol”. It’s also got excessively dry production from Megadeth trying to chase Metallica’s tail to make their album sound more like ...And Justice For All. So yeah, I think this is a noticeably flawed album that’s still about 2/3 stellar. Does it have what it takes to go all the way? I don’t think so. But compared to the best that Pantera could muster it’s still a diamond-crusted steamroller that plows through this C-list mediocrity without a second thought. An easy call for Dr. Karllinianax The Whooshnightie’s FTBlaackanael Wieselman’s choice. Winner: Megadeth

This Black Sabbath album is one of the better Ozzy-era ones we’ve encountered in the GMAC to date. “Sweet Leaf” and “After Forever” are both strong, and “Children Of The Grave” and “Solitude” are solid, but the rest is forgettable. Yeah, yeah, sacrilege. It’s up against a super-uneven early Helloween album that has some corkers like “Ride The Sky” and “Phantoms Of Death”, and some iffy-but-mostly-solid stuff like “Guardians” and “Gorgar”, and then a bunch of filler. This is actually pretty close, but in the end I think I’m going to go with the higher highs here, and that’s not a pot metaphor. Sorry, The Pornfed Fleshlight, but I’m going with Forlata Stark’s nominee here. Winner: Helloween

British Steel is overrated. There, I said it. “Breaking The Law” kicks ass, and “Living After Midnight” and “The Rage” are pretty cool, but beyond that it’s a bit of a wasteland. For the rest of the tracks there’s occasionally a cool groove here and a cool solo there, but the songwriting is sorely lacking. Compare that to Love At First Sting, which has at least 3 completely ass-kicking songs and nothing lower in quality than the stronger second tier on the Judas Priest album, and this is another easy decision. Sorry, Yaxmaticdog80, but PB&J Foto’s choice takes this one. Winner: Scorpions
 
Love At First Sting is one of the best albums of Scorpions (it's in my top 3 albums of theirs), but against British Steel ... - well, tough draw.
 
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