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

As long as we'll get one of your legendary Canadian love declarations in the drubl thread we'll be fine.

Damn autocorrect wanted me to write "Dublin". <_<
 
Probably the worst Skywalkyier-era album (@Jer you won't be surprised that I find their first two the best) but at least it's not Danzig. Similarly Rammstein vs bloody Nirvana. Never really liked Opeth but here we go. Tried to listen to Symphony X, I'm sure it's a great, serious, intellectual and important album, and I'll go for a dull Accept release, thank you very much.
Good round, I don't like any of the albums actually.
 
Ah... two really enjoyable albums to open up this round. Already said my part on Danzig's debut and regarding Skyclad I must confess I'm a long time fan. Curiously enough The Answer Machine is not on my upper echelon when I think about the band's catalogue (that being the 3 album stretch from their debut to Jonah's Arc, Irrational Anthems and Folkemón - my favorite). Nevertheless while Walkyier was on the band, I'm of the opinion everything Skyclad released was - to say the least - great stuff. And this album is no different: although falling in the calmer side of Skyclad there are some really exciting rock/metal approaches like Fainting By Numbers or Hellium, while stuff like Eirenarch or Worn Out Sole To Heel is way more into the folky side we're more used to. Nevertheless the almost Pink Floyd like smoothness of Single Phial is my favorite cut from another fine mes... excuse me... album by these Brits, granting them my vote.

Then yeah... a half the chart 80's AC/DC album. And it's ok, nothing against it: it's effective for what it's meant to (rock big time) but still miles short of doing so in the same scale Back In Black or to a less degree For Those About To Rock did. Orchid was kind of a forgotten album of mine in Opeth's metal era (unlike the amazing sophomore Morningrise). Nevertheless In The Mist She Was Standing has always been one of my two fav cuts here (brutal song!) and thanks to this game and making me revisit their debut, I grew fonder and fonder of it in the last weeks to a scale that it's actually my 4th favorite metal era record by now (Morningrise being the third, Blackwater Park the second and the almost perfect Still Life the first). Mikael and company may sound really rookie like, even clumsy and naive here but I find Opeth's debut way more exciting and sincere than Ghost Reveries and Watershed (that I've always thought portrait a band tired of playing more extreme metal - fact that would later be confirmed).

I've been a die hard fan from Rammstein since 1996. By die hard I mean REALLY die hard. Still have my ultra old Du Hast shirt, saw them preforming almost the entirety of their pyrotechnical (and also... ehem... squirting sausage) stage antics on a 1000 person capacity club in 1998 and to this very day I still own the original copies of Hezeleid and Sehnsucht. Their Ministry riffed Clawfinger tuned guitar was simply edgy as hell, the synth parts were minimalist smart combinations of Synth Pop, harsher Industrial and even some classical bias like Wagner or Ravel and finally Lindemann's voice was powerful as a ten ton anchor although being kind of a Laibach's Milan Fras rip off. Then Mutter came out and things changed. First they modified the guitar tuning and - IMO - lost lots of edge. Then half of the album is absolutely half baked. But hey... still a handful of great tracks present here so yeah... perhaps it was just a slump. Comes Reise Reise and no... it wasn't a slump. Same tuning, same 50/50 good songs/fillers but still I cut them some slack. Until Rosenrot came out... and what can I say? What an utter piece of crap. Really... what is that? Te Quiero Puta, Spring (is this an ode to Van Halen?), Benzin... really, what is this shit? So I rapidly lost the little appreciation I still had for them and also my attention until some years when they released their new single simply called ... Pussy?! Well... what I thought after listening to it was "these dudes are trolling everyone, it can only be". But no... it was really the new Rammstein "song". Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da was released shortly after and since sometimes I'm kind of a sensorial masochist who has a far from healthy tendency to wreck his own nerves, I gave it a listen. While not as bad as Rosenrot LIFAD is still feeble as it can be. Rammlied is perhaps the album's strongest take: a cross between the long lost glory of their first two records and Mein Herz Brennt and while being exciting it never achieves the punch of his forefathers. The following track is forgettable at best (this making it to a single says much about the record itself) while Waidmann's Heil's formula is by now as tired as it could be, not to mention that completely dislocated System Of A Down like bridge. What follows is an uninteresting song about big fishes, something I lack the words to describe its pointlessness (as the band did judging by its name), some lalala bullshit, and other than the ridiculous advance track the album stumbles from mediocrity to more mediocrity. It's sad to see a once really enjoyable and refreshing act that spitted energetic anthems being reduced to this tiresome shock rock pseudo industrial metal joke of their former selves. Their self titled would raise LIFAD's diminute standards significantly. But that only makes it a borderline decent album out of it (that portraits how weak I think LIFAD is). Rammstein's boat has sailed for me more than a decade and half ago and while never being into Nirvana's vessel I easily spot incomparably more value in In Utero.

Finally a skillful but absolutely derivative Power/Prog act in Symphony X against a somehow pale reflection of Accept's early glory days... Well at least Accept are making their own thing (and be doing so either one likes it or not for a crap load of time) . So regarding "career achievement" as an untying factor between two albums that mean nothing to me Accept takes my vote.
 
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I nominated Flick of the Switch because for me, this is Johnson's "Powerage".
While the majority from bons era would go with their most popular highway to hell or in Johnson's case back in black, flick of the Switch is consistently banging from start to finish and raw sounding which I like a lot
 
FTB said:
I nominated Flick of the Switch because for me, this is Johnson's "Powerage".
While the majority from bons era would go with their most popular highway to hell or in Johnson's case back in black, flick of the Switch is consistently banging from start to finish and raw sounding which I like a lot
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For a Belgian it´s nice to see they wrote a song about the Thierbrau incident. Pretty decent album, overlooked by me too. But I liked the Opeth debut more, sorry @FTB
 
Three big wins and a tie.
Skyclad beats Danzig quite easily, knocking Glenn out of the tournament. We'll see how Skyclad does against Black Sabbath in League 11.
Opeth continues their run, beating AC/DC without any difficulties. The Aussies are back in League 10.
It's a tie between Nirvana and Rammstein! Maybe I'll remember to resolve the tie at the end of the round this time.
Symphony X easily overwhelms Accept. The Germans are back in League 6.
 
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