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

[LooseCannon]

Alter Bridge losing to them is more painful than going through my divorce.

I intend to vote for Alter Bridge. Listening to Motley Crue makes me feel like I need a shower.

 

[Magnus]

Don't blame me, blame the random number generator.

#IBlameTheRandomNumberGenerator ?
Nah, doesn't look right.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

Being focused on pair 2 and 4, very very close in my opinion, and then deciding not to vote...I have also overlooked Crue vs Alter Bridge, and would want to vote for Alter Bridge if I wasn't hasty. Everything about Motley Crue just screams lame.

 

[Perun]

I'll be honest here - the only album in this round that I think deserves the label "great" is Blackbird. All the other albums are... meh, let's say. These aren't the top tier of great bands like Sabbath, Priest or Megadave. They're mediocre in the grand context of their discographies. Bel'akor is a fine band, but I'd still take the lesser Dio-era Sabbath over them, if only because Mob Rules has a few tracks that I love a lot. I don't like Mötley Crüe at all save for the Shout at the Devil album, and In Flames... I used to have a really irrational hate for this band, but now I just don't care for them. I saw them live a few times, they bore me, and I never find myself interested when I hear any of their studio work. Having said that, I won't bite my pillow if they should win in this round or if they do well in general because I know they're highly rated and I can live with that the way I can live with people thinking slobbery, drooling dogs are adorable.

 

[Forostar]

Duuuuud.

 

[Saapanael]

I’ve listened to less Black Sabbath in my life than is reasonable but Mob Rules has such an amazing sinister album cover. It looks like a predecessor of death metal aesthetics.

 

[Magnus]

I'll be honest here - the only album in this round that I think deserves the label "great" is Blackbird.

 

[karljant]

First matchup is a no brainer. Yes, I've said it several times and will say it once again: Be'Lakor is really cool mellow death. But Mob Rules is simply put my Dio era favorite record and the only one that ranks among the band's first six masterpieces easily. So when you have the rampant heaviness of the title track, the deliberate return to 70's metal in Voodoo and Country Girl, epic monsters like Sign Of The Southern Cross or Falling Off The Edge Of The World and a sweet old school doom crusher like Over And Over this one goes hands down to Black Sabbath.

United Abominations is also a cool album with a handful of good songs. On the other hand The Jester Race is simply one of the gospels of Swedish Melodic Death Metal. The album is overall superb, but the compositional mastery (especially regarding guitar riffing and harmonies) in tracks such as Moonshield, Artifacts Of The Black Rain, Dead Eternity and Dead God In Me are absurdly fantastic. As influential as masterful: In Flames.

Next:

(I didn't voted for Motley Crue or Alter Bridge because I hate the first ones and Alter Bridge is not my cup of tea)

Exactly my opinion. Although Alter Bridge and elevator music sound similar to me it doesn't irritates my eardrums the slightest but on the other hand says litteraly nothing to me (and that's a problem when it comes to art). Motley Crue on the other hand truly gets under my skin and damages my nerves as almost every Hair Metal band does. But at least managed to compose a good song (Kickstart My Heart) in their career to compensate us for the long list of sonic atrocities they tortured us with. Unfortunately Kickstart My Heart isn't in this album therefore my vote goes to ------------------------------------ . I leave this one on other's voters' hands. Deuces!

As for the final duel... Oh Boy! Is it really necessary? Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhrgggghhhhh. Chosing between two monstrous classics representing 70's metal at its absolute top after the previous duo should be a crime. I don't care if it's the result of a random generator @LooseCannon ! Randomize it again till they don't match, damn it! Sinner, Let Us Pray/ Call For The Priest, Diamonds And Rust, Dissident Aggressor versus Hole In The Sky, Megalomania, Symptom Of The Universe and Thrill Of It All. Hey... there's no way I can chose. As I said before right now I'm more prone to Sin After Sin but if you ask me tomorrow it's pretty possible my opinion changes. It's a virtual tie but must I chose... There: Judas Priest... Before I regret it.

 

[Magnus]

Meanwhile, this Bathory album has pretty cool riffage and songwriting, but bad production, bad vocals, and not very good soloing. So, sorry @Magnus, but

It is the way it is, isn't it. Or is it?

 

[MrKnickerbocker]

I’ve really started to get into Be’Lakor and this album is fantastic, but it still doesn’t beat the heights of Mob Rules Sabbath.

In Flames. Jester Race is one of their only albums I can listen to and it has some cool music. This is a lame Deth entry and it needs to go.

Never Motley Crue. And easy vote for Alter Bridge.

Sin After Sin is a great Priest record, Sabotage is a middling Sabbath record.

 

[Jer]

The first match is the only one that required any real thought for me. Mob Rules starts off really strong with “Turn Up The Night”, “Voodoo”, and “Sign Of The Southern Cross” before fading in quality a bit, until “Falling Off The Edge Of The World” shows up to kick ass toward the end of the album. Songwriting and performances are good to great, not much to complain about here. Meanwhile, this Be’Lakor album has consistently excellent songwriting and music, but it’s paired with abrasive extreme vocals that get in the way of my ability to fully enjoy the album. This one was pretty close, and if it weren’t for the extreme vocals I almost certainly would have gone the other way — but sorry, @Saapanael, I have to go with mcCornfed Hickindog’s nominee here. Winner: Black Sabbath

Speaking of extreme vocals, In Flames’ The Jester Race is one of the very tiny handful of extreme metal albums that I can actually enjoy. The secret here is the mix — the vocals are so low that they’re behind the guitars and wind up acting like secondary percussion instead of sandpaper scraping on my eardrums. They’re also a bit breathier than some other growls, which takes a bit of the edge off. Would I prefer it if this album had clean vocals? Of course. But the growls are handled here in such a way that I can tolerate them and fully enjoy the music. And the music is very melodic and rocks hard. It does recycle some of the same rhythms and chord progressions over and over, so some of the songs are a bit too similar; but what’s here is consistently enjoyable and well-written, and I come back to this album fairly often. Compare that to an OK but wholly unremarkable Megadeth album that probably doesn’t even crack my Megadeth top 10, let alone an overall top 10, and this is a no-brainer. Sorry, KnightInTheMid600’s, but Fat Biztard’s choice takes this one. Winner: In Flames

This Mötley Crüe album has one good song (“Live Wire”) and the rest is filler. This would lose to any competent album, and this Alter Bridge album is certainly well beyond competent. Sorry, @FTB, but Daria The Assident’s nominee is superior. Winner: Alter Bridge

This Black Sabbath album commits the sin of being boring as hell. There’s an interesting mood shift in “Symptom Of The Universe” and an occasional riff here or there that grabs my interest, but I honestly can’t see myself ever wanting to listen to this again. Sorry, @Cornfed Hick, but Moronstaarkindael’s nominee takes this in a walk. Winner: Judas Priest

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Duuuuud.

دود ?


Anyway,

I'm sorry, but Mob Rules must be one of the weakest "classic" albums Dio ever was on, counting Rainbow, Sabbath and his solo career. It all felt like a really rushed attempt to recapture the magic and success of H&H, but the songs were given not enough time to ripen and grow. Over and Over might be a nice closer, but it completely pales next to Lonely Is the Word the year before or Shame on the Night two years after. E5150 is a return to the tradition of the "atmospheric" interlude, after the last album made it seem they would leave those behind for good. The title track is speedy and energetic, with a proper amount of aggression... but it's way too trivial compared to all the other stuff I love the band for. Edge, Night, Voodoo... they're all nice, I guess, but there's really no reason to return to them or to pay them any particular attention, unlike even the lesser tracks off H&H. In the end it's mainly about The Sign of the Southern Cross, which is, like, the Rainbath song for me, better than anything on The Devil You Know, Forbidden and probably even H&H, just the best thing ever and Country Girl, whose unexpected charm sets it against the rest of the album and makes me want to dance and prance. Despite that, with its juiciness and its consistency (and its intriguing feeelz), Be'lakor get my vote, because I can't in good conscience vote for an album with one of the most awesome tracks and the rest of it mostly filler. I know MR has its staunch defenders here, but then again - what hasn't? And I don't love Dio as much so as to get crazy about the album just because of him alone.

---

I don't like the Gothenburg bands, never have, possibly never will (I admit I don't try all that much - there's better things to do with my life) and sure, The Jester Race is probably one of the best stuff you can come across there (along with The Red in the Sky Is Ours and At War with Reality) and probably the stuff worth coming back to, I'll still give this to the run-of-the-mill MegaDave album, in spite of everything I lumped on it the last time around. I admit that it's the second time around (after last time with Darkthrone) I am voting for Megadeth as this type of brand loyalty against a possibly better album of another band that's not my favourite/isn't in my style and I really intend to cease to do so in the future.

---

I wonder if there is an album I'd vote for Motley Crue against. Yeah, I guess considering this forum's obsession with Rush and Judas Priest (see below), I'd vote for them just because, because the final rounds of this is really going to be a randomly selected amount of Maiden, Priest and Rush albums and I'm really getting sick of that, but this time around I think I'll go with the 00s datedness of Alter Bridge over the 80s datedness of Muhtley Cruh. Also, wouldn't it be just awkward, if such a nice Catholic guy like me contracted syphilis all of a sudden?

---

And seriously, fuck this forum's blind obsession with Judas Priest... Black Sabbath, on the albums following Master of Reality (and in a way even on that one) proved and showed that they were not just able to be one of the (if not the) first metal bands, but also one of the (if not the) first band to push on the genre's boundaries, transcend them, help developing it in the wider musical paradigm. SBS and Sabotage are not just great metal albums full of riffs and catchy melodies - they also contain a lot of emotional variety, personal approach and personality (which is something even Sin After Sin genuinely lacks - the uniqueness is mostly in the sphere of sound, not in much else), a colourful palette of genres. You have the album's masterpiece, Megalomania, switching from a dazy, haunting first part into the speedy, crunchy main romp, but it also shows two different approaches of artist's looking at himself. Two differing varieties of self-doubt and self-hate. Packed up in a wonderful musical soundscape. You get Symptom of the Universe, beginning with the breakneck proto-thrash, switching midway into this Latin, laid-back, subdued, very cool section where it stays and actually never returns (Starostin actually says that Iommi turns into José Feliciano here for a moment, in jest of course). You get whatever The Writ is, including that comical snippet in the end. You get Supertzar - whether you like it or not, it's an absolutely unique experience and not just in the Sabbath discography.

This is what shows that Sabbath really were influenced by the Beatles - it's not the stress on melody (which is there), but this strong push at trying to better oneself, to be the best, to be the innovators and to make it all very personal. It's no wonder that with Dio they never played live anything off these latter albums, with Dio and his theatricality that he brought into the band, it'd be a very weird combination, not fitting in the least. Dio's the escapist guy, the fantasy guy, the horror guy even, not a confessional type.

Now Sin After Sin does show certain attempts at shaking the metal paradigm as well (as one of the very few Priest albums) before fully embracing the formula - you get the Baez cover, you get The Last Rose of Summer (still one of the most surprising and intriguing things Priest ever did), but it seriously lacks the amount of scope and artistic development that those first 6 1/2 Sabbath albums show. That's why I always find it silly to compare the Ozzy and the Dio era - especially with denigrating the former - Dio-era merely joined the most basic Sabbath approach with some of that Rainbow magic and ceased developing altogether, the Ozzy era, while having the admittedly weaker vocalist, showed innovation, complex riffs on almost every song there (already seen on H&H - Neon Knights is a fine song, but isn't it a bit underwhelming when you realize that this is the guy who wrote the riff to A National Acrobat? Or Symptom of the Universe?) and an actual desire to be the best band ever, not just the best metal band ever.

There was I time I wondered if out of SBS's and Sabotage's songs you could pick some selection to create the best album ever, but probably no - it'd either be too crunchy, too poppy, too weird, because the balance would be broken. And the way the albums are structured (SBS slightly more than Sabotage) is important as well, the albums are great as-it.

But of course, Judas Priest are going to win. Fuck it. Okay, from now on I'm going to always vote against JP. I've really had enough. Even when they're going to be against Motley Crue. Or Dokken or something. I'll see what I'll do when they come up against Rush, I'll maybe refrain from voting altogether then, but from now on, it's #noRush and #noPriest. Just like Knicks has with his Armored Saint. À propos, talking about him

Sabotage is a middling Sabbath record

Seriously one of the most hurtful things you've ever said to me.

Also @Ariana - this (meaning you voting for JP) is what I get for consistently supporting Alter Bridge? Shame on you.

 

[Ariana]

But I voted for Mob Rules! have I picked the wrong Sabbath album?

 

[JudasMyGuide]

(I already spent way too much time on that post already to go looking for the gif in the end, but I wanted to at first)

Should have voted for Sabotage, yes.

 

[srfc]

I'll be honest here - the only album in this round that I think deserves the label "great" is Blackbird.

I think you've got 3 album there that would grace any top 100 metal albums list.

Also, if I saw Too Fast for Love listed at number 99 in a mainstream publication I wouldn't be too surprised by that either.

 

[Perun]

Duuuuud.

I think you've got 3 album there that would grace any top 100 metal albums list.

Also, if I saw Too Fast for Love listed at number 99 in a mainstream publication I wouldn't be too surprised by that either.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one and they all stink except for mine, which smells of cinnamon buns and rose-scented unicorn breath.

 

[srfc]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one and they all stink except for mine, which smells of cinnamon buns and rose-scented unicorn breath.

A sentiment I agree with, not trying to convince you of my opinion rather just using it as an excuse to throw out my opinion that it's a relatively strong round this time.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Opinions are like arseholes

If that is so, surely there are opinions that work as they should, are properly washed and rinsed and have the hair at least cut if not removed (and, from what I've heard, some people actually bleach their opinions) ... and there are opinions with loosed sphincters that make them strew and drop shit everywhere, with bloody hemorrhoids that make a person unable to defecate and leave blood on the paper and are unwashed, bushy-hairy and altogether disgusting.

 

[Perun]

If that is so, surely there are opinions that work as they should, are properly washed and rinsed and have the hair at least cut if not removed (and, from what I've heard, some people actually bleach their opinions) ... and there are opinions with loosed sphincters that make them strew and drop shit everywhere, with bloody hemorrhoids that make a person unable to defecate and leave blood on the paper and are unwashed, bushy-hairy and altogether disgusting.

Dude, I was just making a joke, not proposing a journey into the world of rectal care.

 

[Saapanael]

This is the nerdiest thread in the world. Analysing albums and assholes.