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

Jer said:
Never heard U.D.O. before, and I was shocked by how much I liked the music and songwriting — a nice blend of sweet 80s riffage and power metal sensibilities, infused with the heart of Maiden, Priest, Gamma Ray, and a dash of George Lynch. The songs have light and shade and consistently strong guitar solos — but then the singer comes along and leaves a gigantic skid mark across the entire affair. Holy shit, does this guy sound awful! I might actually prefer a few extreme vocalists to this unmitigated disaster of a vocal performance.
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Are you actually saying you've somehow missed Accept back in the day?
 
Magnus said:
Are you actually saying you've somehow missed Accept back in the day?
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I was vaguely aware of the song “Balls To The Wall” at the time and dismissed it as trash.

Also, not sure why @Diesel 11 is liking your post when he wasn’t even alive when any of this happened...?
 
All the matches are at 10:6 now, favoring the side I voted for. Only the last match is 9:6 because Kid couldn't vote against ACOS...:facepalm:
 
Jer said:
I was vaguely aware of the song “Balls To The Wall” at the time and dismissed it as trash.

Also, not sure why @Diesel 11 is liking your post when he wasn’t even alive when any of this happened...?
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Because Accept are / were huge. Not my faves but I’m shocked you never heard of Udo Dirkschneider before. I learned of him shortly after I got into metal, and Accept even before that.
 
Jer said:
I was vaguely aware of the song “Balls To The Wall” at the time and dismissed it as trash.

Also, not sure why @Diesel 11 is liking your post when he wasn’t even alive when any of this happened...?
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I'm so sorry to hear it @Jer.

Because taste.
I wasn't even alive when Black Sabbath and Paranoid were released.
None of us were even alive when Telemann, Vivaldi, Fasch, Heinichen, and that guy, wossname, huge family in the business, tip of my tongue, were active either.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Because Accept are / were huge. Not my faves but I’m shocked you never heard of Udo Dirkschneider before. I learned of him shortly after I got into metal, and Accept even before that.
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I’ve heard of Udo Dirkschneider before. I’ve heard of Accept before. They were not huge in the U.S. at the time, at least not in my experience. I was only vaguely aware of their existence at the time, like I said. Why you think I should have been more aware of them back then when you weren’t even alive yet and don’t really know what the U.S. scene was like at the time except through other people’s accounts is strange to me.

I think the point has been missed in this subthread somewhere.
 
Little off topic, I saw Udo's solo band doing Accept songs in early 2017, and it was one of the greatest shows of my life. I also am a HUGE Accept fan. Seeing the original voice of the band doing Winterdreams live was spellbinding.
 
How such a well-versed, metal afficionado would be limited in his knowledge by merely what was popular in the notoriously fickle US market at the time is just as strange to me, but I guess we live in a very strange world, indeed.


Anyway,

Saapanael said:
All the matches are at 10:6 now, favoring the side I voted for. Only the last match is 9:6 because Kid couldn't vote against ACOS...:facepalm:
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Dude, what you're doing? You don't prefer Anthrax to DT. I know as much.
And don't get me wrong, I love Anthrax. I don't know if they're really my favourite of the Big 4, but Persistence of Time is definitely the best Big 4 album in my book. And I've been coming back to the the most recently, because they're undeniably the most fun, in general.

However, even an EP by Dream Theater (which ACOS is) beats any given album of theirs. And I even actually wrote this

JudasMyGuide said:
Part of my personal problem with a lot of 80's/90's prog-metal epics (including the ever-beloved Divine Wings of Tragedy or A Change of Seasons) is that the music doesn't really progress much - it's more of a hodgepodge mess of ideas strung together, sometimes with the overall intention to make them escalate the tension within the song logically, sometimes not (the "tripping the light fantastic" should - by the internal logic - be the climax of ACOS, near its end, like for example the "Triumphant, champion of Ithaca" part of The Odyssey ... but you get another almost ten minutes after that) and Metropolis is definitely an example of that. It sounds great, the individual parts are nice and I can respect it, just as I respect Outcry (which - as its "follower" - has similar completely nonsensical wankery section which is just so great to listen to), but as a whole it just can't work as one of the bests.

For all the talk about how... e.g. Endless Sacrifice makes no sense with random noodlings in the middle, it's actually the complete opposite - even in the instrumental part almost every individual passage logically grows out of / reacts to the previous one which is very well noticeable especially if you concentrate on the backing riffs and such - with all of it culminating in that "All you've forsaken" part and the final chorus, which brings an emotional catharsis. It has many times over been decried as an example of DT "wankery" getting in their songwriting, but it's actually a particularly well-written song, including the "wanking" parts.

Even some of the other latter DT epics, like Count of Tuscany or ITPOE, which both do have parts that shift gears rather abruptly, it still makes much more of a cohesive whole, allowing for familiarity, playing with motives (in different instrumentation even) and in general working really well; much of the early stuff is indeed hard to remember - so kudos to them for being able to play it live - but not particularly substantial, methinks.
And, like, Scarred is just a wreck in that regard.
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Still, that said, ACOS is just mostly better than the rest of the stuff not just in this round, but in this game overall.

So once again - come on, dude!
 
Udo Dirkschneider's a living legend on the heavy metal universe. Of course being the voice of the ultra influential Accept helped a lot but nonetheless he managed to pull some interesting pieces of metal throughout his solo career. That being said Steelfactory is little more than mundane so I'll go with Dream Theater.

Well, Insomnium show they like Dark Tranquillity a biiiiiiit too much on this one but even so I think I'd rather go with the stylistic plagiarism of Heart Like A Grave than the sea of boredom that is The Source.

Oh man hard choice here: two absolutely gorgeous records yet so dissimilar. Badmotorfinger is probably my favorite Soundgarden album. Now you can call it grunge (if they made their break out through the major playlists some years prior or were from a city other than Seattle perhaps no one would) or whatever you want, fact is the band's mesh of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Corrosion Of Conformity on steroids in their 3rd album resulted in a all time classic rock record for the ages. So why is this record so awesome? a) because it is filled with adrenaline uptempos like Rusty Cage and Face Pollution, has the groove of Drawing Flies and Outshined, features near perfect catchy songs like Somewhere and Jesus Christ Pose and crushing claustrophobic monster tracks like Room A Thousand Years Wide or Slaves and Bulldozers and b) the performance and composition level is off the charts and while it's somehow easy to trace the influences the guys gave it such a personal twist it resulted in something unique. That being said I think this one's a virtual tie, since I also think Those Once Loyal is an absolute classic. And as an untying factor I'll say that while Badmotorfinger is a bit more all over the place (70's rock, stoner, metal and some punk), Those Once Loyal is firmly planted on Metal ground (in this case one of the finest casts of Death Metal ever ). So yeah: I'll go with Bolt Thrower since I think it's more suitable for this game. If it was the best Rock record in general I believe I would've picked Soundgarden though, so fair enough.

A Change Of Seasons is a really well penned song with a cool musical narrative (especially the beginning) that can actually also work out really well in separated modules ( I really loved the medley they pulled with the song's first two parts followed by parts of The Mirror and Just Let Me Breathe on Once In A Livetime). The cover songs are also great especially the Elton John one but it's like what the remainder are saying: I would let gladly give ACOS a pass if it was just an EP featuring nothing more than the song. But the fact that it also features a live part with nothing more than cover versions really rubs me the wrong way (even though I really like the whole thing). But then again that would've matter little since it's going against Sound Of White Noise which is simply a monster of a record and one of Anthrax's best releases.
 
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karljant said:
But the fact that it also features a live part with nothing more than cover versions really rubs me the wrong way
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Honestly, I don't get this. I always understood it as an EP with bonus live tracks, 'cause DT does covers as bonuses. The main, significant stuff is obvious and if they actually brought a single person to Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding with this move, all the more applause to them.

It's even classified as an EP. So I always understood it more as "okay, here's our new EP, but we'll give you more material, just because". How can you hold this against them, really?

No, honestly, not just blind fanboyism speaking. How?
 
JudasMyGuide said:
How such a well-versed, metal afficionado would be limited in his knowledge by merely what was popular in the notoriously fickle US market at the time is just as strange to me, but I guess we live in a very strange world, indeed.
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Imagine that, I was less aware of things in my early teens without the internet than I am in my 40s with the internet. The weirdness just keeps multiplying!
 
JudasMyGuide said:
Honestly, I don't get this. I always understood it as an EP with bonus live tracks, 'cause DT does covers as bonuses. The main, significant stuff is obvious and if they actually brought a single person to Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding with this move, all the more applause to them.

It's even classified as an EP. So I always understood it more as "okay, here's our new EP, but we'll give you more material, just because". How can you hold this against them, really?

No, honestly, not just blind fanboyism speaking. How?
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Have you read the last phrase? Even though I would have taken it in account It would've altered nothing... although I like ACOS (both the song and live covers) it would've never stand a change of getting my vote ahead of SOWN. BTW once again I must stress I like the record but the guitar riff on Angel Of Death's bridge alone blasts the whole thing out the room. :D :D :D :edmetal::edmetal::edmetal:
 
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