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

I pity the throat of that Bloodbath vocalist and don't like this type of death metal either.
Whoracle is one of the two masterpieces of In Flames. Not a bad song can be found on this jewel.

This Blind Guardian album is very bombastic and not one of my favorites, it takes alot of mental effort to listen to the album in one take.
The atmosphere Amorphis creates is brilliant. Great album artwork too. They get my vote once again.

Watershed is the only Opeth album I have, I'm planning to get alot more of their discography in the near future.
I've said it before and say it again: the Tony Martin era is very underrated so I'm voting for Black Sabbath.

Toxic Holocaust is good but not great. There are much better bands in this genre.
Gutter Ballet is one of the many masterpieces of Savatage.
 
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Bloodbath are really accessible as death goes, and sound very good. Consistent and great sounding album. In Flames have some nice songs on there but some more nondescript ones too. Going with Bloodbath as a bit more stand-out.

Nothing wrong with Blind Guardian. Enjoyable metal, but this is where Amorphis introduced us to beautiful melodic music with folky overtones, even if I'm more of a Skyforger fangirl.

I have this love/hate relationship with Opeth. Well, maybe not hate, but I adore some of their music and find some songs completely meh. Oddly enough, I find that while I get a bit bored with some of Opeth's mellow moments, I absolutely love it when Katatonia do exactly the same thing. They have quite a bit in common and yet it just comes across a different way. Sabbath make perfectly respectable music here, but Watershed is more interesting overall.

I could choose differently on a different day with the fourth pair, but I'll give the vote to Savatage today for more overall polish. Toxic Holocaust are kitsch and fun, though.
 
A vote for Bloodbath because Akerfeldt's growl is in absolute peak form, whereas In Flames have always felt hollow and samey to me. Don't care for the vocals, either.

This Amorphis album is a masterpiece, even though it doesn't have a great singer. The mood it evokes is incredible. Sorry, Hansi.

Average Opeth is far better than average Sabbath.

Nothing wrong with Toxic Holocaust, but it's nowhere near as interesting, unique, or majestic as Savatage.
 
Bloodbath - Intro good musically but production not to my tastes, bass sounds real fake, vocal awful and music during the verse terrible as well fake sounding too.

In Flames - As I said before, the ridiculous vocal really spoils this as I could get on board otherwise

In Flames with the win

Blind Guardian - pretty bad, the other album from them was far better despite not being great

Amorphis - Opinion given before, musically pretty good even the keys, vocal awful

Amorphis with the win

Opeth - Bassline could be Comfortably Numb :lol: Not the first time I've got Pink Floyd comparisons, yet the actual Pink Floyd get voted out on a technicallity :lol: Track is really good, interest has been piqued, The outro is the shitest since War Pigs though :lol:

Black Sabbath - Children of the Sea rip off intro, Riff good as per usual, like the chord progression behind it from the keys too, and the guitar melody dropped later in the verse, drums again stealing the show though

I'm going to throw Opeth a bone in this one, as being a band I'm not familiar with they have a delivered a track that will have me checking out the whole album with strong expectation, but the outro nearly cost them (even if they are having a laugh:lol:) as the Sabbath track is really good too and I could listen to Cozy all day.

Toxic Holocaust - Heard of these before (Nuke the Cross not sure if it's the same album) it's really just Motorhead/Thrash nostalgia not bad but I think Power Trip done the same thing better, and the actual bands did the same thing way better than both of them first time around!

Savatage - opinion given before

Savatage with the win
 
Watershed is an album appropriate to its name. It is the last Metal Opeth album and kinda represents a hybrid of styles. There’s some really heavy material (Heir Apparent, The Lotus Eater) and there’s proggy stuff that shows hints of where they’re going next (Porcelain Heart, Burden) it’s a well balanced album, if not a little uneven. I recommend it as a starter album if you like Opeth’s sound but you’re not sure you can stomach the death metal side.
 
I actually find it's the opposite way, the death metal side is easy to get to grips with, it's the experimental stuff that's harder to stomach. And I like quite a bit of prog.
 
That Bloodbath album has the most evil guitar sound ever. HM-2 pedal ftw. It's so fucking perfect. And the album is also quite awesome. Every track is super catchy.
 
We start on a great note with none other than Bloodbath, a side project super band of illustrious Norsemen that built a name for themselves playing Death Metal during the beginning of their careers and with the passing of time their bands went to sail different sonic waters. Well these dudes (namely Mr. Swano from Edge Of Sanity, Mr. Akerfeldt from Opeth and Mr Renske and Nystrom from Katatonia) got kind of nostalgic and gathered their efforts to compose and share with us some good old style Swedish Death Metal. And man, if early Entombed and Dismember is your thing you'll have a ball listening to this. Tight as hell and old school as it can get, tracks such as So You Die, Ways Of grace and Bathe In Blood are basically a no brakes time travel back to the late 80's/ early 90's extreme metal universe while Like Fire grinds your eardrums at mid tempo megalithic heaviness. So yeah... a really cool exercise in nostalgia by oldschoolers showing newbies how it's done. On the less positive side Resurrection Through Carnage always sounded a bit too unidimensional to me (I know it's kinda supposed to) while I find its follower - Nightmares Made Flesh - in a superior level regarding variety and even intensity. Nevertheless still a great album for any fan of the genre. With that said I'll still go with the absolutely mind boggling near perfection of Whoracle and its contribution for the definitive consolidation of a genre. In Flames gets my vote.

A Night At The Opera is a bizarre but yet strangely interesting album. Its kind of crazy of mix between Medieval Folk, Power Metal and Lloyd Webber musical feel to it all siting on top of multi layered vocal choirs was surely a curveball for the more purist Heavy/ Power metal ranks of their fan base. As for me I'm even more of a grumpy old head than those and think they achieved their zenith on Follow The Blind. After Tales From The Twilight World I kinda lost significant interest in the band since their Speed/Power Metal went a bit "softer". Don't get me wrong: the undeniable quality of their compositions was still intact and towering above the vast majority of (mainly mediocre) newcomers to the genre... but it was just not my thing anymore (Nightfall At The Middle Earth still caught my attention much thanks to the absolutely gorgeous Into The Storm though). But I must confess I kinda like ANATO... a colourful new approach while retaining the band's blueprint. And what makes this disc so unique can sometimes render it tiring (especially the recurring choirs) but tracks such as Jerusalem, Battlefield or the gorgeous Age Of False Innocence are great compositions any day of the week. Nevertheless I'll give my vote to Amorphis that (curiously enough) also builds their album on Folk and Metal in a dramatic and archaic scenario, although the result being quite different from Blind Guardian's. And why do why vote for them?: a) I like the album slightly more and b) its uniqueness and influence at the time. There you go.

Then we have Watershed. Everybody loves Watershed. I don't. To be honest it bores me to death and this comes from a huge Still Life and Blackwater Park fan. Not that it's bad material by any means... quite the opposite. I'll go even further: the final stretch of the record is simply amazing (especially Porcelain Heart and Hex Omega) and I have nothing to point to the excellence of those tracks. Even the folk meets Pink Floyd first half of Hessian Peel sounds really good to me. But the rest is as well played and composed as tiring. I always had a theory about Watershed and Ghost Reveries (two albums every Opeth fan but I seems to adore): they are the portrait of a band tired of making Prog Death Metal and the following departure from the genre gave me reason. Because in my opinion while the real astounding tracks on Still Life and Blackwater Park were heavier tracks like Godhead Lament (perhaps my favorite Opeth song), Serenity painted Death, Moonlapse Vertigo, Bleak , The Drapery Falls or even MAYH's Demon Of The Fall, from BWP onward I always thought their stronger material was the band's calmer compositions while the Prog Death stuff, while being really well played, lacked the solidity and spontaneous girt of the aforementioned two albums. And I can surely understand why the majority of folks love this record. But reading the previous lines it's also quite easy to understand why Watershed doesn't work as an album for me and I prefer the much more authentic vibe of Heritage (due to being what they wanted to evolve to by a long time now). As for Tyr as I said before it's a cool album... nothing more than that. It's a virtual tie but, since Tyr doesn't bores me as much (and since I know Opeth will win) my charity vote goes to Black Sabbath.

Finally we have Toxic Holocaust vs Savatage and this is such a feeble parade of recycled, overplayed stuff (or as some guy said: "you rob a dead man's grave then flaunt it like you did create") that for the first time in this game I'll simply abstain. You decide it since I lost my patience for albums like this.

Night Prowler said:
HM-2 pedal ftw. It's so fucking perfect.
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The well known "Entombed Sound". Corrosive as hell.

Shmoolikipod said:
I'm pretty sure Mikael Akerfeldt (from Opeth) is their singer here :D
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Yup... it is. And it's quite easy to distinguish his growling.

MrKnickerbocker said:
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D


MindRuler said:
Whoracle is one of the two masterpieces of In Flames. Not a bad song can be found on this jewel
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Amen.
 
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Bloodbath: Whoaah, the vocals! :) They still surprise me every time, altough I've now listened to this kind of stuff quite a lot. This one was ok quality (the song, not the vocals, I mean) and representative of its genre.
In Flames: Somewhat similar to the first one, liked Bloodbath slightly better, so voted for that.

Blind Guardian: I was the only one to vote for this one, at my moment of voting. I don't know the reason, surely people have voted Blind Guardian before? And not liked Amorphis? However, I've liked Blind Guardian songs before on this Cup, and liked this one too, really nice melodies! (Someday perhaps I'll vote for something really embarrassing, without knowing it's lame, and lose even my pretense of rock'n'roll credibility for good. But I'd be surprised if it was this time.)
Amorphis I didn't like that much, so there wasn't a struggle.

Opeth surprised me with their lack of cookie monsters, although I had heard people mention they don't have them on all albums. This was actually a very beautiful song, and I had not anticipated contemplating having them on my playlist. If that should happen, that will really be unexpected! Minus points for playing with the out-of-tune guitar at the very end. Sort of ruined the atmosphere of the song, I think.
Black Sabbath being what they have always been on this album and not my thing.

Toxic Holocaust was a basic example of its genre. Minus points for the nastiness of the video.
Savatage I somehow dislike immensely, so to my surprise, voted for Holocaust. :bigsmile:
 
karljant said:
Godhead Lament (perhaps my favorite Opeth song)
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I don't agree with the majority of your paragraph, but this statement I can get behind :D That song, or The Baying of the Hounds. Or The Leper Affinity... It's like with Priest, they have so many amazing songs that it's impossible to choose one. :)
 
Shmoolikipod said:
I don't agree with the majority of your paragraph, but this statement I can get behind :D That song, or The Baying of the Hounds. Or The Leper Affinity... It's like with Priest, they have so many amazing songs that it's impossible to choose one. :)
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Í find he Baying of the Hounds absolutely boring. As for The Leper Affinity it's ok but still one of BWP's least favorites of mine.
 
srfc said:
I'm going to throw Opeth a bone in this one, as being a band I'm not familiar with they have a delivered a track that will have me checking out the whole album with strong expectation
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Gave it a try, first purely prog track pretty good, next two tracks awful turned it off, the tracks from the earlier album were way better, regret not voting for Sabbath now, they really got lucky by having a good track featured as the sample track
 
Bloodbath:
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This album exemplifies everything I hate about death metal. Shit vocals, boring samey songs, blecch. There are a few decent musical passages, but that‘s about it. At least the In Flames album has consistently strong music and songwriting, even though it also has shit vocals. Sorry, @Night Prowler, but this is an easy win for @Black Wizard ‘s nominee. Winner: In Flames

Hadn’t heard this Blind Guardian album before, and it’s a departure from their earlier stuff. More straight-up Queen influence, more coherent songwriting, and some other unusual sounds for them. I’ve never been that big on Blind Guardian, but this album grabbed my interest and I’ll want to listen to it some more. Meanwhile, Amorphis offers great music with shit vocals, and that vocal gut punch is enough to take it out of contention for me in this matchup. Sorry @Forostar, but I’m going with @Spambot ‘s choice here. Winner: Blind Guardian

I don’t understand this schizophrenic Opeth album. “Coil” and “Porcelain Heart” are brilliant. “Hex Omega” is pretty good. “Burden” is solid, but sounds like it came off of some early 70s album and doesn’t really fit in. Most of “Hessian Peel” is cool, except for the couple of shit vocal parts. And then the other two tracks are full of awful death vox that bring everything down. There’s half of an excellent album here, and then the rest is stained with out-of-place glass gargling. I’m much more interested in the clean vocal version of Opeth, and I don’t understand why they’re trying to straddle the line here. Shit or get off the pot. Then we have Tyr, which is a pretty bland and uninspiring album, IMO. I don’t know, I guess a half-great, half-shit album is at least more interesting than than an all-bland album. Sorry again, @Forostar, but I’m going with @The Flash ’s nominee here. Winner: Opeth

This Toxic Holocaust album has a lot of great thrash music, though it feels a bit samey; and the vocals are worse than average for bad thrash vocals, almost verging on death vox. Still, I think I’d rather ignore the vocals and listen to @phantomoftheicarus ’s choice than listen to the overblown, uninspiring Gutter Ballet. Winner: Toxic Holocaust
 
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