Alice in Chains - I briefly owned a dubbed copy of Dirt when it was out and never got into it, other than that I'm not familiar with their material. This track isn't bad, not anything I'd be rushing out to buy though. The old saying "time heels old wounds" applies, I used to be hostile to Grunge when it was out as it made pariahs out of a lot of the bands I was a fan of, but every grunge band that's been in this game is better than I remembered and definitely preferable to a lot of the music that came afterwards
Judas Priest - opinion given the last round, recap, not the best priest album by a good way but they get kudos for even trying such an album and not turning it into some cliche, I'd expected lyrics like "Nostradamus, he foresaw heavy metal!"
Judas Priest with the win
Hammerfall - I own this album, I reckon the first album is the only one that holds up, but the following couple of albums have a few decent tracks each, although I hate the term, they are "guilty pleasures" if you will. Hearts on Fire falls into that category, although I hate when bands put the live breakdown sing-a-long part onto the album version
Rainbow - opinion given before
Rainbow with the win
Helloween - Nice guitar sound on the intro sounds like Hootie and the Blowfish
, heavier guitar sound isn't great though, keys in the chorus are awful but the vocal/words are hooky and memorable, solo section onwards just seems like a collection of different parts that bear no connection to each other or the rest of the track until it gets back to the verse/chorus part.
Borknagar - Is this the right track? The video has a picture of Asphyx on it? Think it's just a bad video though as I had a look on youtube and there's other tracks with the correct picture and they play the same song. Wasn't expecting the vocal when this kicked in, was good when he was singing properly, there's a kind of an old school mainstream groove to the whole thing, like they are covering an old school song in a black metal style, it's definitely holding my attention more than an average black metal track. The blast beat puts paid to that though
Section around the 5 min mark sounds like Rush. Outro solo sounds good
Borknagar with the win, not a huge fan of either and I could have voted either way but give the vote to Borknagar as usually I would never have lasted more than a minute or two on a track in that style.
Papa Roach - Intro riff sounds like Dedication by Thin Lizzy even the bass kicks in in the same style. The vocal isn't great but the music is not bad at all. I saw these open for Maiden in 2007 and they weren't awful. My little sister was into these when this was out so I'm somewhat familiar with the whole album.
W.A.S.P. - Opinion given before, The Real Me one of the all time great covers.
W.A.S.P. with the win
Loudness problems aside, the songs here are not bad at all (most of them...) What's there not to like about the opening to All Nightmare Long?
