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

Zare said:
TFF is the upper echelon of Maiden's discography. If you ask me it should beat 99% metal albums in existence.
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Don't think it's upper echelon (It's #11 for me, above The Book Of Souls and Below Dance Of Daeth). But one thing's sure: It´s one of the 7 Maiden albums that doesn't have a single crappy song. Plus The Talisman, When The Wild Wind Blows and even The Final Frontier, The Alchemist and Isle of Avalon? Hell yeah!
 
With just seven hours left, four contenders have a strong, but not insurmountable lead. Will your voice be heard?! Vote now!
 
King Diamond stops a short Testament run. Testament is back in League 6.
Queensrÿche fends off a weaker challenge from Ayreon. We'll see them again, also, in League 6.
Avenged Sevenfold can't stand up against Iron Maiden. A7X is back, in a nice change, in League 5, for one more kick at the can.
Deep Purple gives Dissection their second most definitive ending. They're done in the GMAC, and it'll be Dream Theater next to challenge.
 
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Ensiferum - Ensiferum (2001)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Night Prowler
League 7 - Match 17vs.
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Amorphis - Under the Red Cloud (2015)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Night Prowler
Previous Rounds:
League 10: Defeated In Flames - Whoracle 14(ET)-14.
League 9: Defeated Opeth - Deliverance 14-10.
League 8: Defeated Squalus - The Great Fish 12-11.
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Queensrÿche - Empire (1990)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Yax, @Collin
League 7 - Match 18vs.
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Amorphis - Tales From the Thousand Lakes (1994)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Forostar
Previous Rounds:
League 14: Defeated Rhapsody - Symphony of Enchanted Lands 13-5.
League 13: Defeated Negura Bunget - OM 16-6.
League 12: Defeated Blind Guardian - A Night at the Opera 14-10.
League 11: Defeated Devin Townsend - Terria 15-7.
League 10: Defeated Wardruna - Runaljod (Ragnarok) 21-6.
League 9: Defeated Discharge - Hear Nothing Say Nothing See Nothing 20-4.
League 8: Defeated Stratovarius - Elements 18-5.
 
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VUUR - In This Moment We Are Free - Cities (2017)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Black Wizard
League 7 - Match 19vs.
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Opeth - Watershed (2008)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @The Flash
Previous Rounds:
League 12: Defeated Black Sabbath - Tyr 14-9.
League 11: Defeated The Who - Who’s Next 14-8.
League 10: Defeated Nightwish - Century Child 14(ET)-14.
League 9: Defeated Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin 14-11.
League 8: Defeated At the Gates - At War With Reality 14-9.
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Mastodon - The Hunter (2011)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Night Prowler, @Spambot
League 7 - Match 20vs.
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Riverside - Second Life Syndrome (2005)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Lampwick 43
Previous Rounds:
League 9: Defeated Savatage - Gutter Ballet 13-12.
League 8: Defeated Bolt Thrower - Realm of Chaos (Slaves to Darkness) 14-9.
 
Ensiferum - Music is good, vocals aren't, kind of reminiscent of a couple of the In Flames albums from earlier in that it's really only the vocals that are a deal breaker, I could have got on board with everything else.

Amorphis - opinion given before

Ensiferum with the win

Queensryche - A strong album from them, with some of their biggest hits in the title track, Silent Lucidity and Jet City Woman. It's been a while since I gave this one a listen, which I will definitely do asap

Amorphis - opinion given before

Queensryche with the win

Vuur - atrocious guitar sound, not doing a lot for me.

Opeth - opinion given before

Opeth with the win

Mastodon - I've seen these a couple of times live in support slots, and they are quite bad maybe the worst live band I ever saw. This track isn't bad at all though

Riverside - Intro pretty good, weak vocals, bit of a Faith No More feel where there's the heavy eastern riff mixed with the keys and aggressive vocals, best track from them so far.

Mastodon with the win
 
Two absolutely mundane and boring albums. Nothing wrong with them, just a snoozefest. I'll go with the one that makes me yawn the least and pick Ensiferum (plus this subpar Amorphis album has been up here for too much time).

Second match features the best records from the whole round and is the toughest of them all. I really like Empire but not regarding the songs that I think the majority of people do. It's stuff like The Thin Line, Della Brown, One And Only and Anybody Listening that (alongside the monstrous Empire and Best I Can) make this record shine as far as I'm concerned. Silent Lucidity is also good. As for the remainder of the tracks I'm sorry but it's too much hard rocky for me (yes, even Jet City Woman and Another Rainy Night). But then again 7 tracks that span from absolutely great to good while the others don't bother me at all? I'll buy it anytime (as matter of fact I did: both in vinyl when it came out and later on CD). I'll go with Amorphis and Tales on this one because it's more well balanced (and since Operation Mindcrime and Rage For Order are yet to make their appearance and once they do I'm not seeing them leaving that soon) but if Queensryche make it to the next round it won't bother me the slightest.

Next we have two quite boring albums from great composers. Although bearing the undeniable seal of quality both Mikael and Annekke are capable of so much exciting and inventing records than these ones. Well, once again Watershed's been here for far too long (Opeth have so much better stuff) and even being a dull record, Annekke's continues to be gorgeous and gracious at his 40's while singing even over somehow uninteresting content in Vuur.

The Hunter, while being a cool record is no Remission, Leviathan or Blood Mountain. At least is way more cohesive than the mixed emotions of Crack The Skye where they let go of many previous traits that made them great for a somewhat more generic brand of prog/psychedelic metal (that while working wonders in tracks such as Oblivion and Divinations made the rest of the album quite boring). Black Tongue is great and so is the the proggy Sabbathesque Octopus Has No Friends and Dry Bone valley and Curl Of The Burl are also really on point but it's the relentless Spectrelight featuring Scot Kelly that really kills. And while Riverside's album also features some great passages I'll give my vote to Mastodon.
 
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Everything I've heard from Ensiferum is enjoyable, even if it dips into black metal-lite territory sometimes. Still, Red Cloud is one of my favorites from Amorphis.

No, Geoff. Please take your weird voice and go home. Another, easier choice for Amorphis.

I'll say it: I don't get Anneke. I'm sure she's lovely, but she sounds like a mismatched folk singer in a forgettable, radio-djent band. Incredibly bland. I'll take Opeth, please.

Riverside is so much more interesting than Mastodon here. I'm so bored with Mastodon's sound.
 
Vuur is the other, other, other band I've listened to loads this year. I really like that album, even if it took a little while to grow. There are scattered hooky bits across most of the songs, except maybe the last one, I find that a little bit saccharine. I actually find Anneke's vocals really intriguing. It sounds quite soft in places, but going by videos of her performing live, she's actually switching between soft and powerful, and is belting out the vocals in places. Rather than modern folk style, she reminds me more of a couple of singers I know who have studied historical music and use some unusual sounding techniques - not least because they're female singers performing what what would almost certainly have originally been male voice parts.
 
Oh my god. It's impossible to choose between first two albums.

Ensiferum's debut is magical. They were never the most original band. Riffs were 100% 80's Metallica, mixing with folk stuff was done before, vocals were done in melodeath years before. But this album and Iron have something that no other band before or after managed to capture. Obviously not the Ensiferum after these two albums. As I said, riffs on these two first albums were 100% Metallica. They even got the guy who produced Ride The Lightning, Master and Justice to produce Iron, and they covered multiple Metallica songs live. But anyway, this album really did it all.

Perfect little intro. Then an onslaught of three fast and short catchy songs in Hero In A Dream, Token Of Time and Guardians Of Fate. Then two weirder epic tracks (which are IMO weakest on the album) followed by another onslaught of 5 super epic songs. Abandoned, the only one without growls with an epic af melodic ending. Windrider with a kickass lead melody. Treacherous Gods... just about the most epic song in this genre ever. I mean if you don't find that last chorus epic af you should rethink your music taste completely. Fucking perfect buildup to that one. Eternal Wait... might actually be my favorite song of theirs. Incredible ballad. Gonna have to put it into TJST. And then at the end Battle Song. It's like Run To The Hills dialed up to 666 in a heroic melodeath style. There's no song more appropriate to be called Battle Song than this one. Part that starts at 02:30 is out of this world epic.

I will acknowledge that Jari isn't a perfect vocalist. His harsh vocals are great, but not too irreplaceable, and his cleans have an accent but he has sincerity unmatched by his phony weak and sad replacements. For those who don't know the history of this band, Jari left after Iron (along with everyone else other than Markus, the other guitarist). Petri from Norther took over harsh vocals and Markus and the new bass player took up the cleans. Petri does a fine job, but those two are really really bad at singing. Imagine Bruce being replaced by Steve and Janick dual singing everything. They have next to no range and both have a much worse accent than Jari.

Anyway, with this I've convinced myself to choose it over Under The Red Cloud, which is an awesome album, just not on the same level of epicness.

Amorphis over Vestryche.

Watershed over Vuur. Watershed has grown immensely on me in the past few months. When I first heard it I was really disappointed that they minimized the extreme metal stuff so much, and the harsh vocals were weaker, but considering Opeth's current output, I've softened my stance on it immensely and now I rate it higher than even Ghost Reveries and the first 3 albums. Vuur is cool but not as good as Opeth.

The Hunter is a kickass album full of hits and epics. I'd single out title track's incredible solo, Stargasm, Black Tongue and Thickening. I really tried Riverside but they really sound dry to me. Bland vocals, bland music... Maybe one day I'll try them again but no matter how many times Spotify plays one of their songs for me on shuffle, I just don't get it.
 
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