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

Okay, three out of my four votes were partially a knee-jerk reaction against the other choice (anything but Diamond, anything but Ryche, anything but Slayer; though that Accept album slaps) and yet for the first time in forever all my votes are actually winning this time around.
 
Spambot said:
1. You don't skip a single song when listening to the album.
2. Any song from the album you can listen to twice in a row.
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Going by just these two rules means that there are way more albums out there that I would consider perfect. If I’m gonna listen to an album I’m gonna listen to that album, which means skipping songs is completely taboo (with the only exception being if I’m playing it in my car and don’t have time for all the songs). And there are a lot of songs I could listen through two times in a row, good and bad.

For me a perfect album is:
— one where every song is great.
— one that has a certain mood and atmosphere through it all.
— one that works as a bigger piece; an album, not just a collection of songs.
— one that I can return to just about whenever and go, god I love this album.

Off the top of my head, the albums I would consider perfect are:

Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding
Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
Iron Maiden - The X Factor
Nightwish - Once
Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell
Metallica - Master Of Puppets

There are also other contenders here. Iced Earth have both Horror Show and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Symphony X has V: The New Mythology Suite, but they all have some weaker songs that hold them back. Same goes for Judas Priest’s Firepower and Bruce Dickinson’s Accident Of Birth. And Poe‘s Haunted is awesome, but I haven’t returned to it all that much lately.
 
KidInTheDark666 said:
And then there's me who doesn't believe that a perfect album exists.
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Yes, or any piece of art for that matter. If there is ever a perfect piece of art, then there can be no two perfect pieces of art. Perfect is an unreachable state, and if you have two perfect pieces of art, then it's just sort of contradictory. Because you're going to find something about a particular piece of art that you like more than the other. And it's so hard to compare different forms or art to one another (ala movies, books, music etc)

But, I think Ace of Spades is as close to perfect in my ears. If I were to rate it though, I would probably give it a 97/100. Or 9.7. or 4.8. whichever you prefer.
 
“Perfect” just means “exactly the way I like it”, and that’s going to be so different from person to person. Some people may encounter tons of “perfect” works of art, while others will never find one. The chance of an artist making every choice completely in line with your personal preferences over the span of a full album is minuscule unless you’re very easy to please or you’re the artist (or both) — but a lucky few will find a handful of pieces that speak to them fully in that way.
 
I've got a feeling we're going to derail the thread but I'm really enjoying where this discussion is going.

What I maybe forgot to mention in those 2 rules is the enjoyment. Otherwise, you can listen to anything on repeat for days, but what would be the point? Yes, every song should be great, but to me the album doesn't need a certain mood and/or atmosphere. I would maybe say, in lack of better term, it should have consistency. And definitely, when I listen it after a long time I should go: I really love this album.

I'm going to mention TFF again and also say something about skipping songs. It's been 10 years since it came out and when it did, I've binged on it for months. At least once a year I return to it and if my last.fm profile doesn't lie, I have around 600 scrobbles (which means around 60 spins just on PC). Adding all the times on MP3 player and in my car, I'd say I definitely spin/span/spun (?) TFF around 100 times. At some point, I realised The Man Who Would Be King doesn't do anything for me and I rather play When The Wild Wind Blows twice. So yeah, I skip.

I'm not doing that for the albums I haven't listened in a long time or when I'm listening to something new. But those I know well - I skip some and hear something new or something that I enjoy rather than "giving a chance" to a song that last 20 times I've heard didn't do anything for me. Of course, it also varies on the situation: if it's in background while I'm working, I just let the album go. In the car, I push that skip button like there's no tomorrow.

As per the term "perfect album" I say both @Dityn DJ James and @Jer are right. Sociologically speaking, there is no perfect art, while individually one person can have a thousand perfect albums, while other can find none.
 
Spambot said:
Yes, every song should be great, but to me the album doesn't need a certain mood and/or atmosphere. I would maybe say, in lack of better term, it should have consistency.
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Now that I’m thinking more of it, I’ve never encountered an album where I think the songs don’t all have that consistency of style / mood / atmosphere that I was thinking of when I wrote that. I should’ve said it has a style / mood / atmosphere that I love. With Powerslave it’s the bright pedal-to-the-medal vibes, and with The X Factor it’s the dark and brooding inner look aspect. With the first Bat Out Of Hell, it’s like driving in an old Buick and getting lost in the excitement; with the second, it’s like being in a castle made entirely of speakers and blasting that album from all of them. And so forth.

One thing that just struck me was how some compilations actually work in the way I’m talking about too. It might have to do with experiencing them at a younger age, but there’s something to be said about compiling ABBA’s biggest hits on Gold, and taking the listener on a chronological journey through The Beatles’ Red and Blue Albums. In particular, The Blue Album is linked to the Christmas where I got it, my first (and still current!) CD player, and several classic illustrated novels. So whenever I hear it, I’m essentially hearing part of A Tale Of Two Cities and part of Christmas memories too. I dunno if this has anything to do with the topic at hand at this point but figured I’d throw it out there.
Spambot said:
I'm going to mention TFF again and also say something about skipping songs. It's been 10 years since it came out and when it did, I've binged on it for months. At least once a year I return to it and if my last.fm profile doesn't lie, I have around 600 scrobbles (which means around 60 spins just on PC). Adding all the times on MP3 player and in my car, I'd say I definitely spin/span/spun (?) TFF around 100 times. At some point, I realised The Man Who Would Be King doesn't do anything for me and I rather play When The Wild Wind Blows twice. So yeah, I skip.

I'm not doing that for the albums I haven't listened in a long time or when I'm listening to something new. But those I know well - I skip some and hear something new or something that I enjoy rather than "giving a chance" to a song that last 20 times I've heard didn't do anything for me. Of course, it also varies on the situation: if it's in background while I'm working, I just let the album go. In the car, I push that skip button like there's no tomorrow.
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To me it’s really just simply... once it’s part of an album, it’s part of an album, and changing things to that album bothers me. The version of Horror Show that I own takes “Transylvania” and moves it from track 8 to track 11. I’ve gotten so used to going into it right after “Dragon’s Child” that it’s hard to hear “Frankenstein” instead. Restructuring a tracklist to me is something the listener should do, not the artist, unless you’re Kanye West changing Life Of Pablo for the zillionth time. Sometimes I’ll go, huh, what if this album included the b-sides too? And I’ll put it together and listen to it, but it doesn’t replace the original.

Also this is random but one thing that will always bother me about owning The Chemical Wedding on vinyl... I think it’s no secret that it’s my favorite album. Like, I do have a handful of records I consider perfect because they fit my shifting moods of what I want from an album experience. But if I’m going by what @Dityn DJ James said above (which I recognize for him but I just don’t have that same experience in my own life, and I’m a really critical over thinker, too), then TCW is really the most perfect album to me. Everything about it, everything, right down to the most minuscule of details, is just perfectly crafted to my ears. All of it essential, all of it expertly designed, including the last two minutes of silence before the final spoken word piece after “The Alchemist”. It’s a moment to take in what you just heard and then when the other comes you can laugh about it and the whole experience and ugh, it’s hard not to get so passionate about this because it just... it’s something from music I didn’t ever expect to experience the way I do, but I do.

Anyway, that brings me to my point, and maybe someone can help me out with this. Why didn’t they include the final three minutes at the end? They split the thing up into two records, surely they had time to include that at the end? It just makes the album so incomplete to me.

/endrant
 
Alright, I did manual confirmation, only the second value in the first pair was incorrect. I'll reset the poll (delete entirely) and I will track manually for awhile to confirm it doesn't occur again.

Accept defeats King Diamond. King Diamond is back one more time, in League 1.
Iron Maiden defeats Queensrÿche, but Queensrÿche is still alive in Match 18.
Slayer comes up short against Iron Maiden as well. Slayer returns in League 3.
Dream Theater crushes Deep Purple, who are still alive in Match 28.
 
CrimsonGlory-T-album.jpg

Crimson Glory - Transcendence (1988)

How it got here
List entries: Metalstorm 22, Metal Kingdom 82
Maidenfans Nominators: n/a
League 6 - Match 17vs.
Amorphis_Under_The_Red_Cloud.jpg

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.
League 7: Defeated Ensiferum - Ensiferum 12-10.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The_Devin_Townsend_Project_-_Addicted_%282009%29.jpg

Devin Townsend - Addicted (2009)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @matic22, @Mosh
League 6 - Match 18vs.
Queensryche_-_Empire_cover.jpg

Queensrÿche - Empire (1990)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Yax, @Collin
Previous Rounds:
League 7: Defeated Amorphis - Tales From the Thousand Lakes 13-10.
 
Linkin_Park_Meteora_Album_Cover.jpg

Linkin Park - Meteora (2003)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @KidInTheDark666, @Midnight, @Travis The Dragon
League 6 - Match 19vs.
Opeth_-_Watershed.jpg

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.
League 7: Defeated VUUR - In This Moment We Are Free 15-7.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ayreon_-_Human_Equation.jpg

Ayreon - The Human Equation (2004)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Night Prowler, @Shmoolikipod
League 6 - Match 20vs.
Mastodon-The_Hunter.jpg

Mastodon - The Hunter (2011)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Night Prowler, @Spambot
Previous Rounds:
League 7: Defeated Riverside - Second Life Syndrome 12-11.
 
Let's do this quick:

Anti-Amorphis bias
Devin bias
Opeth bias
Own nomination bias (plus, this album is legendary. The Hunter is rather uneven imo)
 
Something of a boring round for me. Don't feel strongly about any of these bands/albums (Crimson Glory is quite good though). Voted for:
Crimson Glory
Queensryche
Linkin Park
Ayreon
 
Crimson Glory - This album is one I've discovered from this game, after enjoying their first album earlier in the game. I don't know it well enough yet to pontificate on individual tracks merits, but it's a very good listen as a whole. I posted the listed track in the Now Playing thread only last week.

Amorphis - opinion given before

Crimson Glory with the win.

Devin Townsend - Featured video won't play so I picked "Bend it like Bender" from youtube, out of curiosity to see if it's about Bender from Futurama, and he does make an appearance. His stuff in general is a combination of being too off the wall and too inorganic for my tastes.

Queensryche - opinion given before

Queensryche with the win.

Linkin Park - I have nothing nice to say about this

Opeth - opinion given before

Opeth with the win

Ayreon - this is not for me

Mastodon - ok

Mastodon with the win
 
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