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

AC/DC sends Iron Maiden down the highway to their next nominee, there's so much left.
Opeth shoots down UFO in a narrow fight, and will advance to battle AC/DC.
Iced Earth burns Motörhead, who are coming up again in Match 2 of League 3.
Rush moves on against the last Stratovarius album. They'll be up against Slayer next time.
 
SomethingWickedThisWayComes.jpg

Iced Earth - Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 69, Metalstorm 52
Maidenfans Nominators: @Ariana, @FTB, @LooseCannon
League 3 - Match 1vs.
Mastodonleviathan.jpg

Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

How it got here
List entries: Rolling Stone 46, Loudwire 19, DigitalDreamDoor 83
Maidenfans Nominators: n/a
Previous Rounds:
League 4: Defeated Rammstein - Mutter 15 -14.[/TD]
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Mot%C3%B6rhead_-_Overkill_1979.jpg

Motörhead - Overkill (1979)

How it got here
List entries: Metalstorm 35, DigitalDreamDoor 44
Maidenfans Nominators: @Dityn DJ James, @Spambot
League 3 - Match 2vs.
Superunknown.jpg

Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Ariana, @Lampwick 43, @mckindog
Previous Rounds:
League 6: Defeated Atlantean Kodex - The Course of Empire 15-9.
League 5: Defeated Metal Church - Metal Church 15-13.
League 4: Defeated Gojira - From Mars to Sirius 19-10.
 
IFtOS.jpg

Blind Guardian - Imaginations From the Other Side (1995)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 74, DigitalDreamDoor 76
Maidenfans Nominators: @Black Wizard, @FTB, @LooseCannon, @Travis The Dragon
League 3 - Match 3vs.
Tool_-_Fear_Inoculum.png

Tool - Fear Inoculum (2019)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Midnight, @Travis The Dragon
Previous Rounds:
League 6: Defeated Anthrax - Persistence of Time 13-11.
League 5: Defeated Blaze Bayley - Silicon Messiah 16-13.
League 4: Defeated Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky 18-11.
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SavatageMountainKing.jpg

Savatage - Hall of the Mountain King (1997)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 51, Metalstorm 34
Maidenfans Nominators: @Dityn DJ James, @Niall Kielt
League 3 - Match 4vs.
Moving_Pictures.jpg

Rush - Moving Pictures (1981)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Collin, @Forostar, @Jer, @mckindog, @Midnight
Previous Rounds:
League 5: Defeated Rush - A Farewell to Kings 22-4.
League 4: Defeated Carcass - Heartwork 19-9.
 
Note on Moving Pictures - I had been drawing from Jer's suggestions, but he didn't give me one for this League so I reverted to Foro's list.

Welcome to League 3, which in my opinion is the biggest step up yet in terms of quality. Essentially we're into the consensus Top 100 Metal Albums, and a little more uniformity in nominees is going to occur. Lots of the classic bands coming up. One or two surprises, still, but we're now past the "oh this is unknown" stuff.

League 4 brought in 13 new victors, as we ended the fourth phase of the GMAC (Phase 1 being Leagues 18-15 with single-list nominations, Phase 2 being Leagues 14-8 with single Maidenfans nominations, Phase 3 being Leagues 7-6 with multiple Maidenfans nominations, Phase 4 being Leagues 5-4 with single list + Maidenfans nominations (with some triple list nominations)). Our breakdown looks like this now:

League 4 entrants: 13
League 5 entrants: 3
League 6 entrants: 9
League 7 entrants: 3
League 8 entrants: 1 (Annihilator - Alice in Hell)
League 10 entrants: 1 (Rush - Hemispheres)
League 11 entrants: 1 (Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier)
League 12 entrants: 1 (Symphony X - The Divine Wings of Tragedy)

Two notable runs, Blind Guardian's Tales From the Twilight World and Iron Maiden's Dance of Death, also ended. They'd been around since League 14, so congratulations on these great deep GMAC runs!
 
Giants in this league! Curious how this will play out.

This round I'm going for:

Superunknown Pictures from Something Wicked.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Wikipedia says something slightly different:
​
On the original CD, released in 1995, "Dante's Inferno" was divided into three parts on a single track.​

I looked it up, and saw a couple variants of the back cover, and they both had “Dante’s Inferno” as one song, but which three chapters alongside. Is that what you meant, or that they literally split it into three tracks a la Nightwish’s “Lappi”?
Click to expand...
Yes, I meant "three chapters". To quote the cue file for the CD:

TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "Dante's Inferno"
PERFORMER "Iced Earth"
INDEX 01 36:09:57
INDEX 02 41:40:40
INDEX 03 47:44:00

"INDEX 01" is the starting point of the song, while "INDEX 02" and "INDEX 03" mark the second and third chapters respectively. If you played the CD on a player that supported indexing, you would be able to jump between the three chapters.
 
Even if I weren’t boycotting Iced Earth, I would vote for Leviathan. Possibly Mastodon’s best album and one of their rawest, heaviest, and some of the best riffs in the business. It’s real competition against Iced Earth.

Overkill is awesome. I really want to see Soundgarden dislodged, but Overkill is much more deserving of a GMAC title.

Blind Guardian is classic metal, Tool is prog for people who hate prog and metal for people who hate metal. Imaginations is also possibly the best Blind Guardian album.

Last match is one of the tougher ones. Savatage has more metal cred, but the Rush album is just too good to vote against.
 
The first match is pretty tough. Leviathan took a while to grow on me, and while I still contend that it's far from a great Moby-Dick concept record (Ahab's take remains unparalleled), the songs are all really good, particularly that opening track. A real grower.

But Something Wicked This Way Comes is Iced Earth's Powerslave. Not only is it filled with great songs, but it also led to one of the best live releases ever. It's my second favorite Iced Earth album, beaten only by Horror Show. "Consequences" and "Reaping Stone" are filler, the rest is killer. And "Burning Times" is a contender for my top 10 favorite songs overall. The fact that Barlow sings the chorus high notes even higher live blows my mind. Truly amazing.
 
Iced Earth - The squeek in the riff sounds like Leather Rebel. Solid enough stuff, the last 2 or 3 albums from these that have appeared in the game are definitely of a far higher standard than the albums that appeared in earlier rounds (well duh!?), point being that I can see what they have to offer on these last few albums whereas on earlier rounds I was scratching my head and wondering how they have a fan base.

Mastodon - opinion given before

Iced Earth with the win

Motorhead - I'm more likely to listen to later line ups than the classic line up, but this is probably the best of the classic line up, loads of classics Overkill, Stay Clean, Capricorn, No Class, Damage Case and Metropolis. The outro in Overkill tricking you into thinking it's over 3 times is great!

Soundgarden - opinion given before

Motorhead with the win

Blind Guardian - not for me

Tool - opinion given before

Blind Guardian with the win, by default as the Tool track wasn't even a song and I didn't feel like looking for a different track for comparison purposes on a match up I don't care about.

Savatage - I'm familiar enough with this track but feel sorry for them by the draw they've been given.

Rush - opinion given before

Rush with the win
 
Wow. Just wow. Right after we had that IE discussion, we have this first pairing here - my absolutely favourite IE album versus downright my absolutely least favourite Mastodon album (I actually prefer even Remission to this one and I don't count Call of the Mastodon)... Humph....
And because Watching Over Me, Disciples of the Lie and the closing trilogy are just darn sweet...

But no, IIRC, this is the band that kicked out Tales from the Twilight World, so I just can't vote for it (again). Not a way. Mastodon!

---

The second pairing is much easier - I know that Overkill is beloved, but I don't understand why - out of those early albums, nearly all of them surpass this one, bar maybe the debut and On Parole. It's just waaaaay boring, the quirkiness of Capricorn notwithstanding. I like Badmotorfinger more than Superunknown (man, what's with those titles?), but the latter is very colourful, fun album that kicks a lot of ass, has Cornell on top of his game (though maybe slightly below BMF) and enough melodic infectiousness to surpass the Chinese flu. Hey-ho, Cornus-Cornwall-Cornrow-Cornell here I go and ring your bell, ring-a-ding-dillo!

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Mosh said:
Tool is prog for people who hate prog and metal for people who hate metal.
Click to expand...

:funnypost:

but I don't mind it all that much - actually, Pneuma might be my absolute favourite metal song of 2019. But then again, Imaginations is on the level of the best metal albums of the whole 90's at least. It is a transitional album of sorts, at least in my book not really reaching the highs of neither the early BG (Twilight) nor its later incarnation (that'd be Nightfall->Opera), and I especially don't like the mid-tempo slog of both the opener and the closer but still, Script? I'm Alive? Bright Eyes? Mordred's Song? Past and Future Secret? Even Another Holy War (much as it copies I'm Alive on side A)? HANSI! I LOVE YOU!!!

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The last pair are two bands I don't like all that much and especially with Savatage I never really understood what's the deal about them, but just because I already predict the final row of albums in the last rounds will be like a million Maiden albums, Firepower, tree to four Iced Earth albums and about a trillion Rush albums, I vote #noRush. Also, doesn't matter how great the Side-A is, the slooooooog of the B-Side of Moving Pictures could put a zombie back into the ground for the second time, so there.
 
I speak largely in jest, I do enjoy Aenima and Lateralus (to varying degrees, I think they each fall flat as far as full album experiences go). I think it’s laughable that the band’s long awaited comeback album that was received with mixed reviews at best is competitive in a greatest album game, but nevermind that.
 
Voting for Mastodon. Not bothered if IE advances, I enjoyed that record, though I prefer the live versions of the better songs on Alive In Athens. This one was close. May have been influenced by Jon's recent shenanigans.

I have nothing against Soundgarden but Overkill should win just for the title track alone.

Blind Guardian > Tool generally. I am probably a bigger BG fan than most here, and Imaginations is one of their better albums.

Tough draw for Savatage, that's a fun, albeit cheesy, album. But, I mean, c'mon. Moving Pictures is a juggernaut. Anti-Rush bias notwithstanding, this should go deep until it runs up against one of the big Maiden or Sabbath records. Side 2 is underrated, by the way.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
Tough draw for Savatage, that's a fun, albeit cheesy, album. But, I mean, c'mon. Moving Pictures is a juggernaut. Anti-Rush bias notwithstanding, this should go deep until it runs up against one of the big Maiden or Sabbath records. Side 2 is underrated, by the way.
Click to expand...
I'd say Moving Pictures has a good chance in League 2, but it will almost certainly be blown away in League 1, which has a true juggernaut waiting in the Match 4 stream.
 
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