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

Diesel 11 said:
@JudasMyGuide honestly, thank you for speaking your mind on the whole Dead issue. His life is among the most tragic in music history, and I hate Euronymous's treatment of him like some beat dog as a mascot for them. It also frustrates me that his death was used as a cheap gag by the Warmaster Records to sell a bootleg live show that never should have come out.

But I do like the Deathcrush EP, which was released before Euronymous became as evil as he did. I think the dark atmosphere on it is unparalleled and it's a cool experience. But I also don't have any plans to vote for Mayhem in this game because of Euronymous's really reprehensible actions. Should I end up voting for them, it'll be solely in memoriam of Dead and what he could have been were he actually given the right support.

Hope that makes sense?
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Yes, I think that's completely fine. I'm not an arbiter of that, I know, but I felt the immediate urge to like that post.

Magnus said:
I thought we were voting music not history or personal beliefs.
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Yes, but wouldn't you agree that maybe Mayhem crossed the line a bit, in intertwining their personal horrible selves with the music at hand? That is, in an attempt to create "evil" music they fell into and tried to sell their own evil as well?
(not an attack, this was my point all the time)

I know you like the music and that you probably take this as an attack at you, it's not (or at least it's not supposed to be). Just... even if I liked their sound (and while I am able to appreciate the genre, I can't this particular band) I couldn't listen to them, really. Maybe I'm just way too soft or something.

Though you also deserve some mocking for liking the constipated-man-trying-to-relieve-himself sound of Attila Csihár. :ninja:
 
JudasMyGuide said:
This is ... wrong/incorrect on a lot of levels (it's nice to see you absolutely know why I do what I do, better than myself, actually), but okay, yes, Christians stress death and dying a lot. Possibly too much in cotrast with the current world which tries to pretend death doesn't exist at all or at least it's something you don't talk about.

On the other hand, to enjoy, use and in some ways support the mental illness of your bandmate, who suffers from self harm and does weird macabre shit, leave him alone and secluded with access to weapons for him to commit suicide and then collect pieces of his body and photograph him in order to increase your popularity and fandom via the resulting shock value when you put that on the cover of your shitty, shitty sounding, garbled attempt at noise-making, that's not something just Christians should be opposed to. In a f*** civilized society. Seriously???
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'You' did not mean personally you, just a style of writing.

I find the separation of artist and art an absolute dogma. I don't care about Mayhem, largely the bulk of BM I like was made by Varg. I don't even care if this convicted murdered put his jinx on the songs because we know reality doesn't work like that.
 
Now Chemical Wedding has to be a serious contender in this game. I'm still very fond of Firepower, though, latter day Priest-by-numbers or not.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
Yes, but wouldn't you agree that maybe Mayhem crossed the line a bit, in intertwining their personal horrible selves with the music at hand? That is, in an attempt to create "evil" music they fell into and tried to sell their own evil as well?
(not an attack, this was my point all the time)

I know you like the music and that you probably take this as an attack at you, it's not (or at least it's not supposed to be). Just... even if I liked their sound (and while I am able to appreciate the genre, I can't this particular band) I couldn't listen to them, really. Maybe I'm just way too soft or something.

Though you also deserve some mocking for liking the constipated-man-trying-to-relieve-himself sound of Attila Csihár. :ninja:
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Euronymous, if you ask me, was a bloody idiot, and you must not forget that much of the Norwegian BM scene was spoiled bored youngsters with too much time on their hands.

Which doesn't change the fact that all of a sudden they created something remarkable out of nothing.

As for Attila, it must be something Central European obviously after all, because I hear nothing wrong with his vocals.
 
Well this went south fast. One second light funny stuff puns on plagiarism was being thrown around and all of the sudden we're on the subject of suicide, something really obscure and dire. Call me sensitive or what may but I hate to discuss stuff that tragic and depressive in a music forum. Don't say any one of you that are talking about it should stop it but only justifying why I will not take part on that discussion. Well... Votes, right?

Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes Of A Memory had everything for me to dislike it before it came out. Something told me so (perhaps the need of going from the more simplistic Falling Into Infinity straight to the opposite pole) but when I heard a conceptual/ prog opera by DT was on its way it meant red flags all over for me. And unfortunately I was right. Although the story is quite interesting (with a really cool twist at the end) and some passages truly translate the narrative in acoustic form overall there's a need to compensate old fans with an over the top technical extravaganza full of Broadway like mannerisms in a Prog Metal outfit. But let's not fool ourselves: Metropolis Pt 2 surely has some really nicely put together and achieved moments.
The opening in Regression/ Overture 1928 is superb. We all know DT love to go virtuoso borderline workshop and this is the perfect place to put such a section, as the main character goes back in time. Plus those brief reprises of old riffs are a cool and smart feature. And man, the uncomfortable and rash way Strange Deja Vu kicks in is perfect. Like saying "Ok, we've arrived to your past life... let the plot unfold". But by the second minute I wonder where this song went, as we're thrown once again into several disconnected sequences just when the narrative asked for much more focus. The same pretty much works for the following songs before Beyond This Life brings this record back to the right course: it has the intensity, heaviness and mystery the murder passage demands as well as the labyrinthine nuances and uncertainty Nicholas starts to feel as it all seems to fit too perfectly to be true. But we're given a la la la ballad when Through Her Eyes asked a far more tragic and sad song. Home's Alice In Chains like melodies are ok but once again this is the moment when Nicholas is truly starting to figure there's something really fishy on this whole story, while hell bent on solving it... and the music simply doesn't transpires that to me. The same cannot be said about The Dance Of Eternity an absolutely chaotic prog metal roller coaster that absolutely fits the regression and confusion while putting back the pieces motive brilliantly. One Last Time is another absolutely boring and distant from its narrative music wise passage and although I really like The Spirit Carries On and its Dark Side Of The Moon like atmosphere it adds nothing to the rol in the conceptual perspective. Up to the end of Petrucci's solo at the middle of Finally Free the song is a drag, lacking the adrenaline and on the edge of your seat feeling the (apparent) closure of the story demands (namely discovering the truth beyond the tragedy). But from that point on the grand finale and particularly the twist are truly well portrayed and at least the whole thing has a great ending.
Making a big conceptual album is everything but easy. And while not being an absolute miss, Metropolis Pt 2 falls short regarding that link where musical dynamics must go along with its well penned and demanding story line too many times. And it's a pity since Dream Theater showed in the past they could make good conceptual works: just check A Change Of Seasons. On the other hand we have a simple yet well done Heavy/ Power Metal record with addictive tracks such as Bad To The Bone, The Battle Of Waterloo, Running Blood or Ridding The Storm. So yeah... Running Wild pulls this one while achieving what they're up to with much more effectiveness and control, getting my vote.

The Chemical Wedding. I won't waste too much time praising this album (much less in this forum). Just want to point out how Bruce, while being hugely talented, knows his limits. He could go all out megalomaniac kinda like Dream Theater did on this one... but no. The man choosed a simple area to serve as object of his record and an author/ subject he prety much knows top to bottom. So the record is a colection various aspects, (more precisely human emotions) put under William Blake's scope and/ or his approach on the bible, distorting them or adapting their context to a timeless use. And man this records sounds TIGHT! When your "worst" song is (by "is" read "IMO is") probably The Alchemist you know how brilliantly you did things. It's still a conceptual record since each song is connected by a common theme, but the fact it's not "tied" to a narrative or enters any Rock Opera territory are also traits that IMO helps the record to shine even brighter. The Chemical Wedding is perhaps the 90's best Heavy Metal record and has the bulk and grace to look straight in the eyes every single all time classic album of the genre. Land Of The Free, while being enjoyable, is far from that league. So an obvious vote to Bruce Dickinson.
 
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Mosh said:
And it doesn’t have to be that way. Awake is a great album on its own merits. Well written, well performed, very well produced. It’s extremely dynamic: light moments like Lifting Shadows and the Rush-esque Innocence Faded mixed with very heavy material such as The Mirror. It’s probably their most “metal” album and, although challenging at times, is a lot more to the point and accessible in the same way.

Firepower is the ultimate “not bad” album. As in, it’s so bland that it’s hard to have any strong feelings for it one way or the other. If a sine wave could be translated to Metal music, this is what it would sound like.
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Agreed, Awake along with Images And Words are the two Dream Theater albums which I really want to revisit, because I have a fair bit of their songs on my playlist and they are all amazing but haven't heard them in the album context since the initial listen. Plus finding them on vinyl is damn near impossible.
 
Next we have two quality records. Awake has some truly great tunes like Caught In A Web, Lie and The Mirror. 6:00 has that Rush like vibe and while being pretty cool is an odd choice for an opener. Erotomania on the other side is more on the workshop virtuoso like department but it features some truly great passages here and there for all you prog metal maniacs. But Awake is not devoid of songs that really turn me off. Innocence Faded and Voices are simply boring. Lifting Shadows Of A Dream's guitar work by Petrucci alongside Moore's simple yet effective keys build an excellent ambiance but LaBrie and the high pitch pseudo ballad direction the song gets into really tarnishes it. Scarred starts with a great atmosphere, excellent build but by the 4.17 minute mark it deflates completely and then gets lost in twist and turns never to be found again. Nevertheless the album ends with a masterpiece of a quiet tune in Space-Dye Vest showing that Kevin Moore was way more than just a great performer. On the other hand Firepower has two kinda fillers in its last song and Flamethrower, a weak one in Lone Wolf and the rest varies from really great classic Heavy Metal to that monstrosity of a 4 song spree that open the record. So no slander intended on Awake but it's more uneven than Firepower. I'm sure it was more pivotal to the Prog Metal genre than a classic metal album released in the late 2010's. But even when it comes to its high points I think they're not on the same level than Firepower's initial onslaught. At least not in my book. My vote goes to Judas Priest.

Yeah yeah yeah. I'm from the "Brave New World is full of plagiarism and overrated" old geezer's club. There I said it (once again). I won't go as far as the grumpy elephant man demanding its disqualification or as some others that really ridiculed some passages and lyrics. I really love some tracks: The Thin Line Between Love And Hate is truly amazing, Out Of The Silent Planet is really cool as well and Blood Brothers is also one hell of a song. Then there's Life's Sh.. ehem.. The Nomad and Running W... sorry... The Wicker Man. While being two different songs they share two features: a) they're really great and b) ... well... you get my point. Hell, I've even started liking The Fallen Angel. But then there's the chorus and bridge of I Don't K... coff coff... Ghost Of The Navigator, the great parts along with goofy ones and awful structure in Dream Of Mirrors and the title track or the insipid Mercenary. Hey... at the end of the day it's still a large improvement regarding its predecessor for all it's worth. And has the advantage of not being Symphony X. Who's a lucky band, Iron Maiden?
 
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So Maidenfans is Team Varg. Good to see. Euronymus can go suck it.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
Yes, I think that's completely fine. I'm not an arbiter of that, I know, but I felt the immediate urge to like that post.



Yes, but wouldn't you agree that maybe Mayhem crossed the line a bit, in intertwining their personal horrible selves with the music at hand? That is, in an attempt to create "evil" music they fell into and tried to sell their own evil as well?
(not an attack, this was my point all the time)

I know you like the music and that you probably take this as an attack at you, it's not (or at least it's not supposed to be). Just... even if I liked their sound (and while I am able to appreciate the genre, I can't this particular band) I couldn't listen to them, really. Maybe I'm just way too soft or something.

Though you also deserve some mocking for liking the constipated-man-trying-to-relieve-himself sound of Attila Csihár. :ninja:
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Magnus said:
Euronymous, if you ask me, was a bloody idiot, and you must not forget that much of the Norwegian BM scene was spoiled bored youngsters with too much time on their hands.

Which doesn't change the fact that all of a sudden they created something remarkable out of nothing.

As for Attila, it must be something Central European obviously after all, because I hear nothing wrong with his vocals.
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This is an excerpt excerpt from Alex Ross's book "The Rest Is Noise - listening to the 20th century". Here he describes the European philosophical background "that made possible the extremes of modern art", as he writes. It is exactly fitting this BM discussion IMO. Check it out, if you like, it's very interesting:

A young man named Hieronymus strides through Richard Strauss’s hometown of Munich, scowling at the extravagance around him. He goes inside an art shop and berates its owner for displaying kitsch—art that is merely “beautiful” and therefore worthless. “Do you think gaudy colors can gloss over the misery of the world?” Hieronymus shouts. “Do you think loud orgies of luxurious good taste can drown the moans of the tortured earth? ... Art is the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s terrible depths, into every shameful and sorrowful abyss; art is the divine flame that must set fire to the world, until the world with all its infamy and anguish burns and melts away in redeeming compassion!”

All over fin-de-siècle Europe, strange young men were tramping up narrow stairs to garret rooms and opening doors to secret places. Occult and mystical societies—Theosophist, Rosicrucian, Swedenborgian, kabbalistic, and neopagan—promised rupture from the world of the present. In the political sphere, Communists, anarchists, and ultra-nationalists plotted from various angles to overthrow the quasi-liberal monarchies of Europe; Leon Trotsky, in exile in Vienna from 1907 to 1914, began publishing a paper called Pravda. In the nascent field of psychology, Freud placed the ego at the mercy of the id. The world was unstable, and it seemed that one colossal Idea, or, failing that, one well-placed bomb, could bring it tumbling down. There was an almost titillating sense of imminent catastrophe.
Vienna was the scene of what may have been the ultimate pitched battle between the bourgeoisie and the avant-garde. A minority of “truth-seekers,” as the historian Carl Schorske calls them, or “critical modernists,” in the parlance of the philosopher Allan Janik, grew incensed by the city’s rampant aestheticism, its habit of covering all available surfaces in gold leaf. They saw before them a supposedly modern, liberal, tolerant society that was failing to deliver on its promises, that was consigning large parts of its citizenry to poverty and misery. They spoke up for the outcasts and the scapegoats, the homosexuals and the prostitutes. Many of the “truth-seekers” were Jewish, and they were beginning to comprehend that Jews could never assimilate themselves into an anti- Semitic society, no matter how great their devotion to German culture. In the face of the gigantic lie of the cult of beauty—so the rhetoric went—art had to become negative, critical. It had to differentiate itself from the pluralism of bourgeois culture, which, as Salome demonstrated, had acquired its own avant- garde division.
The offensive against kitsch moved on all fronts. The critic Karl Kraus used his one-man periodical, Die Fackel, or The Torch, to expose what he considered to be laziness and mendacity in journalistic language, institutionalized iniquity in the prosecution of crime, and hypocrisy in the work of popular artists. The architect Adolf Loos attacked the Art Nouveau compulsion to cover everyday objects in wasteful ornament, and, in 1911, shocked the city and the emperor with the unadorned, semi-industrial facade of his commercial building on the Michaelerplatz. The gruesome pictures of Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele confronted a soft-porn art world with the insatiability of lust and the violence of sex. Georg Trakl’s poetry meticulously documented the onset of insanity and suicidal despair: “Now with my murderer I am alone.”
If members of this informal circle sometimes failed to appreciate one another’s work—the bohemian poet Peter Altenberg preferred Puccini and Strauss to Schoenberg and his students—they closed ranks when philistines attacked. There would be no backing down in the face of opposition. “If I must choose the lesser of two evils,” Kraus said, “I will choose neither.”
The most aggressive of Vienna’s truth-seekers was the philosopher Otto Weininger, who, in 1903, at the age of twenty-three, shot himself in the house where Beethoven died. In a city that considered suicide an art, Weininger’s was a masterpiece, and it made a posthumous bestseller of his doctoral dissertation, a bizarre tract titled Sex and Character. The argument of the book was that Europe suffered from racial, sexual, and ethical degeneration, whose root cause was the rampant sexuality of Woman. Jewishness and homosexuality were both symptoms of a feminized, aestheticized society. Only a masculine Genius could redeem the world. Wagner was “the greatest man since Christ.” Strange as it may seem in retrospect, this alternately incoherent and bigoted work attracted readers as intelligent as Kraus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and James Joyce, not to mention Schoenberg and his pupils. The young Alban Berg devoured Weininger’s writings on culture, underlining sentences such as this: “Everything purely aesthetic has no cultural value.” Wittgenstein, who made it his mission to expunge pseudo-religious cant from philosophy, was quoting Weininger when he issued his aphorism “Ethics and aesthetics are one.”
The entire discourse surrounding the Viennese avant-garde demands skeptical scrutiny. Certain of these “truths”—fatuous generalizations about women, obnoxious remarks about the relative abilities of races and classes—fail to impress the modern reader. Weininger’s notion of “ethics,” rooted in Puritanism and self-hatred, is as hypocritical as anyone’s. As in prior periods of cultural and social upheaval, revolutionary gestures betray a reactionary mind-set. Many members of the modernist vanguard would tack away from a fashionable solidarity with social outcasts and toward various forms of ultranationalism, authoritarianism, even Nazism. Moreover, only in a prosperous, liberal, art- infatuated society could such a determinedly antisocial class of artists survive, or find an audience. The bourgeois worship of art had implanted in artists’ minds an attitude of infallibility, according to which the imagination made its own laws. That mentality made possible the extremes of modern art.
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Dream Theater wins a strong victory to stop Running Wild's GMAC journey. They've earned a League 2 matchup with Mayhem.
Bruce Dickinson takes down Gamma Ray with distinction. That's it for Gamma Ray, and Bruce faces Black Sabbath next league.
Judas Priest holds on against Dream Theater. There's lots of DT left, so don't worry.
Iron Maiden wins definitively over Symphony X. That's it for the prog metal group, and Maiden's next challenge will be Sepultura.
 
Dream_Theater_-_Train_of_Thought.jpg

Dream Theater - Train of Thought (2003)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Kingdom 26
Maidenfans Nominators: @FTB, @KidInTheDark666, @Lampwick 43, @MrKnickerbocker, @Shmoolikipod, @Spambot
League 3 - Match 29vs.
Acdc_Highway_to_Hell.JPG

AC/DC - Highway to Hell (1979)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 18
Maidenfans Nominators: @Niall Kielt
Previous Rounds:
League 4: Defeated Iron Maiden - Dance of Death 16-15.

[TR]
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1024px-ACDC_Back_in_Black.png

AC/DC - Back in Black (1980)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 4
Maidenfans Nominators: @Dr Eddie’s Wingman, @Jer, @mckindog, @srfc
League 3 - Match 30vs.
Opeth_stilllife.jpg

Opeth - Still Life (1999)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Kingdom 97
Maidenfans Nominators: @Collin, @Midnight, @MrKnickerbocker, @Night Prowler, @Shmoolikipod, @The Flash
Previous Rounds:
League 4: Defeated UFO - Lights Out 16-14.
 
DiamondHeadLightningToTheNations.jpg

Diamond Head - Lightning to the Nations (1980)

How it got here
List entries: Rolling Stone 42, Metalstorm 45, DigitalDreamDoor 45
Maidenfans Nominators: n/a
League 3 - Match 31vs.
BurntOfferings.jpg

Iced Earth - Burnt Offerings (1995)

How it got here
List entries: Metalstorm 88
Maidenfans Nominators: @Forostar, @Mosh, @Perun
Previous Rounds:
League 4: Defeated Motörhead - Inferno 20-10.
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Slayer_South_of_Heaven_Cover.jpg

Slayer - South of Heaven (1988)

How it got here
List entries: Rolling Stone 47, Metal Rules 23, DigitalDreamDoor 63
Maidenfans Nominators: n/a
League 3 - Match 32vs.
Rush_Hemispheres.jpg

Rush - Hemispheres (1978)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Midnight
Previous Rounds:
League 10: Defeated Rush - Permanent Waves 15-11.
League 9: Defeated Rosetta - Wake/Lift 19-3.
League 8: Defeated The Michael Schenker Group - The Michael Schenker Group 19-8.
League 7: Defeated Gojira - Magma 20-5.
League 6: Defeated Rush - Clockwork Angels 15-12.
League 5: Defeated Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion 17-12.
League 4: Defeated Stratovarius - Visions 20-11.
 
AC/DC
AC/DC
Iced Earth
Rush

Highway to Hell and Back In Black are absolute monster albums for AC/DC only surpassed by Let There Be Rock for my own personal taste, against Train Of Thought, which is a pretty great album but doesn't have the staying power for me, and Opeth which I haven't acquired the taste for. Diamond Head hasn't clicked while Iced Earth has, then we have Rush vs Slayer the latter of which I have never successfully listened to a full song of, plus Hemispheres is amazing and well I'm Canadian. Being on a progressive rock/metal kick right now also helps.
 
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