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

Dio v Helloween - An easy tie, I think this Helloween album is ok, it get's some bonus points from being an influential album in it's subgenre, but that subgenre doesn't appeal to me. Holy Diver on the other hand is choc-ful of classic tracks sung by one of the best in the business with a great band backing him.

Dio with the win

Judas Priest v Black Sabbath - The ultimate clash between the two most important early Heavy Metal albums. Sad Wings is a good bit better. Black Sabbath is a great album but was pretty much recorded in one take over the course of a day or so, and ultimately that shows in some of the vocals and noodling solo parts. Sad Wings has Epitaph which sounds like an even shitter version of Eleanor Rigby, but everything else is brilliant.

Judas Priest with the win.
 
The first matchup is tough, but Holy Diver is one of the best debut albums ever and Dio's singing makes it perfect. I must say, I like Part 1 of the Keepers albums more (the classics in Part 2 are: Eagle, Stein, Time, Out, the title track).

My second vote is for Sad Wings Of Destiny (Victim, Ripper, Tyrant, Genocide... all great) - I like it more than the debut album of Black Sabbath.
 
Dio

Priest


Both albums in the second match are legendary, but Victim of Changes is better than anything on BS (not to mention the other great songs on Sad Wings).
 
The A side of Black Sabbath is one of the strongest in their catalog but the B-side (with the two only so-so cover songs on it) really brings the album down for me. Paranoid is the first album full of all excellent songs and no filler stuff like cover versions or jams to fill out record time.
 
The A side of Black Sabbath is one of the strongest in their catalog but the B-side (with the two only so-so cover songs on it) really brings the album down for me. Paranoid is the first album full of all excellent songs and no filler stuff like cover versions or jams to fill out record time.
I've never been a fan of bands putting cover songs on their albums. As B-sides or bonus tracks or whatever, fine. Or as an all-covers album like Metallica did, fine. But not on an album proper. It just screams "we don't have enough ideas."
 
I've never been a fan of bands putting cover songs on their albums. As B-sides or bonus tracks or whatever, fine. Or as an all-covers album like Metallica did, fine. But not on an album proper. It just screams "we don't have enough ideas."
I think there are cases where covers are good enough to put on albums. Judas Priest’s “Diamonds and Rust” and “Better By You...” come to mind. The latter got them in a lot of trouble, though.
 
I've never been a fan of bands putting cover songs on their albums. As B-sides or bonus tracks or whatever, fine. Or as an all-covers album like Metallica did, fine. But not on an album proper. It just screams "we don't have enough ideas."
In Black Sabbath's case, though, you have got to remember that they recorded the album in one day, they might have wanted to keep and polish one or two ideas of their own for the next record.
 
I've never been a fan of bands putting cover songs on their albums. As B-sides or bonus tracks or whatever, fine. Or as an all-covers album like Metallica did, fine. But not on an album proper. It just screams "we don't have enough ideas."
I agree. I think it depends on the artists though, if they can do some original with a cover then why not? But it usually means for a worse album experience overall.
 
The A side of Black Sabbath is one of the strongest in their catalog but the B-side (with the two only so-so cover songs on it) really brings the album down for me. Paranoid is the first album full of all excellent songs and no filler stuff like cover versions or jams to fill out record time.

The first Sabbath album I ever got was the 1 CD version of We Sold Our Souls for Rock N'Roll. Warning is on there but it's only the last 3 minutes of it, and I'm just so used to that I can never really enjoy the full version of it.
 
What the frick, really?
From Wikipedia:
"According to Black Sabbath's guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi, the group's debut album was recorded in a single day on 16 October 1969. The session lasted twelve hours. Iommi said: "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland." (Black, Johnny (14 March 2009). "Black celebration: the holy grail of Black Sabbath". Music Week. Archived from the original on 5 March 2012. Retrieved 7 September 2013.)"
 
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From Wikipedia:
"According to Black Sabbath's guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi, the group's debut album was recorded in a single day on 16 October 1969. The session lasted twelve hours. Iommi said: "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland." (Black, Johnny (14 March 2009). "Black celebration: the holy grail of Black Sabbath". Music Week. Archived from the original on 5 March 2012. Retrieved 7 September 2013.)"
They probably couldn't afford much studio time. I'd say the strategy worked out for them.
 
Holy Diver is certainly a candidate for my favourite album ever.
Strong and varied songwriting, great sound and album sequencing, deep, well-performed (Campbell is on fire) and the best singer in the history of the genre.
Not sure how you could have improved it.
 
My heart's not really in the game anymore, but

Helloween, because of Dio's cover art and because about a third of the tracks do nothing for me, whereas with Helloween I mostly enjoy pretty much all the tracks at least somewhat. Dr. Stein might be stupid, but it's memorable and it's fun, which I can't say about Gypsy...

...wait, what?

Snímek obrazovky 2021-04-21 v 18.12.00.png

Heh, anyway, one of the worst tracks either of them ever wrote. :ninja:

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#noJP. Because of the unbridled adoration, because of Opeth and because I think I'll pick the band without any nonces, thank you very much. Wait, there's Alan Moore on the drums on Sad Wings instead? Didn't he write Lost Girls? Well, as I was saying...

:ninja:
 
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