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

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Iron Maiden - A Matter of Life and Death (2006)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Ariana, @Dityn DJ James, @Dr. Eddie’s Wingman, @Kalata, @KidInTheDark666, @LooseCannon, @matic22, @Mosh, @Perun, @Poto, @srfc, @The Dissident, @The Flash
Previous Rounds:
League 5: Defeated Crimson Glory - Transcendence 23-5.
League 4: Defeated Running Wild - Port Royal 26-7.
League 3: Defeated Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse 28-4.
League 2: Defeated Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind 23-17.
League 1: Defeated Metallica - ...And Justice For All 24-14.
Round of 32 - Match 9vs.
Queensryche_-_Operation_Mindcrime_cover.jpg

Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime (1988)

How it got here
List entries: Rolling Stone 67, Loudwire 24, Metal Rules 11, Metalstorm 8, DigitalDreamDoor 24, Metal Kingdom 18
Maidenfans Nominators: @Collin, @Diesel 11, @Dr Eddie’s Wingman, @FTB, @Jer, @mckindog, @Mosh, @Poto, @srfc, @The Dissident, @Travis The Dragon, @Yax
Previous Rounds:
League 1: Defeated Judas Priest - Hell Bent For Leather 26-11.
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Ridetl.png

Metallica - Ride the Lightning (1984)

How it got here
List entries: Rolling Stone 11, Loudwire 8, Metal Rules 3, DigitalDreamDoor 6, Metal Kingdom 7
Maidenfans Nominators: @Ariana, @Cornfed Hick, @Dr Eddie’s Wingman, @Jer, @LooseCannon, @Midnight, @Perun, @Poto, @The Flash, @Whooten, @Yax
Previous Rounds:
League 1: Defeated Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls 29-9.
Round of 32 - Match 10vs.
Iron_Maiden_-_Somewhere_in_Time.jpg

Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time (1986)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 26, Metalstorm 30, DigitalDreamDoor 59
Maidenfans Nominators: @Collin, @Dityn DJ James, @Dr Eddie’s Wingman, @FTB, @Kalata, @karljant, @KidInTheDark666, @matic22, @Midnight, @Shmoolikipod, @srfc, @The Dissident, @The Flash
Previous Rounds:
League 2: Defeated Iced Earth - Night of the Stormrider 38-3.
League 1: Defeated Anthrax - Among the Living 33-5.
 
I think this is the best chance SIT has of going out in the next couple of rounds, so if you do not want to see SIT win this whole thing, certainly Ride the Lightning is your chariot.
 
*laughter*

No way.

The best Maiden album and one of the best albums of the new millennium so far (I could write pages and pages on that single album alone) vs. even the best Ryche album's just no contest. No fucking way.

The second pair is a little bit closer, but still, Metallica at their absolute best beats Maiden at their 80's norm.
Ride is the more diverse and colourful album, the title track is absolutely unoverplayable (is that a word?), Bell has more riffs in the first few minutes than Maiden have had in their entire career (sorry!), Ktulu is just so mysterious, haunting. Fight Fire is more brutal than anything Maiden ever did, Fade to Black is just so emotional, well-thought, epic (and with guitar harmonies!).

Okay, now I care. These two are the fucking albums that SHOULD win! YEAH! COME ON!
 
Yax said:
Allow me to rephrase. If a person likes Maiden it isn't surprising if the person also likes bands that are assigned the same or closely related genre description - Especially if they are roughly of the same era.
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Agreed, genres were made up because different bands had a shared audience.

However I did specifically refer to music only. Vocals are #1 thing that a person grabs from the song. Try putting Future World, I Want Out, and Aces High, instrumentals, to your dad, and ask him how many bands are there. Without the vocals dominating the rock song, all the differences in music can be heard.

Just a difference in POV, I go for the music first. General population doesn't and that includes metalheads so I guess you're right.

Diesel 11 said:
This is genuinely just a me thing, but when I think of Dio I actually associate him more with Britain and Europe than I do with America? Like he doesn’t seem American to me despite *being* American. Maybe that’s because he played with two British bands (Rainbow, Black Sabbath) or because his imagery is completely different from the America that I know of.
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Both I believe. He did not use the average USA metal 80s tropes from the either side. He had songs about girls but they were no hair metal songs and he had songs about, well, thrashing and metal but they were no thrash metal. Add a hefty amount of fantasy there too. Also he remained somewhat popular throughout entire 80s without changing the sound too much.

However Dio as an act has a strange career curve. Their sales started dropping almost immediately. Sophomore did chart better than the debut but it didn't sell comparatively more, Sacred Heart sold less than both and any following studio album did not reach point of certification in UK or USA.

A normal band would've probably disbanded or just went into obscurity after 4 albums but Dio had his following even then. Because it was not a normal band in a sense that debut album isn't really the debut of the whole affair, it's a continuation of carreer that Dio built in years prior.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
Bell has more riffs in the first few minutes than Maiden have had in their entire career (sorry!)
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Yeah, but Maiden didn’t drop their whole load all at once like Metallica did, and instead gave us 15 great albums compared to Metallica’s 5 (and with a higher average of quality at that).
 
Zare said:
A normal band would've probably disbanded or just went into obscurity after 4 albums but Dio had his following even then. Because it was not a normal band in a sense that debut album isn't really the debut of the whole affair, it's a continuation of carreer that Dio built in years prior.
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I was going to say, it helps that he toured his pre-solo stuff strongly as well. Had he lived longer I feel like he'd have had a renaissance in the 2010s as a grandfather of metal. But alas.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Yeah, but Maiden didn’t drop their whole load all at once like Metallica did, and instead gave us 15 great albums compared to Metallica’s 5 (and with a higher average of quality at that).
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Yes but RTL is their best album and it's not particularly close, at least for me.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Yeah, but Maiden didn’t drop their whole load all at once like Metallica did, and instead gave us 15 great albums compared to Metallica’s 5 (and with a higher average of quality at that).
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It's easy to be consistent (or as you say, with a "higher average of quality") if you aim mainly at maintaining the formula (with rather small cosmetic changes here and there) and don't take risks all that much.

And Tullica 2-4 might have a stronger appeal for me than even AMOLAD. Though I'd usually put Maiden higher, as a band.

Well, these are all tough questions, you know?
 
AMOLAD beats Geoff Tate, any day.

Metallica have the better album here. SIT is a 50/50 album for me, half is amazing, half is wobbly at best. RTL is a top tier Metallica album, SIT is somewhere around 5th or 6th for Maiden at best.

EDIT: After checking my personal notes, SIT has ranked 7th nearly every time I’ve done a full album run. RTL has consistently been 2nd or 3rd.
 
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Iron Maiden v Queensryche - AMOLAD is a very good Maiden album, maybe not as good as it's rated on here (better than Piece of Mind :facepalm: ), but nevertheless the best of the 6 man line-up. Operation : Mindcrime is better than that though, and I will likely only vote against O:M if it was up against one of my top 4 Maiden albums.

Queensryche with the win

Metallica v Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time is Maiden's most overrated album, the second weakest of the 80's Maiden albums. I'd likely still vote for it over a huge swathe of all the metal albums released. But Ride the Lightening is not just another Metal album, it's the second best album from one of the very best, and certainly the biggest, Heavy Metal bands of all time.

Metallica with the win
 
Oh dear.. Mindcrime is one of the best albums of all time IMO, and one of the albums I have listened most to. However AMOLAD is my all time favourite. Maiden it is.

Ride the Lightning in the second paring. Somewhere in Time is excellent, but it's second tier Maiden and slightly weaker than Ride the Lightning.
 
This thread is giving me cancer.

If I ever discover any bit about SiT period on my own, if I manage to download some live shit no-one has, I swear to god I won't ever post it here on this board. Ever.
 
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