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

And now for what you've all been waiting for ...

Lampwick's top 43 5 discoveries of the GMAC​

Counting down from #5 to #1. I will include a link to a song from each album that helps to showcase why it's so great.

#5 Atlantean Kodex - The Course of Empire


The MaidenFans moderators really pulled off something special. I had seen Atlantean Kodex mentioned a few times on the forum, but never bothered checking them out. The GMAC was perfect for exposing me to a really great band. Some purely epic heavy metal that's still modern, and not overly cheesy. A hard feat to accomplish. The chorus of the linked song got stuck in my head for several days after the first time listening to it.

#4 Down - NOLA


Linked is by far the best song, but the whole album is absolutely worth the listen. I've never even heard of this band prior to the GMAC, nor have I had any familiarity with the genre of sludge metal, but this album makes for a great listen. It's the perfect balance of heavy and melodic, and features the universally beloved Phil Anselmo. It has definitely made a significant presence in Lampwick's musical rotation.

#3 Savatage - Edge of Thorns


Now I have heard of Savatage, and even listened to them a bit prior to the GMAC, but never fully experienced this true gem of an album. It's truly stellar from a band that's otherwise hit-or-miss. Especially when you compare it to the vastly inferior fellow GMAC contestant, Gutter Ballet. I picked a less obvious track to showcase that the album is much deeper outside of the outstanding title track.

#2 Unleash the Archers - Apex


This is a band that seems to be quite popular on MaidenFans, and I can see why. Even one of my irl friends, whose musical opinions I respect, suggested that I would like them, so I had fairly high expectations going in, and I was still blown away. Apex is one hell of an album, and yet it still continues to grow even more on me every single time I listen to it.

#1 Spiritual Beggars - Ad Astra


Here it is, the absolute best discovery of the GMAC. I had absolutely 0 awareness of this 1970's influenced stoner metal band from Sweden, but my eyes have been opened. To me the best part of the tournament has been discovering new music, and in that regard, the GMAC did not disappoint. I highly recommend everybody give this album, and all of Spiritual Beggars' albums really, a proper listen. You won't regret it.

honorable mentions to Edguy's Mandrake, that Persefone album, Alcest, Skyclad, and many many others who I can't think of at the moment.
 
Lampwick 43 said:
#2 Unleash the Archers - Apex


This is a band that seems to be quite popular on MaidenFans, and I can see why. Even one of my irl friends, whose musical opinions I respect, suggested that I would like them, so I had fairly high expectations going in, and I was still blown away. Apex is one hell of an album, and yet it still continues to grow even more on me every single time I listen to it.
Click to expand...
Respect! Apex is awesome and I really do love it. I'm glad you got exposed to this awesome band through the tournament (as well as all the others!)
 
imo SSOASS was always the obvious winner. It tends to do really well in these games, has a lot of hits but doesn’t really get hit with the “overexposed” criticism like NOTB, it has some prog bonafides, but it isn’t quite as difficult to swallow as Somewhere In Time. On any other credible Metal forum, I think Powerslave would be a runaway favorite, but SSOASS has just a little bit more to offer for the hardcore fan.
 
Not surprised by the outcome, as I think this was nearly inevitable after Somewhere In Time was eliminated, but it still managed to be a nailbiter. And Iron Maiden’s best and second best albums took the #1 and #2 slots in the correct order, so the invisible hand apparently approves of my personal ranking.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was a complete reset of my perspective on what constitutes terrible vocals. Before the GMAC I would have considered someone like Tom Araya or Kill ‘Em All era James Hetfield to be a terrible vocalist, but after hearing stuff like Pig Destroyer and a year’s worth of various growls, shrieks, and nonmelodic screams, I find bad melodic vocalists to be a quaint breath of fresh air by comparison.

The GMAC also provided me an opportunity to listen to some older albums and lesser classics that I’d never quite gotten around to before. Most of these didn’t wow me and came off as a bit overrated, but some of the King Diamond and Mercyful Fate albums were great, as were a couple of Savatage albums. Oh, and Tony MacAlpine is totally up my alley, but I’d just never listened to his stuff before.

I kept a list of albums that I want to get back to, and some of the surprising entries include Borknagar’s The Olden Domain, Amorphis’s Skyforger, and Be’lakor’s Stone’s Reach. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get all the way over the vocal hump with those, but they were compelling enough to deserve a real effort, at least.

Heavens Gate is a band I’d totally never heard of before the GMAC, and their stuff was interesting enough to merit some more attention. That Hibria album was pretty good for what it was, too. Evergrey deserves more time, as does the no-growl remix of that Cynic album. W.A.S.P.’s The Crimson Idol and Running Wild’s Death Or Glory had their moments. Riverside, Haken, Tremonti, Star One, and a few others caught my attention too.

I was kind of surprised by how many really terrible albums were on the various web site top 100 lists, and how many great albums didn’t make their lists at all. The collective wisdom of the MaidenFans nominations landed in a far better place than those other sites, I think.

The Rainbow debut can burn in hell for all the great albums it knocked out before their time.

Albums that deserved a better run than they got in the end:

Def Leppard - High ‘n’ Dry
Dokken - Tooth And Nail
Yngwie Malmsteen - Marching Out
Megadeth - Endgame
Mercyful Fate - Don’t Break The Oath
Nightwish - Oceanborn
Powerwolf - Lupus Dei
Savatage - Edge Of Thorns
Luca Turilli - Prophet Of The Last Eclipse
Van Halen - 1984

If someone really wants a final top to bottom ranking of all the GMAC albums, I might be willing to do that, but we’d have to figure out ranking criteria for the albums eliminated within the same round.
My best guess would be to rank by these criteria, in order:
1. Exit round (later is higher)
2. Total non-tiebreak votes received in the exit round
3. Total votes received in the exit round
4. Total non-tiebreak votes received in the GMAC
5. Total votes received in the GMAC

Thanks again to @LooseCannon for spending a year of his life on this for our benefit!
 
Last edited:
Lampwick 43 said:
#4 Down - NOLA


Linked is by far the best song, but the whole album is absolutely worth the listen. I've never even heard of this band prior to the GMAC, nor have I had any familiarity with the genre of sludge metal, but this album makes for a great listen. It's the perfect balance of heavy and melodic, and features the universally beloved Phil Anselmo. It has definitely made a significant presence in Lampwick's musical rotation.
Click to expand...
If you really love NOLA and want something similar, look into 1990s Corrosion of Conformity (specifically Deliverance, Wiseblood, and America's Volume Dealer). Pepper Keenan (lead guitarist in Down) is the rhythm player and lead singer of CoC during this period and it's like Metallica + Lynyrd Skynyrd + even more pot.
Lampwick 43 said:
#2 Unleash the Archers - Apex


This is a band that seems to be quite popular on MaidenFans, and I can see why. Even one of my irl friends, whose musical opinions I respect, suggested that I would like them, so I had fairly high expectations going in, and I was still blown away. Apex is one hell of an album, and yet it still continues to grow even more on me every single time I listen to it.
Click to expand...
FUCK YEEEEEAAAAAH
 
Thank you Loosey for hosting, it was a beast of the game.

As for the results... well... at least neither NOTB nor Rush won.

New discoveries... hmm... gonna have to think about that. Honestly, not that I was bragging or something, but off the top of my head out of the stuff that could genuinely interest me, I already either knew it or at least knew about it, so I'll have to go back and look more thoroughly.
Since someone already mentioned it above, yes, Unleash the Archers were better than I remembered them - though it might be because they got better with time - last time I heard them was I'd say definitely before 2017, before they... hit the apex, so to speak.
 
LC, thanks for hosting. This was a massive undertaking but resulted in one of the best games the forum has seen. This was my reason for coming online for much of the last year.
 
Thanks @LooseCannon for hosting this fun game called GMAC.

Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son is more than a worthy winner - one of Maiden's top masterpieces!

- I still regret not nominating the FOTD album (the only Maiden album which was not featured in the game).

The album which I found from the game was: Symphony X - The Odyssey
Unfamiliar band which I found from the game and I liked it: Enforcer - old school heavy metal!
Curious round: AMOLAD's win over POM - that showed once again how good the reunion albums are.
Cool song from the game: Unleash The Archers - ''Awakening''

Surprises:

Ride The Lightning with victory over 3 Maiden albums (TBOS, SIT and AMOLAD) and Painkiller!
Rising finished 4th - I expected some album with Dio will go far away in the game, maybe... Holy Diver or Heaven And Hell.
The Final Frontier's loss to a much weaker opponent.

Albums that deserved more (and I expected a higher ranking):

Judas Priest - Firepower
Accept - Balls To The Wall
Nightwish - Once
DIO - The Last In Line/Holy Diver
 
Near miss albums:

Kvelertak - I loved the single that was the sample track, literally went straight to spotify to check the rest of the album out, and it just didn't click. Disappointing.

Constructive Criticism:

I think the weighted seeding on some albums was 100% necessary, most of the top 32 definitely arrived in the game at pretty much the right time. But maybe there was too many good albums that arrived too late and never got a chance to get a run going. Killing is my Buisiness and The Real Thing had really good runs, which gave people a good chance of checking them out, but better albums by both bands only ended up with a round or two. Crimson Glory was a band I discovered because they got a decent run, if it had been one song and out, I would have only gave one song a listen and dismissed them as Queensryche wannabes to my own detriment. I realise that this is on me for only checking out the sample tracks.
 
Thanks for the hosting and all the work (which was insane!), LC. You deserve a well deserved break man. *bows deep and takes hat off*

For me personally it was a good game until I got a headache of several voting "motivations" (when people went mass appeal madness, rather than doing what they really prefer; I really saw stuff like this happening several times: "Yeah, I think I prefer A, but I will vote for B because *rant about popularity, influence, etc follows*). It was allowed, but I thought it sucked, realizing that the voting outcomes were not always representative.
This spoiled the fun. I hope this reaction will not cause too much upheaval, just see it as one critical note (or well... just an experience).

Now I'm looking rather forward to other games, such as the Olympic Games, Euro 2020 (2021) and the Tour de France.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top