Your Top 10 Metal Albums of All-Time

siLLy puPPy wrote: Saperlipopette! wrote: siLLy puPPy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Kill 'em All could very well be the beginning of "Metal", while the 70s laid the foundations with their "Heavy Metal" albums: Rock/Blues -> Heavy Rock/Blues / Hard Rock ->  New Wave of British Heavy Metal -> (Modern) Metal ->  Thrash Metal / Death Metal / Black Metal / ... Kill Em ALl the beginning of metal? OMG. Are you serious? Metallica didn't even release the first thrash much less metal. Both Sodom and Holy Moses released thrash metal before Metallica. But come on a couple of primitively recorded german cassette demos weren't game-changers like Kill 'Em All was. Your revisionist way of thinking is nice for shining a light on overlooked bands and stuff, but not helpful in understanding music history. Era defining albums is rarely about being the very first, but the first that was widely listened to and the most influential. As with In the Court... or Bitches Brew before - for Prog and Fusion. Anyway I just wrote what I mean when I state just "metal" - and don't specify any further like with "heavy metal". If someone tells me "I listen to a lot of metal" I will associate with another kind of metal than someone saying "I listen to a lot of heavy metal". - Imo there is a before and after Kill ‘Em All. To those who heard it, it sounded harder and more aggressive than anything before. And as it actually sold a few copies - it made the biggest waves. But there’s no before and after Witching Metal (or Satan's Angel), as hardly anyone knew of its existence back then. Just like In the Court... is much better than anything by The Nice - Kill 'Em All is obviously of a much higher than quality than those earlier, thrashy demos too. So you're saying Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Diamond Head, Ozzy Osbourne, Angel Witch, Pagan Altar, Saxon, Accept, Riot, Heavy Load, Scorpions, Venom, Witchfinder General, Tank, Cirith Ungol, Tygers of Pan Thang, Holocaust, Raven, Trust, Picture, Legend, Quartz, Samson, ManillaRoad, Loudness, Killer, Kimmo Kuusniemi Band and Fist, JUST TO NAME A FEW, weren't metal before Metallica? Those German demos were only pointed out to show that Metallica didn't INVENT thrash metal. Of course they get credit for popularizing it. The claim was Kill Em All was the FIRST METAL ALBUM. Hardly.

I didn't claim anything, but explained my way of thinking. I'm not talking about "inventions". I don't really think of musical nuances in in that way. As inventions I mean. Thrash Metal wasn't invented by anyone. It's parts from here and there. I think by large it's a pointless and inane way of looking at art. If you do something and no one takes notice, you're not part of the the story anyway. Metallica however, were noticed.


Edited by Saperlipopette! - July 17 2023 at 10:23

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ And their opinion differs slightly from the folks at metal-archives.com. The emerging picture that is consistent with most viewpoints is that there were different phases of metal:  1. a classic, pioneering phase in the 70s 2. the NWOBHM in the late 70s and early 80s 3. "modern" metal in the early 80s and beyond All we're basically arguing about is what to call them, and which albums qualify - which will be an eternal discussion

Trickster F. wrote: What about all the forms of metal that MA fails to acknowledge as being connected with the genre (and has done so for decades)? Don't they still omit Tool, of all bands, from their database?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ And their opinion differs slightly from the folks at metal-archives.com. The emerging picture that is consistent with most viewpoints is that there were different phases of metal:  1. a classic, pioneering phase in the 70s 2. the NWOBHM in the late 70s and early 80s 3. "modern" metal in the early 80s and beyond All we're basically arguing about is what to call them, and which albums qualify - which will be an eternal discussion

^ And their opinion differs slightly from the folks at metal-archives.com. The emerging picture that is consistent with most viewpoints is that there were different phases of metal: 

siLLy puPPy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Kill 'em All could very well be the beginning of "Metal", while the 70s laid the foundations with their "Heavy Metal" albums: Rock/Blues -> Heavy Rock/Blues / Hard Rock ->  New Wave of British Heavy Metal -> (Modern) Metal ->  Thrash Metal / Death Metal / Black Metal / ... Kill Em ALl the beginning of metal? OMG. Are you serious? Metallica didn't even release the first thrash much less metal. Both Sodom and Holy Moses released thrash metal before Metallica.

But come on a couple of primitively recorded german cassette demos weren't game-changers like Kill 'Em All was. Your revisionist way of thinking is nice for shining a light on overlooked bands and stuff, but not helpful in understanding music history. Era defining albums is rarely about being the very first, but the first that was widely listened to and the most influential. As with In the Court... or Bitches Brew before - for Prog and Fusion. Anyway I just wrote what I mean when I state just "metal" - and don't specify any further like with "heavy metal". If someone tells me "I listen to a lot of metal" I will associate with another kind of metal than someone saying "I listen to a lot of heavy metal".

siLLy puPPy wrote: 70s heavier rock is early metal. I call it first wave metal.

Edited by The Anders - July 17 2023 at 03:58

These 10 are up there for me but not absolute.

Metallica - Master of Puppets
Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime
Corrosion of Conformity - Blind
Tool - Lateralus
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
Motorhead - Orgasmatron
Anthrax - Sound of White Noise
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Warrior Soul - God, Drugs and the New Republic
Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

^ I'm just trying to use these labels in a consistent way. "Metal", in its essence, stands for a certain way to structure music that is different from (or sometimes even diametrically opposed to) the way things are done in "Rock" music, and it has to do with (but is not limited to) a rejection of Blues/RnB. It began in the 70s, gained more momentum with the NWOBHM, and then came into full bloom in the 1980s. That's just the objective facts, and I suspect that most participants in this thread agree. Where we differ is where/when we would draw the line between releases that are still in the "Rock" domain (with some Metal traits) and those that are in the "Metal" domain (with some Rock traits), or whether we would even want to make such a distinction. And that's a really subjective call. Ultimately the music is more important than the labels of course.