100 FAVORITE METAL ALBUMS

For my second act of nerdness, I bring forth my “100 Favorite Metal Albums”.  It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am a metal head, though oddly after all of the dumb lists that I have made in the past, I have actually never tallied the best albums of the most headbanging of musical genres until now.  Similar to the Time Out London list that inspired my previous horror one Decibel magazine just recently put out a their “Top 100 Death Metal Albums of All Time”.  The timing was rather cosmic as I was already committed to my own metal list awhile before, so Decibel did not give me the idea this time around.  Honestly, their list is so utterly shitty anyway that I will not even bother linking it here, (that’ll learn ‘em).

When it came to deciding what was metal enough to include, I had the similar problem when deciding what was horror enough to include on my horror list.  Once again, I had to undergo much splitting of hairs.  Though there is no denying that Black Sabbath practically invented the metal riff, they have always been a classic rock band to me, even up to the Dio era.  Maybe that is because their first album came out in 1970 which seems too early for metal to officially exist.  On that note,I basically began with post-New Wave of British Heavy Metal stuff. 

As will become rather obvious, I tend to lean towards the extreme end of things.  Black and especially death metal-tinged stuff makes up a staggering majority of this list.  My time spent in my first death metal band where we all kept inspiring each others CD purchases has certainly contributed to my tastes being what they are.  I do dig some power, stoner, and doom metal, as well as the classic thrash and traditional stuff, but what can I say; at the end of the day I am a blood-curdling screaming and cookie monster vocals kind of guy.

Now there was other questionable stuff that also came up like pop music with really heavy guitars (System of a Down, Korn), or virtuoso prog metal, (Dream Theater, Fates Warning), and I opted not to include any of the above.  In the case of Dream Theater who were damn near my one time favorite band, albums like Images and Words and Awake would take up the top two spots on my list if I included them and saying either is the best metal album ever made just does not sound right.  So whatever; my list, my rules.

Now this time around I was lazy and a, just posting it as a list to read, sans the essays.  Lame I know, yet hopefully I have made up for this with including a link for each album, naturally to said album's most bomb-ass track.  Anyway, enough of this, on to the headbanging…