Coming near the end of the Norwegian black metal boom that began in the late 80s and kinda peaked out by the mid-90s, Ulver's debut album
Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler is Norwegian folklore set to music. The album's long-titled opening track "Capitel I : I Troldskog Faren Vild" contains not a moment of screaming, Garm (Kristoffer Rygg) instead sounds like a sole choir boy in a massive Viking temple. Musically, Ulver hit a peak here that they'd never get to again, not that they ever tried mind you as they haven't resembled anything close to a metal band for almost all of their existence since. But then why keep going for glory when you knock it out of the park on the first swing?
Nevermore's first 7-string written and recorded album
Dead Heart In A Dead World I'd say is their finest and the band's signature jam as far as I'm concerned is "The River Dragon Has Come". Just reading that song title and assuming that Nevermore is a power metal band, (which on paper I guess they are), this could be a lot closer to the truth. Nevermore were exceptionally heavier and darker both lyrically and musically than literally every other traditional metal band there's ever been. Sick riffs, a harmonized lead from Jeff Loomis, plus a rare high scream from Warrel Dane and lyrics about something-something serious. It's enough to make a believer out of any extreme metal head who's allergic to clean singing.
And here we have Fenriz delivering one of the funniest power metal parody vocal performances of all time. At least I think it's a parody. Very hard to tell with this guy. If you'd have told me when I first got into Darkthrone that in 2015 I'd be regularly bumping a 13 minute, traditional metal song with vocals like this and zero of the primitive black metal elements the band got on the map for, I'd of said you must enjoy drugs. That said, Darkthrone has never been a band to beat a dead horse, as they've gone from generic death metal, to black metal, to punk, to now "Leave No Cross Unturned". I like my metal with a heavy dose or at least side of silly and Fenriz who wrote, "sung", and performed this one on his lonesome may be the Benny Hill of metal musicians. It's physically impossible to not both laugh and headbang to this one all at once.
Quorthon (Tomas Börje Forsberg) was basically the sole godfather of black metal and 1987's
Under the Sign of the Black Mark was his near one-man project Bathory's third and finest album. It was also the first one to contain listenable production and more epic arrangements and the last to embrace the Dark Lord. "Enter the Eternal Fire" is primal enough musically that I've debated covering it in one of my band's whilst having all of us switch instruments, but this does zero to diminish it's impact. A lumbering, slow, and of course evil hym, Immortal, Satyricon, Darkthrone, and you name it pretty much had the rule book laid out for them here. Quothon still had three more quality albums to release under the Bathory title, but this one sums up his powers most good.
This was the first Opeth anything I ever heard and it kicks off barely-arguably their very best album
Blackwater Park. Before this song was even over that first time, I was an Opeth fan. I actually enjoy Mikael Åkerfeldt's more mellow compositions if I was forced to choose, but I was still rather surprised to discover that this is the first of only two songs making this list. But it assuredly belongs. Besides just being my introduction to one of metal's all time finest bands, it's textbook Opeth at their very strongest. I really could've picked any song off this album, ("Bleak", "The Drapery Falls", or "The Funeral Portrait"), but I'll stand by this one till I change my mind next time I make this list.
"11th Hour" was one of the crowning moments off
As the Palaces Burn, once again the first album I had bought and heard from THIS band. Lamb of God was getting better and better by the time they cut their third album with ridiculously talented Devin Townsend helping produce. This has been a concert staple pretty much ever since and it's easy to see why. Two-ish minutes in when it kicks into thrash gear and ultimately breaks down that ridiculously tight "stupid" riff is the moment anyone in the crowd will compulsively start circle pitting, moshing, and/or just cracking one's neck in place. Really every Lamb of God song has a moment or several like this, but this one just cracks the neck more nicely it does.
As of late, Poland's unholy extreme metal darlings Behemoth have been getting increasingly better and more interesting. I've always been a fan since their Morbid Angel worshiping early 2000s days, but the band's latest album
The Satanist is where I wish oh so many metal bands would go musically. The album before that one though
Evangelion ended with "Lucifer" which not only may be the greatest music video ever made, but is my pick as the band's high water mark. It also clearly set the tone for what they'd do on
The Satanist, meaning slow, very moody, groove oriented hell metal. Out of all the metal band's that take themselves way too seriously, Behemoth is my favorite. Moments like "Lucifer" are so godforsaken good that it almost makes me wish I didn't play in a comedy death metal band but instead one that made pretentious arthouse music and videos that piss off Christians.
And now, this list's introduction to the feminist poetry that is Chris Barnes lyrics. Many people, (including many in and out of Cannibal Corpse), consider
The Bleeding to be the band's finest album. I do not, though I love it plenty mind you. But the crazily catchy "Stripped, Raped, and Strangled" doth appear on it so there's your glowing endorsement right there. My old death metal band Wretched Disciple learned this song at one point and me and my brother still made a point to start playing it during band practice on a regular basis afterwards, regardless of which band we were practicing in. It's as infectious as death metal can possibly be. I could be having a root canal done and explosive diarrhea at the same time and if this song came on I'd still start headbanging.
Initially I had three Sepultura songs written down for consideration for this list. Ultimately I settled on just "Slave New World" off
Chaos A.D. As fantastic as "Refuse/Resist", "Territory", and well every other song on that album is, "Slave" just kicks all the ass. I simply love dumb, chunky riffs like the main one here where the drums kick in. And the awesome and simple D standard riffage doesn't stop there.
Chaos A.D. is where Sepultura both changed up their sound from the excellent, Slayer-inspired death metal of their first few albums to move into tribal groove metal. But it's also where they perfected said move, as
Roots onward would slowly deteriorate into TOO much de-tuned primal-ness. But 1993, still Max Cavalera fronted Sepultura was certainly firing on all cylinders.
One of the shittiest named metal band's of all time released their fifth album
In Defiance of Existence in 2003 and I was hip to it right away. I had some Dimmu Borgir and was aware of the band's then second guitarists Galder's (Tom Rune Andersen) long going project Old Man's Child when I heard "Black Seeds On Virgin Soil" on a compilation CD, (remember those?), for Century Media Records. I promptly went and picked said album up as this song whoops fucking ass. It certainly doesn't hurt that Dimmu, Lock-Up, and ex-Cradle of Filth drummer Nicholas Barker is behind the kit on this one. This entire album is excellent and it remains the only OMC album I ever listen to even though I have all of them. Lightning caught in a bottle I suppose.
It's understood by most that when Metallica was good, they were goddamn godlike. Until
(The Black Album) came out, they could basically do no wrong. The title track from
Ride the Lightning just missed the cut, but "Creeping Death" was written in Moses' tablets as for sure showing up on this list. A song about the plagues of the death of the first born from
The Bible, (which is a good song title in and of itself), and containing a riff that makes most other riffs sound like they suck, "Creeping Death" is one of those songs you'd play an alien who's never heard metal before. In fact it's also a song you'd play an idiot who only knows Metallica post "Enter Sandman" to show them that at one point Metallica chanted "Die!" and tore the roof off the place.
The first excellent Enslaved album I picked up was
Below the Lights and it's lead-off track, "As Fire Swept Clean the Earth" hit me right away as a masterpiece. First off, how awesome of a song title is that? Second off, any song that starts with the world's most beautiful instrument the mellotron has my attention straight away. The rest of "AFSCTE" perfectly encapsulates Enslaved at the peak of their powers, with eerie melodies, odd drumming, chanted and growled vocals, and slamming riffs all thrown into the mix. Amazingly this isn't even the best song off this album, meaning of course if you haven't done so yet, you should make it a purchase that you make.
Boring and sub-par vocals, drumming, and kinda cornball keyboards aside, Dimmu Borgir's third and best three-word-titled album
Enthrone Darkness Triumphant has some gloriously Satanic excellence on it. Opener "Mourning Palace" is easily the band's best song. Truth be told, I'm not the overall biggest Dimmu fan as I find them very hit or miss. This album is very solid though and "Palace" is chock-full of riffs that they'd never had or would have again. So clearly their prayers to the Great Deceiver were being answered at this point in their careers. Look no further than the 3:45 onward mark in this song for all the evidence you need that at least in this instance, Norway's most commercially successful black metal band was worthy of the hype.
My bass player Eric randomly emailed me one day that he had found the heaviest song of all time. As this was the bass player in both the death metal band's I've thus far played in, (and much of our conversation revolved around just how heavy metal truly was), this was indeed saying something coming from him. And after partaking, my head, mind, and ass were assuredly blown. To date, I'm hard pressed still to find anything that is indeed heavier than "Pandemonic Hyperblast". Nearly everything that's happening in this song is distorted to obscene levels and the non-human drumming is so relentlessly pummeling that it nearly knocks you off your seat listening to it at any volume level. Anaal Nathrakh would go onto make more stellar music and noise throughout their still going career, but they never came as close to defying the laws of physics as they did here.
Mayhem is one of those band's that you can take or leave entire moments in their career. I have friends who've stuck by everything this band has done, but I hate their back-again asshat frontman Attila Csihar with all of my black heart so anything he's on and ruining doth not get listened to by me. Mayhem's early basement recordings are as unlistenable sonically as their later era stuff is complex musicianship wise. Through it all, it's brutal and bleak though. "To Daimonion" is the last full song on
Grand Declaration of War which is probably my favorite Mayhem album. Maniac is everything Attila isn't as I adore every sound he makes from his ridiculous preacher talking to his cat being murdered with a demon throat ripping. And musically this is Mayhem at their most technically proficient.
Long before I trained my ears to tolerate and ultimately dig King Diamond's outrageously silly vocals, what the rest of his band members were turning out behind him certainly sat me well.
Melissa is my favorite Fate album between it and
Don't Break the Oath if I had to choose, and "Curse of the Pharohs" be my favorite song. The clown prince of Satan does his usually wailing thing, throwing his vocals hither and tither, but riff wise this is as classic as old school metal gets. Technically Danish and ergo technically not part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Mercyful Fate was still better than virtually all of their English peers for at least two albums in a row. Hail Satan and go Egyptian curses!
It may be cheating to include the only Six Feet Under song in this list almost solely for the reason that Ice T raps on it. But in my defense, said rap is brutal as all get out and certainly meets Chris Barnes standards lyrically. Also, SFU has enough tasty jams that I could've easily included any number of their non-MC featured ones, "Impulse To Disembowel" juuuuust missing the cut. But yeah, this is good shit. Me and my death metal band member cohorts have been planning on covering this some day in a live setting, but as of yet we have not found a worthy enough MC to tackle the Ice T part. Maybe we'll just throw the Cop Killer himself a line and see if he's game.
Megadeth easily followed up their best album with another damn excellent one.
Countdown to Extinction was their comparatively stripped down and better answer to Metallica's
(The Black Album), though "Ashes In Your Mouth" is actually probably the most complex song on it, with odd timings and in unison transitions sharing space. And it also ended with possibly the best utterance of the word "mercy" in any song ever. But luckily for us all, the rest of "Ashes" besides the M word is also oodles of fun. Because when you think of Dave Mustaine, you think of the phrase "oodles of fun". Right after the phrase "asshat" most likely.
The "oldest" band on this list meaning it features four men who's ages added up far surpass the number of years added together of any other group appearing here. Of course meaning the second and far technically better line-up of Black Sabbath, in 2009 dubbing themselves Heaven & Hell for Sharon-Osborne-Is-A-Cunt legal purposes. Not confused? Very good. Moving on then. With "Bible Black" and
The Devil You Know, (the album said track stems from), Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and Vinny Appice proved that their best work was not at all behind them. I couldn't have been more pleased the day this song was released as I was hoping that the awesome was still very much in these gentlemen. And it most certainly was.
According to
one of the funniest things to ever be on youtube, "Tyrants" was Abbath's attempt to re-write "Kashmir". Time will tell if it ends up being as iconic to metal heads at least as said legendary Zeppelin classic, but the third track off Immortal's masterpiece
Sons of Northern Darkness certainly brings the fuh-ng meh-ol. A slow and slamming beast of a song, "Tyrants" is as heavy as they come, due in no small part to drummer Horgh's (Reidar HORGHagen, get it?) giant drum sound and attack. The "Kashmir" esque riff ain't none too shabby either. Go Abbath! My old death metal band actually DID cover and play this one live, but alas, Immortal does it better. As I assume they do most things.
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