Finally... The Top 200 Extreme Metal Albums of ALL TIME!(results)

Oh how I wish those vox weren't so loud in that mix. One of my pet peeves. Especially those two songs in the style of Transilvanian Hunger, probably two of my fav DT songs. Dammit, Nocturno Culto!

106. Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane (242, 4 votes)

https://i.sli.mg/Q0AOa7.jpg

https://youtu.be/6G9tEqqMqnw
https://open.spotify.com/album/6xg1LH1tG9LfStZwv5zdV7

I can hear the cries again

Perfection. And with that I'm off to procure food. I'm sure I'll be back to complain about sonic frequencies later.

yeah that seems ridiculously low to me...
maybe I overrate it, but it's top 20 stuff to me.

105. Deathspell Omega - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice (242, 5 votes, 1 #1)

https://i.sli.mg/q5vVr7.jpg

https://youtu.be/ZUnS93C5U_4
https://open.spotify.com/album/0U7RL2nyTlDfEIef7Uv7EK

104. Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten (243, 4 votes)

https://i.sli.mg/HD2bDn.jpg

https://youtu.be/bLorNSZjcBI
https://open.spotify.com/album/1J7eevhe1aXP45NkpPgl7b

bed calls for me. Will catch up tomorrow.

Top 100 starts tomorrow so cant wait to see what makes it!

yeah that seems ridiculously low to me...

me too cuz yeah

see ya tomorrow CS, thanks again for the help!

<3 <3 Suffocation <3 <3

This is an obviously perfect album that nevertheless took me about six months to get into.

103. Megadeth - Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? (245, 5 votes)

https://i.sli.mg/ahbQwn.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/album/4U8ZF5zDIRy4lBnnXBN2uO

102. Voivod - Killing Technology (248, 5 votes)

https://i.sli.mg/QI1iKD.jpg

https://youtu.be/Jl_231xbN9E
https://open.spotify.com/album/5jtQcNwIXmhMLQJWMwk0UR

everything is too low

Storm of the Light's Bane absurdly low, Panzerfaust maybe too high. Some great stuff on there but it feels like a grab bag of B-sides from the previous few records. Megadeth aren't extreme metal by any stretch of the imagination.

last album of the night is coming up, and its some amazing work of gore. I love it.

101. Pestilence - Consuming Impulse (248, 4 votes)

https://i.sli.mg/xr6dXZ.jpg

https://youtu.be/cQc4ZKH185E
https://open.spotify.com/album/6dfMQNvVXj6Z8oM9kOrXj6

was gonna add 'except megadeth'

still don't know what they sound like but they're one of the rare bands I'm just not interested in testing any hypothesis on

Megadeth, Voivod and Pestilence were all high school faves, with Consuming Impulse being an album I feel like deserves more respect. People got so hung up on that Testimony of the Ancients crap...

BTW the Ambergris was kind of a hit on the Glenn Branca metal thread, where Jute Gyte reigns over all.

i just assume everyone likes meshuggah but doesnt admit it

Weird, isn't it? They have this meathead reputation they really don't deserve. Well maybe tech-meathead. I dunno. But Koloss was one of the best METAL releases the year it came out, I feel like it got slept on by a lot of dudes who were just like LOL MESHUGGAH.

our countdown so far:

205. Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness
204. !T.O.O.H.! - Rad A Trest
203. Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale
201. Liturgy - Renihilation
201. Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide
200. Virus - The Black Flux
199. Yob - The Unreal Never Lived
198. Nocturnus - The Key
196. Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury
196. Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors
195. Meshuggah - Chaosphere
194. Satyricon - Nemesis Divina
193. Darkspace - II
192. Watchtower - Control and Resistance
191. Sacramentum - Far Away From The Sun
190. Prong - Beg To Differ
189. Kayo Dot - Hubardo
188. Setherial - Nord
187. Dark Angel - Darkness Descends
186. Strapping Young Lad - City
185. Atheist - Piece of Time
184. Panopticon - Roads to the North
183. Sodom - Persecution Mania
182. Painkiller - Guts of a Virgin
181. Liturgy - Aesthetica
180. Bathory - The Return
179. Krallice - Diotima
178. Pestilence - Testimony Of The Ancients
177. Vlad Tepes/Belketre - March to the Black Holocaust
176. Portal - vexovoid
175. Obituary - Slowly We Rot
174. Kayo Dot - Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
173. Esoteric - Metamorphogenesis
172. Anaal Nathrakh - The Codex Necro
170. Dodheimsgard - A Umbra Omega
170. Reverend Bizarre - In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend
169. Shining - Blackjazz
168. Enslaved - Vikingligr Veldi
167. Nokturnal Mortum - The Voice of Steel
166. Peste Noire - Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor
165. Bolt Thrower - For Victory
164. Mgla - With Hearts Toward None
163. Jute Gyte - Vast Chains
162. Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious
161. Bathory - Bathory
160. Ved Buens Ende - Written In Waters
159. Naked City - Torture Garden
158. Cleric - Regressions
157. Angel Hair - Pregnant with the Senior Class
155. Dismember - Like an Everflowing Stream
155. Meshuggah - obZen
154. Thergothon - Stream From The Heavens
153. Morbid Angel - Covenant
152. Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape
151. Tiamat - Wildhoney
150. Blut Aus Nord - 777 - Cosmosophy
149. Meshuggah - Catch 33
148. Opeth - My Arms Your Hearse
146. Immolation - Close to a World Below
146. Sodom - In the Sign of Evil
145. Mare - Mare
144. Death - Leprosy
142. Ambergris - Ambergris (EP)
142. Melvins - Lysol
141. Eyehategod - Dopesick
140. Cynic - Focus
137. Carcass - Surgical Steel
137. Jute Gyte - Discontinuities
137. Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer
136. Isis - Celestial
135. Coroner - Mental Vortex
134. Demilich - Nespithe
133. Celtic Frost - Into the Pandemonium
132. Absu - Absu
131. Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade
130. Negură Bunget - OM
129. Abyssal - Antikatastaseis
128. Kayo Dot - Choirs Of The Eye
126. Oranssi Pazuzu - Valonielu
126. Wolves in the Throne Room - Diadem of 12 Stars
125. Immortal - At the Heart of Winter
124. Sepultura - Arise
123. Corrupted - Llenandose de gusanos
122. Mayhem - Ordo ad Chao
121. Jute Gyte - Ship of Theseus
120. Entombed - Clandestine
119. Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness
118. Death - Scream Bloody Gore
117. Melvins - Houdini
116. Orthrelm - OV
115. diSEMBOWELMENT - Transcendence Into the Peripheral
114. Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God
113. Meshuggah - Destroy Erase Improve
112. Spectral Lore - III
111. Nachtmystium - Assassins: Black Meddle, pt 1
110. Stara Rzeka - Cień chmury nad ukrytym polem
109. Drudkh - Autumn Aurora
108. Yob - Catharsis
107. Darkthrone - Panzerfaust
106. Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane
105. Deathspell Omega - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice
104. Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
103. Megadeth - Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?
102. Voivod - Killing Technology
101. Pestilence - Consuming Impulse

also, imago, go listen to Megadeth you fkin' dilettante!

I have not heard any of these, some bands of which I didn't even know existed, save for Celestial, which TOO LOW.

But then again I only listen to hipster metal.

The last few were def of the old school bullet belt variety (which is to say, the good stuff). Wish I'd known about Consuming Impulse when it came out.

That said, the DSO album is one of the peaks of black metal. Talk about jumping off a cliff and wrapping your arms around the sun. It's one of those you can make a night out of, sitting down with the lyrics and poring over them. I kinda prefer the less intense stuff like the Norwegian second wave of the early to mid 90s, but when I want to experience the extremities of the genre without going into the avant-garde, Si Monumentum is a go-to. Funeral Mist's Salvation is in that same category.

just back after dinner, thoughts on the some of the stuff I missed:

124. Sepultura - Arise
I actually haven't listened to this album, but in going through thrash last year, I hit Sepultura in December, and their first 3-4 releases are all great. I had heard this was showing influence of nu-metal, so didn't go out of my way to check out yet, but their blend of black/thrash on the first EP, and later buds of death/thrash were completely my thing last couple of months.

120. Entombed - Clandestine
I think if I had my ballot to do again, I'd make this my Entombed pick (not counting Nihlist). Production is better, and the songs are a little less hokey. I kind of wish they'd gone down this path instead of Wolverine Blues, because you can almost hear them hinting at a brutal/tech sound here.

118. Death - Scream Bloody Gore
The only Death album I've been able to enjoy that much. It's obviously the simplest, but I guess that's what I like about it. The production seems very influenced by Seven Churches, and to be honest, I always thought I'd like Death more if they toned down the studio polish and gated reverb, and just played straight up, no frills death/thrash, a la essentially what Chris Reifert did on the first Autopsy record.

116. Orthrelm - OV
Didn't actually vote for this. The more metal I listen to, the less this feels like metal. Not to say I don't still admire it, and listen to it once a year or so.

107. Darkthrone - Panzerfaust
106. Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane
I love Panzerfaust, rate it above Transylvanian Hunger myself. I love the fact that it's all over the place, and when you think about the direction that this band took in the 00s, it's easy to see this album as representing their truest selves, a la paying respect to stuff they liked from the 80s rather than trying to be evil and kvlt (even tho the production is TOTALLY evil and kvlt).

Dissection I just don't get. Or, maybe, I do get them, and just don't like them. They remind me of Emperor, with the death metal quotient dialed up. From what I can see, metal heads REALLY love this band, but maybe I'm just not metal enough.

Arise is actually a pretty straight up death/thrash thing; Chaos A.D. is where the nu metal/groove stuff began (but is actually worth a listen too).

Agree with you guys on Panzerfaust and DSO. I've had my difficulties with Dissection, too, they're fathers of a whole strain of black metal I don't particularly care for. I've come around to Storm and The Somberlain but I doubt I listen to them more than once or twice a year.

I'm listening to Imaginary Sonicscape for the first time in years and it's still so much fun!

Megadeth aren't extreme metal by any stretch of the imagination.

― mozart,

Thrash was extreme metal at the time. How often did you hear from people "Oh I love heavy metal like Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Deep Purple but hate that thrash shit"? All the damn time!

Now you get old fart thrash fans saying they hate "that death and black metal shit"

The feeling is mutual

Maybe one day I could like thrash but that day is about 25 years ago

Seeing Orthrelm relatively high is pretty funny. I did vote for it but it was in the lower reaches of my ballot. The Stara Rzeka album's fantastic but I ended up not voting for it due to it's low metal content. I have never seen anyone who love.s that Spectral Lore opus as much as I do.

AND Megadeth have always been irredeemable piss poor garbage. My opinon is probably invalidated by the fact the only thrash albums I like are RTL/MOP/...AJFA)

Come on, Rust In Peace is undeniable.

'How often did you hear from people "Oh I love heavy metal like Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Deep Purple but hate that thrash shit"?'

I don't hang around old people so I never hear this. Thrash was like the bridge from traditional heavy metal to death/black so I'd consider the bands on the harsher end of the spectrum like Sodom, Possessed, Dark Angel etc. extreme but not bands like Megadeth, Metallica & Anthrax. All these bands were contemporaries so it's not like the latter group was pushing the boundaries in terms of heaviness, there was already way harsher stuff around at the time.

Yeah, well, Merzbow's first recordings were in December 1979. So they're all pussies and latecomers.

true

I will never understand imagos aversion to where the music he likes came from

This is an enormously reductive & antagonistic provocation so take w/ a pinch of salt, but...why unevolve?

Aren't you interested in where the music you like has come from and how it evolved? How it turned out as it has?

this is a slight detour but lj have u heard/do u like celtic frost

^ perhaps the most important band in the evolution of extreme metal

idk

willing to give early bm/dm lots more chances to blow me away. iirc early dm is the more impressive, atheist had some sick tunes

i am interested in where it's come from but i'm not sure i need to listen to the early ventures too much, unless i can be convinced otherwise. today's extreme metal acts weren't just influenced by thrash either. there are loads of lineages leading to this.

my favourite bit of thrash is the intro to 'sanatarium' before the thrashy guitars come in

I understand his POV without sharing it. It's one of the things I hate most about jazz, is old fucks who are always like "Well, you need to understand Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in order to really understand this new record you like." No I don't. I like the record I like, and it stands on its own merits for me. Music isn't a survey course.

My guess is that as far as general listening tendencies go (for rock music anyway), imago and I are similar. However, when I got into metal, it wasn't really because I was looking for something even further out than what I already liked -- I think it was because I wanted something angry and ugly. I just didn't know what it was, until I started hearing old black metal and realizing that there was music even uglier than I'd realized. Qualitatively, it wasn't really a question of "evolution" -- except in the fact that my listening tastes were certainly evolving. I mean, you can't really help but evolve, adapt, change, it's just part of nature. The notion that evolution has to lead to something further out in the strain of my current tastes isn't really correct imo.

Anyway, I can tell you, I had to undergo a pretty big shift in how I listened to music to get a lot of that stuff -- still happening in fact. What can sound too extreme, ugly, brutal, barbaric one day can totally hit the spot only weeks later. This has happened time and time again going thru extreme metal. I mean, only now I'm starting to get into classic DM like Incantation and Immolation, not to mention older, cruder bands like Beherit and Blasphemy. I might have been able to hear them 2 years ago, but I don't think I'd have appreciated them. And it certainly isn't because it's too complex; on the contrary, it's because it's a little like taking pleasure out of a bloody battle scene, and realizing that there's a lot to get out of the carnage.

But I'd rather listen to Metallia and Slayer (and Destruction and Kreator - always hated Sodom) than any black metal record. "Angry and ugly" isn't enough for me, hasn't been since I graduated high school.

Semi xpost with Dominique

Well, that's pretty reductive on my part -- and really, these days, I listen to a lot more stuff that sounds like, say, Sadus, than I do black metal. But I never would have got there if I hadn't started at a place that was angry and ugly, and over time, realizing I could make out riffs and patterns, and see how this music progressed, both within a song, and throughout a movement. I started seeing the difference between all these sub-genres, and started being able to tie threads from Celtic Frost, for example, to modern death and doom metal. To me, that says as much about "evolution" for my listening as any other music I've heard.

So when does the top 100 start?

I don't think metal (or music in general) evolves. Or it does, but evolution is not the steady upward climb to perfection that it is sometimes imagined as, but rather a somewhat random and incoherent sequence of lateral motions. My tolerance for out-dated musical forms is high: I like old-timey country, big band jazz, Chicago blues, baroque and classical, etc. Actually early DM reminds me a lot of Chicago blues, in that both have a fairly limited palette and rather strict formal requirements, which can make the music seem monotonous at first. I'm not really interested in tracing the "evolution" of DM or in figuring out which bands were influential. I just like what sounds good. I think maybe after you've listened to enough of it, your ear starts to notice things, like a particularly good riff, or drum fill, or vocal sound, etc. It gets kind of addictive after a while, and it scratches an itch that other music doesn't.

Framing early extreme metal as a battle scene might well be a good way to get me into it, as might lyric sheets. Oh xp, as might tracing its subtle formalist shifts