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

ok final one for tonight...

70. Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick (314, 6 votes)

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

https://youtu.be/NdHJ0u5cLB0
https://open.spotify.com/album/4y34C9YeavvuMTdMQzrPGG

My #2. As good as Morbid Angel is when they go more straightforward like on Altars and Covenant, Blessed is just ... like classical music turned death metal. Flows perfectly from start to finish.

Production is kind of lacking and I've heard the remaster actually improves the sound. I need to grab it one of these days.

I kinda miss the more musical element Brunelle brought to the band; there's something to be said for letting Azagthoth off the chain but I listen to Altars and Blessed way more than any of the later albums.

xpost

Love Repulsion -- somehow, that record never gets old for me.

Oh yeah, gotta recommend the Master "Unreleased 1985 Album" aka "Funeral Bitch" for Repulsion fans. Similar vibe, production sounds a little more like it was recorded in a dumpster.

Relevant video alert: Repulsion live 1987, and around 43:30 they cover Hellhammer!

https://youtu.be/i-fW-OBahkY

squee!

"Corrupted are the best band no-ones ever heard of"

they have a really big non-metal hepcat audience. maybe that was partly the doing of people like aquarius records who would write long love-letter reviews of their stuff alongside all the avant/indie stuff they sold. aquarius definitely instrumental in getting a lot of u.s. people into more fucked up/lo-fi BM via their old catalogs as well.

Quite possibly but not sure about "big"

xp I actually got into bm through Aquarius records! Dead as Dreams was the first black metal album I ever bought, but it took me a while to get into other harsher/more fucked up bm since I was more enamoured with WitTR and other post-/cascadian sorts of bands.

You learn pretty quickly with aquarius to take their reviews with a pinch of salt though since according to them almost every slightly weird bm album is the most bizarre, in the red thing ever

also sorry CS I have and like El Mundo Frio but apparently I didn't vote for it. I haven't heard any other Corrupted albums so I will remedy that tonight maybe

El mundo frio is the Corrupted album I voted for.

as long as 4 people voted for it then it should make it

Corrupted were big amongst the stoner doom crowd when I was getting into that kind of stuff in the early 00s. StonerRock dot forum peoples. Awesome sound, but not much memorable material imo.

Even though some thrash metal albums are my all time favourites I kept them out of the top 20 because it doesn't feel good to have them win an "extreme metal" poll...but the sheer number of votes (these are albums *everyone* had heard) will propel them to the top anyway.

― Siegbran,

So how will you (or anyone reading) feel if one of master of puppets or reign in blood or ride the lightning or vulgar display of power win?

good

would be a bit boring and predictable though

I guess. I'd be more annoyed if some dishwasher epic or "confusional black metal" curiosity took it. I mean, what should come out on top? Spiritual Healing? Nazi Fuckhead Sings?

Calling it for Monoliths & Dimensions

lol at confusional black metal

if only 8 or 9 votes is needed id be more worried that Anthrax could be top 10.
Total big four domination because its the best known stuff outside of metal thread. Remember its not metal thread regulars only voting (well ok atm 4 regulars are voting haha) so the rest of ilx may decide.

My money's on Reign in Blood

which would be so, so dull imo

honestly, and they may revoke my metal credentials because of this, I'd agree -- however, I'd still be able to get behind it in favor of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeath, etc. My only real issue with it (and Slayer in general), is that I heard it after I'd already been into stuff like Kreator, Possessed, Sadus, Morbid Saint, not to mention tons of black and death metal. Compared to that stuff, it seems a little tame, and the vocals are (ha) too clean. But I haven't met a metal-head yet who actually agrees with me, and I'm quite sure my position is based on a retrospective appreciation of metal -- if I was a kid in 1986, it probably would have blown my mind.

Nightside Eclipse or Anthems I reckon.

#1 will be The Eagles - Greatest Hits.

hearing Reign in Blood was a game-changer for me, the first time I had heard music that felt genuinely scary

i had the same thing with 'Reign In Blood'. All my life I'd been told about this absolutely insane, face-melting metal album to rule them all. When I finally heard it, I was like 'sounds like Metallica but slightly faster'

xp

there's loads of young ones out there who think anything before slayer isnt metal and that it all started from them.

Ive actually argued online with some who insist sabbath,maiden, priest are heavy rock. They also tend to hate black metal for some reason.
I suppose they only like the Slayer - death metal lineage?

for people our age hearing slayer in the 80s was definitely "extreme" but quite obviously post death metal et al its not extreme at all. But it would be silly to say slayer arent extreme. It would just be deadly dull if they or any of the big four won this poll.
otoh I cant honestly say there's anything I think should win.

can we just not ever reveal the top 4? :D

1. YOUR HARD DRIVE

I have to think Lombardo's drumming -- and the production of that drumming -- was a huge part of RiB's face melting. Yeah, Possessed and Kreator were darker, Dark Angel was more vicious; but there's something in the sheer punchiness of RiB that made it leap out of the speakers unlike any other album of the time. If you listen to just the guitars and vocals alone, there's really not that much of a 'holy shit' factor. Those drums, though ...

Those famous Slayer arpeggios were genuinely creepy, too.

These days the creepiest things are their fans

xpost Having said that, I was still never clear on whether thrash was allowed in this vote so I didn't include as much as I could've -- and really mostly only the bigger American names. Very unscientific. And unmetal, probably.

xpost

yeah, Lombardo is a Hall-of-Famer, one of those Bonham-type guys who really did change the game. And imo in metal, instrumental game-changing is part of the equation in a way that it isn't in most other genres. The problem as a decades-later listener, is that you only have to jump a ahead a few years to hit Pete Sandoval, and then Flo Maunier, etc etc etc. I can argue that Lombardo was as good or better a *musician* as any who came before/after him, but you can't argue that people did crazier/faster stuff not very long after. Metal has a ruthless way of making the past obsolete, while at the same time always keeping a candle lit for the Ones Who Came Before.

Has metal hit max-extremity yet?

I suppose with technology it could get even faster and unlistenable

I think even with just good old human ambition, there's never going to be a "max extremity" point -- unless metal extremes itself out of being recognizably metal anymore.... at which point, a new starting point for some other kind of music to evolve is set.

Extremity doesn't need to mean speed. It can refer even more pleasingly to complexity and depth of composition, which has no limit. I would even call speed a red herring, a battle of metal's early days and comparatively modest ambitions.

to most people its speed and it must also have growly vox

nanotonality is the future

It can refer even more pleasingly to complexity and depth of composition, which has no limit

I dunno, you gotta draw the line somewhere and Dream Theater is that limit

I do like the idea that Ferneyhough is the future of metal.

Ferneyhöügh?

Korn invented Future Metal remember

would be lols if Frobisher was making us wait because reign in blood was next