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

Yes, this was an amazing discovery!

Listening to Altar of Plagues' Teethed Glory and Injury now. Lovely dystopian atmospheres...will see how it progresses.

That's one thing that surprised me about extreme metal in general -- how young the bands were when they made their classic records. Most of the Swedish and Brazilian scenes were made of teenagers too, and the big American bands were in the early 20s or teenagers. It's weird how metal has this rep (outside of metal scenes of course) of being unintelligent music, because when you actually break down what these bands do compared to what you'd expect out of a regular old rock/indie band comprised of 20-year-olds, metal comes out way ahead in the complexity dept!

Does it still have that rep? Iirc, through some quirk of critic-logic, technical complexity was actually one of the reasons why classic critics used to regard metal as dumb. I definitely remembering reading scornful lines about "dumb virtuosity" or "the sort of song that boneheaded guitar mags would transcribe note-for-note" in negative reviews.

"classic" as in "older rock critics", not "classical music critics"

"I'm resigned to the fact that Filosofem will place probably - apart from any extraneous factors it's incredibly boring and responible for a million bedroom bm projects that mistake low fidelity and shit screaming for "atmsophere" and that's why I fucking hate it"

this album still sounds pretty amazing to me. and hating its influence is kinda like hating brian wilson for inspiring so much bad indie rock. unless you really do hate brian wilson, which is fine. i think burzum inspired a lot of GREAT stuff over the years. yeah, there is lots of boring bedroom stuff, but i think that DIY aesthetic was a quick and easy way for some talented people to make powerful music. especially if they lived in the woods and couldn't find anyone to play with.

filosofem also one of those albums where you can see what non-metal people see in it. compositionally, all kinds of musicians could get something out of what he was doing.

xp people confuse 'loud, fast and heavy' with 'dumb, meatheaded and aggressive'.

I definitely had a phase where I thought Anthems... was the better Emperor album but I've cooled on it a bit now. I still like some of it but the songs just don't have the impact they should for some reason, it sounds a bit too murky. I actually think the cover sums it up - looks more expensively-made than Nightside Eclipse but it's a bit hard to tell what's going on.

Does it still have that rep?

I think it does -- except that there appear to have been certain metal that gets a pass, like a lot of sludge/doom and new black(gaze) metal. Or, if it's not a stigma based on intelligence, there's still an aspect of traditional metal (whether heavy metal, thrash, death) that's treated as being outside of what most mainstream music publications would cover. And I'm not even sure that's a bad thing!

I blame Anselmo.

metal thrives on its own. like bluegrass. you don't read about bluegrass that much. and it was made by dumb hillbillies! but its hard to be good at it...also, see polka.

i like the living folk tradition that is metal. and rap too actually. you don't have to be a great innovator to make a great metal or rap album. or polka or bluegrass album...you are a vessel for the past. but still invigorating in the here and now.

I really hated Anthems at first. At the time it was the much awaited big comeback of Emperor after the a four year hiatus in whole arson/murder/incarceration/etc frenzy, and they replaced half the band. Their progress within two years from the demo to the EP and then ITNE was amazing, but out came something that was so similar to ITNE but with, inexplicably since it's the same studio and producer, much worse sound. The current remaster cleans it up a bit and I now kinda like it for what it is (some really cool riffs mainly), but it never had that impact that ITNE had, they did things that were never heard before. By 1997 there were already so many other bands that ran with the Emperor sound: Sacramentum Far Away From The Sun, Setherial Nord, Satyricon Nemesis Divina - which I all think are more interesting (and better sounding) records.

Reading the NME/Melody Maker growing up there was definitely a sniffy attitude towards metal/metal fans, the idea that it was unintelligent music was there but it seemed to be more about emotional intelligence? Like mocking it for dealing with 'immature' themes or for being angry teenager music. The musical complexity was dismissed too but more in line with the punk/indie thinking where displays of technical/compositional skill = pointless showoffery. I might be misremembering things though!

Yeah same Gavin. I remember Vox magazine c1996 starting a review with something along the lines of 'if you're one of those saddoes who stands at the back of the room in a black t-shirt moaning about "when are they going to play some decent music?" then this is for you'. Actually I think it was for an early Feeder EP, so pretty far from metal but this was peak Britpop.

The opinion back then was that metal wasn't just lucky, but desperately unfashionable to boot. I get the impression that at least the metal/gothic aesthetic has had a bit of a revival since then.

I'm amazed that Hvis Lyset Tar Oss and Scum didn't place higher

I also think that IX Equilibrium is a damn good album

nobody dismisses metal like metal fans do. black metal is just 'angry and ugly', remember kids

Re: Burzum - I get too frothy sometimes. Filosofem is just one of those apparent classics that when I finally sat down and actually listened to it all I got out of it was "really? THIS?" I mean, without it a lot of my favourite music might not have existed but I found the bm half really tedious but I was crying out for the guitars to come back ten minutes into the casio ambience

...having got that out the way I'll refrain from mithering when it actually appears

xxp My mates hated IX Equilibrium when it came out. I think it rules. Prometheus is also great.

Well Vox/NME/MM could be forgiven as the mainstream metal of the day was unspeakably bad - the largely defensible representation of metal of the 80s (Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, etc - even big underground bands like Morbid Angel and Carcass) had been displaced from the top of metal festival bills by Pantera, 90s Metallica, Machine Head, Biohazard, Korn, Deftones, Tool - to casual observers, metal surely must've seemed like it was headed towards total retardation.

I guess by the time Limp Bizkit arrived on the scene, onlookers would have been surprised to find a braincell in the average moshpit.

i mentioned this before on here but what made me mad is that there was so much great metal in the 90's that COULD have been commercially successful but wasn't. mostly cuz it was on metal labels that didn't have the know-how/money to get it out to a broader audience even though by the end of the 90's you could certainly buy most of it at any mall chain store. in the 2000's this kinda stuff became more popular (goth/melodeath/etc) but the best albums by most of the bands still making it had already been made by then.

(i like to live in an imaginary universe where the gathering were bigger than tool though, so....)

Machine Head's first album was great. The next ones not so much

it just seems like in any other era the big u.s. labels swooped down on anything even remotely tuneful and pillaged smaller labels at will. if i were a geffen exec in the mid-90's i would have bought out half of century media/peaceville/earache rosters. just outright. not licensing/distro like the columbia/earache deal. just own it all. (this is my devil's capitalist advocate hat i'm wearing.) nobody here thought they could sell katatonia or at the gates to sad teens? it's a mystery to me.

There's a lot of stories like that in the Chasing Death and Swedish Death Metal books. Fred Estby from Dismember talks about how when Carnage split, they were shopping their demos to all the big underground metal labels of the day (Peaceville, Roadrunner, Earache). Even tho Carnage already had a name, and their style wouldn't change dramatically in Dismember, nobody was interested except Nuclear Blast. It seems labels were just really scared about signing stuff like this, maybe afraid it was just a flash in the pan, and nobody would buy much extreme metal over the long run.

i'm talking about stuff that was more commercially viable though. tiamat, moonspell, katatonia, gathering, etc. tons of bands making truly great albums that never made it out of metal-land. i usually don't care, but so many 90's bands deserved a wider audience that only money could buy.

It seems basically the same thing tho -- in the 90s, if a major label was going to sign a rock band, why would they opt for a metal band when they could get the next Live, or Toad the Wet Sprocket, or Soul Collective?

i swear i'll stop in a minute: at any other time the big labels would have signed all those people even if they didn't think they would make any money. that's my real point. they would hear some underground buzz and just BUY whoever was causing the buzz. just in case. but it didn't happen with any of those bands. whole scenes in europe! and yeah not every euro prog band got signed in the states either in the 70's. but by the 90's metal had a built-in diehard audience here. you'd think just owning back catalog stuff would be enough for the behemoths.

it just makes me wonder if they were even listening. i guess they were all still trying to catch nirvana in a bottle. and all their hair metal bands were suffering major diminishing returns.

i am not an expert, please forgive me....

Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to inject logic into label-think, just my two cents -- and there's also the notion that labels just got a lot more conservative in general starting the 80s. Once it became apparent that you could bank on huge stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, U2, it seems like the easy thing to do was just to gravitate towards stuff that showed potential for massive success. The only metal band that did this (and arguably, has EVER done this) is Metallica -- and my guess is that labels thought there could only be so many Metallica success stories out there.

lots of death metal bands got signed early 90s because of grunge. Not just death metal but bands like Fudge Tunnel etx there was a market for it but none of them broke out except for pantera and sepultura and by 1996 the major labels signed a load of nu metal bands and that wa it. All the stuff scott liked was ignored.

Nu metal coming along saying 'old' metal was old fashioned killed it for a decade unless they got a slot on fucking ozzfest.

pitchshifter got signed by geffen. maybe they were hoping for some helmet money.

pitchshifter also turned to absolute shite.

damnit fudge tunnel didnt get nominated for this poll did they?

fuck fuck fuck

Fudge Tunnel and Godflesh was my introduction to extreme stuff

never even heard of Fudge Tunnel until now, taking a listen -- very first impression is that is def very grunge-y.

man, death metal was such a godsend. no offense to satan. saved me from having to buy nuclear assault records out of boredom.

something bandnames something never listen

Fudge Tunnel were amazing. I think Skot is a fan

i used to make fun of pitchshifter for not being godflesh but i'm listening to them now on tape and they fit my mood.

yeah, fudge tunnel were fun.

Hate Songs In E-Minor would have been in my top 10 if it had been nominated. The other 2 albums would have been in the top 100

i have a bunch of sealed earache tapes here at the store. old deadstock. that will be my day of listening.

Desensitized by Pitch Shifter was terrific. When they changed to Pitchshifter they were awful. Such a sellout

sounds like you will be having a fun day scott

i'm not gonna listen to Dub War though...

i'm listening to desensitized now. that blend of ministry and godflesh...hey, they were good at it.

i might even crack open a copy of Swansong. which i haven't listened to since 1995.

also, i don't know if i need to crack open these Ultraviolence tapes. i don't know if i ever listened to Ultraviolence.

Old and Napalm Death and Godflesh and Scorn i will be listening to though.

hahaha oh god I used to have 2 Ultraviolence cds

Things aren't that much better today, have you seen what Ghost were up against at the Grammy's?