New List to rip apart: Revolver Mag's 69 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time

Nickelback with Default at Kool Haus, February 1. Tickets: $23.50. Attendance: 2,100. Rating: N

the kids in attendance bashed, thrashed and flashed the universal "this rocks!" hand signal while Nickelback roared their way through another of their soulless nu-metal tunes last Friday night at the Kool Haus. Vancouver's Default set the tone for a night of endless four-chord guitar drones and constipated Creed-style vocals, complete with the mean faces and rock posturing common among groups stuck in 1992.

The highlight of their dreadful set came when vocalist Dallas Smith provided some unintentional humour by introducing a number called Seize The Day as a blues song, possibly because halfway through it the band broke into the whitest-ever version of Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker.

Then came Nickelback's onslaught of generic chord changes and predictable melodies. It was almost a relief to hear their encore, the annoyingly catchy hit single How You Remind Me.

I don't know how the band got a reputation for being great showmen, unless standing on top of the speakers while throwing water on the crowd passes for showmanship these days.

Vocalist/guitarist Chad Kroeger's cringe-worthy stage banter employed not-so-original lines such as "Toronto kicks ass" and "This is a song about weed," and he reminded us repeatedly about his big plans to get drunk and pass out in a bar later on that night. So what's with the pseudo-sensitive lyrics about drunken wife-beaters?

There are times when mediocre rock acts redeem their questionable material by putting on fun and enthusiastic live shows.

This was not one of them.
_______________________________________________________________________

The Cult, "Electric." Please.

3rd & The Mortal - Tears Laid In Earth
Accept - Restless And Wild
Amorphis - Tales From The 1000 Lakes
Amorphis - The Karelian Isthmus
Anathema - Serenades
Anathema - The Silent Enigma
Anthrax - Spreading The Disease
Arckanum - Kostogher
Asphyx - The Rack
At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness
Bathory - The Return
Bathory - Under The Sign Of The Black Mark
Beherit - Drawing Down The Moon
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blasphemy - Fallen Angel Of Doom
Bolt Thrower - For Victory
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus
Carcass - Necrotism - Descanting The Insalubrious
Celtic Frost - Into The Pandemonium
Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales/Emperor's Return
Cryptopsy - None So Vile
Cynic - Focus
Dark Angel - Darkness Descends
Dark Tranquillity - The Gallery
Darkthrone - A Blaze In The Northern Sky
Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger
Death - Human
Death - Scream Bloody Gore
Destruction - Infernal Overkill
Disembowelment - Transcendence Into The Peripheral
Dismember - Like An Ever Flowing Stream
Dissection - The Somberlain
Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse
Enslaved - Vikingligr Veldi
Entombed - Left Hand Path
Esoteric - The Pernicious Enigma
Exciter - Violence & Force
Exodus - Bonded By Blood
Gorguts - Obscura
Graveland - 1000 Swords
Graveland - The Celtic Winter
Grim Reaper - See You In Hell
Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids
Helloween - Keeper Of The Seven Keys I
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
Impaled Nazarene - Ugra-Karma
Incantation - Onward To Golgotha
Iron Maiden - Killer
Iron Maiden - Piece Of Mind
Jag Panzer - Ample Destruction
Judas Priest - Sin After Sin
Judas Priest - Stained Class
Katatonia - Dance Of December Souls
Kreator - Pleasure To Kill
Master's Hammer - Ritual
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Megadeth - Rust In Peace
Merciful Fate - Don't Break The Oath
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Metallica - Master Of Puppets
Morbid Angel - Blessed Are The Sick
Motorhead - No Sleep 'Till Hammersmith
My Dying Bride - Turn Loose The Swans
Napalm Death - Scum
Nocturnus - The Key
Paradise Lost - Gothic
Paradise Lost - Lost Paradise
Possessed - Seven Churches
Raven - All For One
Sacrifice - Torment In Fire
Samael - Ceremony Of Opposites
Samael - Worship Him
Sarcofago - INRI
Sepultura - Beneath The Remains
Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet
Slayer - Reign In Blood
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Sodom - Obsessed By Cruelty
Sort Vokter - Folkloric Necro Metal
Suffocation - Effigy Of The Forgotten
Summoning - Minas Morgul
Terrorizer - World Downfall
Testament - The Legacy
Thergothon - Stream From The Heavens
Unholy - From The Shadows
Unleashed - Where No Life Dwells
Vader - The Ultimate Incantation
Venom - Black Metal
Venom - Welcome To Hell
Voivod - Rrroooaaarrr
Winter - Into Darkness

Wha? Who the fuck? At #5 no less?

Where the fuck are Killing Joke?

i mean, what the fuck. siegbran's list is way, way, way closer to my reality ("blessed are the sick" seems to be the album everyone with any sense whatsoever acknowledges as THE morbid angel album - and WINTER - fuck yes).

and "wolverine blues"?! what the fuck is that? i'd vote for "clandestine" any day of the week, despite the kind of scattered, half-assed vocal work.

I've got some recent favourites, but I don't think I can name any of them "classic". Well, OK here's a few I think are going to be "classic" in a few years:
Countess - The Shining Swords Of Hate (doesn't sound like ANYTHING else - ambient/black/doom/drone-like)
Absu - Tara
Impiety - Skullfucking Armageddon
Antaeus - Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan (somewhat of a nec-plus-ultra in black/grind chaos)
Taake - Nattestid (this screams "classic" all over itself, perhaps a bit too obvious)
Summoning - Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame (lightyears better than that schmaltzy "Stronghold" - this comes close to the musical quality of "Minas Morgul" but with a massive 2002 production)
Apparently the new Graveland is a step up from the previous (boring) albums, but I've yet to hear it.
The latest Esoteric and Skepticism albums are also very good, but I can't say they're better than the ones mentioned above.

Horna is OK I guess...but is so much of a clone band (note-by-note ripoff of Gorgoroths first two albums) it takes away much of my enjoyment (Urgehal has the same effect on me, sadly). That's mainly my position on most metal coming out - everybody is so busy revering the oldies:
- cloning 1992 Norwegian BM
- 1985 German thrash
- 80s heavy/power metal
- late 80s Blackgrind chaos a la Blasphemy/Beherit
- mid 90s Polish black/folk
- drowning mediocre material in layers of synth fluff a la Limbonic Art
- going mid 80s DM a la Pestilence/Slayer/Death
- perfecting Suffocation-like technicality to the nth degree
- revelling in Black Legions-like lo-fi obscurity

Somehow I'm starting to get the feeling that after the enormous leaps from 1985-1995, everyone stopped, and started digesting/permutating these developments rather than continue plunging headlong into the unknown. This is probably why something like Horna will never have the impact that, say, Darkthrone or Gorgoroth had on me. The history of it all seems to drag everything down...if there's going to be any buildup of a new spirit/momentum it's probably come out of a scene no-one is expecting it from. I mean, from a European/American point of view, who would've predicted the Brazilian scene producing greats like Volcano/Sarcofago/Sepultura?

And for the sake of discussion: why "Chaosphere" and not "Destroy:Erase:Improve"? I enjoy both almost equally. I should add at least one Meshuggah album and it's got to be one of these two.

i'd vote for "clandestine" any day of the week, despite the kind of scattered, half-assed vocal work.
Actual (paraphrased) discussion:
- "Clandestine" is just as good, you know.
- Yes, but those vocals...
- OK, "Left Hand Path" it is.
When Entombed ditched the Sunlight Studios' ultra-dense guitar sound their appeal was massively reduced. Bloody typical that a band can depend so much on such a trivial thing, really...

Side issue/Subthread: I coulda sworn that Revolver mag was set up to be some kind of American equivalent of Mojo...but somehere along the line it became some kind of Teenybooper Nu-metal knockoff of Kerrang!...but without Kerrang's long history of (*cough*) Journalistic Integrity. :)

*Sniff* I KNOW! I used to freakin' love "Revolver" (it's the Classic Rock magazine that features Wookie and Wu Tang Clan!), and now it's gone down the drain...

I do have the feeling sometimes that I should get away from the scene and re-enter a few years later - perhaps in the last fifteen years I've been numbing myself with hundreds of albums to the point that only the stuff that stands out as different (sound, structure, whatever) gets my blood flowing. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the last few Decayed albums which are basically excellent "The Return" ripoffs, and the Cutthroat "Rape! Rape! Rape!" covers-of-old-thrash-bands CD was pretty great too, in terms of headbanging/air guitar playing appeal (something you don't get with your average 90s influenced band). But somehow to me the bar lies higher for artists that "work on existant models". I could rave about Megiddo, Maniac Butcher, Black Witchery, Nile or Abigail but somehow I can't really convince myself they're really something worthy of being in an "all time greats" list. Perhaps in retrospect I will appreciate them more than I do now.

I actually haven't heard the latest Hate Eternal album, although I keep hearing wonderful things about it from everyone. I guess I should take a hint...

http://www.entertainment.inuk.com/music/numetalguide.html

Awful Link of the Day

Crypt of the Lost Souls (thanks Roland) - In sticking with the theme of today's update, here is a website filled with angst called the "Crypt of the lost souls." Filled with horrifying satanism and gothic-ness, it's a testament to hell that the dark lord himself could be proud of. It's run by a 16 year old boy named Chris who could most definitely pass for a 14 year old girl.

http://medlem.spray.se/metalalbums/blackmetal.htm

Argh! You can take the girl out of white trash, but the white trash RUBS OFF ON the girl!

Rightly so, I can't think of a single good female metal band.

Why? Girls are great at other genres.

>I can't think of a single good female metal band

Precious Metal, "That Kind of Girl"

SUCK!

Two Pantera albums and only one Sabbath album has to be criminal.

Why the hell are Bad Brains, Misfits and, to a lesser extent, Jane's Addiction on this list? They don't seem very metal to me.

66. GODFLESH - Streetcleaner
64. SLEEP - Jerusalem
60. DARKTHRONE - Transylvanian Hunger

[...]

21. KORN - Follow The Leader
17. SLIPKNOT - Slipknot
7. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE - Rage Against The Machine

CHRISTBAIT RISING
BULLS ON PARADE

22. AEROSMITH - Rocks
21. KORN - Follow The Leader
...
9. GUNS N ROSES - Appetite For Destruction
8. SYSTEM OF A DOWN - Toxicity

4. SLAYER - Reign In Blood
3. BLACK SABBATH - Paranoid
2. PANTERA - Vulgar Display Of Power
1. METALLICA - Master Of Puppets

it certainly is a number two.

2nd best metal album of all time my arse

even bill magill thinks its a joke its #2 and he is one of the few Pantera fans round here