I don't think a classic album has to be prefect! SO I'd say Ride the Lightning qualifies. It has some TRULY great songs, along with 1 or 2 that are merely good.


Perfect albums are RARE. Black Sabbath - Sabatoge is a classic album AND a perfect one!

A classic album is not the same as your favourite album. There are lots of classic albums that I don't particularly like. That doesn't take away from their importance on the development and history of music.

Might be a Jew's harp?

Yeah, that's a mouth harp/aka jew's harp

Anyone ever seen someone wear a Metal Church “Hanging in the Balance” shirt?

What's the reach of Queen's influence in metal?

He once attended a party with members of Peste Noire and I think they had a conversation, so I’d stay far the fuck away from anyone who’s been under the same roof as those guys.

Owen/Rusay - Tomb of the Mutilated. I'm not the biggest fan of this era of the band.
Owen/Barrett - The Bleeding. My favorite album by them.
Owen/O'Brien - Bloodthirst. Gallery of Suicide is a very close second.
O'Brien/Barrett - A Skeletal Domain. Love the guitar tone.
Barrett/Rutan - Violence Unimagined. But the new one is also very good.

I would say power metal probably got a lot of its pomp and melodiousness from Queen.

Blind Guardian

Nope but that would be so fuckin cool. EBay has some but $90NZ is insane.

Just spotted that Tomcat post with the squadtee link. Way cheaper, about half the price. Pays to shop around folks.

Scorpions surely? Granted I've only recently started getting into the latter, but In Trance had the most clear Queen influence I've heard on a metal album.

Which Queen albums are you referring to?

Was thinking I and II. Now realise I'm a total idiot, guess all I picked up on was similarities rather than influence, always forget Scorpions were as early as they were.

I have the original shirt and have worn it proudly! I always liked the cover. Great album!

https://tshirtslayer.com/tshirt-or-long ... ng-balance

So I'm about done with Manilla Road's Mystification, and it absolutely rules, easily a top 5 of that year for me. Usually top 5's are set in stone, but I love it when something like this comes in, and shakes it up!

Which Manilla Road album should I buy next?


As for Queen, if you had melodies in your songs, Queen influenced you. The entire power metal scene is to some extent, trying to be Brian May's songs at 200 mph.

Interesting perspective about Queen. It seems logical to say they have an impact on metal bands, but how specific do you want to get? Ask the bands, I guess. Influence is a weird thing and sometimes it can be pretty subtle.

Maybe you could go for the previous album, The Deluge, next, from Manilla Road. It's not quite as thrash-sounding as Mystification can get, but it's just as heavy, and slightly more esoteric sounding. It's one of my favourites from the band. If you think you'd like to hear the next step in speed and fury, go for Out of the Abyss. Like Mystification it also contains some fantastic more epic songs.

While I love the thrash tendencies of Mystification, I want to see what more the band has to offer, so I went with The Deluge.

Unrelated, when it comes to Sepultura, I am firmly team Beneath The Remains. How much will I like Nailbomb?

Definitely a great choice.



Well, there's no real reason why a person can't like both BTR and Chaos AD or even BTR and Roots for that matter. But Nailbomb is definitely closer to the latter. No thrash. Angry, punishing, midpaced, noisy. Very 90s.

Anyone else agree that Cathedrals Soul Sacrifice could have fit on Pantera’s VDOP perfectly? Versatile band!

WTF? No. I love both but fuck no.

C'mon Kai ya gotta give Open The Gates and Crystal Logic a spin. Both are absolute classics.

Also Nailbomb kicks fuckin ass. Check out Fudge Tunnel too, great stuff.

Well, by "team Beneath The Remains" I mean that's my favorite and I prefer thrashy Sepultura. I did check out Chaos AD for the first time ever a few months ago and I actually really like it. Roots on the other hand, was a bridge too far. But I guess the question I meant to ask was "how thrashy is Nailbomb?" According to you the answer is "not very."




I'll get to them eventually.




Eh, it might have. I'd rather that have been on VDOP than Live In A Hole.

Open the Gates and The Courts of Chaos are mandatory metal listens. Both very different, but easily recognizable as Manilla Road.

What's going on with Pagan Altar/Volume 1/Judgement of the Dead? Same tracklist, but is it a rerecording or just a rerelease? Does it matter which one I listen to?

They're all the same thing.

That was nice of them. More bands should offer multiple-choice album title options.

All the same thing, originally released in 1982. The only Pagan Altar full length that wasn't a rerecording. They had already recorded Lords of Hypocrisy and Mythical & Magical in the 80s, but never released them. They had the intentions of finally releasing them in the early 2000s, but the master tapes to both albums were too damaged. So they reunited (which was not originally part of the plan) to rerecord the two albums.

I'm not sure what the deal is with The Room of Shadows. I believe in the 80s, after recording the original Mythical & Magical, they recorded what was to be their final album, Never Quite Dead. When they were working on what was to become The Room of Shadows, I THINK it was originally going to be titled Never Quite Dead, but then Terry Jones died and Alan felt because of that thought it fit to use a different title, which was The Room of Shadows.

Is The Room of Shadows a rerecording of the 80s Never Quite Dead? I really don't know.

Why does Ensiferum not sound like your typical drinking in an inn Folk Metal while being a drinking in an inn Folk Metal band?

Not a metal question, but is djent always progressive? ie. is there djent that isn't progressive?

Allow me to be that guy, but, one of the core ideas of prog rock was upturning the notions of what rock could be beyond a steady 4/4 with a simple structure and set instrumentation. To that end, by sticking to the expected odd-time signatures and weird forms, djent is stylistically conservative, if anything else.
But to answer your question, no, afaik there’s no genre-defying djent that plays plain square Iron Man style songs.


Because they actually have riffs in their songs. There’s a lot of Metallica influence in their playing.

What's the deal with the band Mad Butcher? They're a thrash band from Germany that released their first demo in 1983, and both of their albums from the 80s have artwork that reasonably resembles the guy on Destruction's Mad Butcher EP. There are no shared members between the two bands.

Is the Mad Butcher a known character (especially in Germany) or did Destruction borrow the title from these guys?

Mad Butcher is an Italian horror picture from the early 70s which I'd imagine the inspiration for both came from (although the "Mad Butcher" character on either album doesn't really resemble the main character from the film. Maybe the film was popular in Germany because it was about sausages?). The album Metal Meat from the band Mad Butcher was released by Metal Enterprises, which, knowing what we do about that label, makes me believe that they (the label, not the band necessarily) threw on the character of "Mad Butcher" as a cash grab, although I can't find definitive info on that albums release date, discogs even lists it as '88 while MA says '87.

Keep in mind that Destruction had recorded the song Mad Butcher as early as the '84 Bestial Invasion of Hell demo, and Mad Butcher's '83 demo was "not released officially or commercially distributed, but used as showcase for local clubs and festival promoters". It seems like the song title and band name were coincidence, but the album art portraying a fat bald "mad butcher" was an attempt on the label to play off of Destruction's popularity. You could probably ask the vocalist of Mad Butcher, he's pretty active on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/@harryelbracht

Is Andy LaRoque's last name pronounced La-Roke, or La-Rock?

It's a French name, and you would pronounce roque similarly to the way you pronounce the word rock, but with a little less emphasis on the "k" sound.

It's a stage name. Pretty sure it's rock, like in rock. His last name is Allhage.

Why is Kevin Moore generally held in higher esteem than Jordan Rudess? That’s never made a lot of sense to me, but I may be missing something and am genuinely interested in hearing why that may be.

I personally think Kevin Moore’s approach to keyboards worked as a more subtle counterpoint to most of Dream Theater’s other musicians having a flashier attitude. He was also the group’s greatest lyricist whose more cynical, personal touch is another great contrast to how overwrought or saccharine the other guys tend to be lyrically, especially Petrucci. That and I think somebody who was on DT’e first three albums is just gonna have more reverence by default.

I don’t think Rudess is awful for the band and you can tell that they considered having him on to be a major win but with how he joins them in those flashier methods, it just threw the last bit of subtlety they had right out the window.

Jordan Rudess is too flashy.