Feel the Fire is so good. If I didn't love The Years of Decay so much it would be #1 for sure.

This is actually more common than you think as peoples' top Slayer pick.

What about the rap album Diabolus in Musica?

Carcass - Swansong

Darkthrone - Soulside Journey

In a ranking it would be my top 2 after Stained Class, a genre-defining classic


Hard agree, it's a totally underrated album even by Cirith Ungol themselves, you can tell they didn't have a good time during the production and recording process. "Fallen Idols" is one of their best songs ever!

Vicious Rumors - Sadistic Symphony. Don't care for their other albums.

There are a lot of albums that people here have already mentioned and I will second those:

Iron Maiden - The X Factor
Iced Earth - The Glorious Burden
Dissection - Reinkaos
In Flames - Clayman
Nokturnal Mortum - Nechrist
My Dying Bride - Light at the end of the world

Then some others mentioned two albums in particular which to me are actually my favourite albums from the band in their entire discography:

Cannibal Corpse - Vile
I really have no idea why this album is given such disregard. It's basically The Bleeding part 2 but with better vocals, the perfect marriage of their old and new sounds

Running Wild - The Rivalry
I really don't care how many people will endlessly felate albums like Port Royal or Death or Glory (don't get me wrong, those albums rule) but The Rivalry 100% deserves to mentioned in exactly the same breath as any of those albums. And for my money, this is the best record the band has ever done.


Here are a couple of mentions I haven't seen yet:

Savatage - Edge of Thorns
I absolutely love the emotive guitar work on this record and this is probably my favourite Zak Stevens performance, period

Slayer - Undisputed Attitude
A really great swift kick in the pants and one of the only "covers only" records that I still play regularly. Never understood the hate

Hamerfall - Renegade
Don't actually know why I love this record as much as I do since it's inferior to the first two but it's just so damn catchy that I cannot stop humming the songs for days on end after a listen

Cradle of Filth - Thornography
Still undecided how good the album is as a whole, but it definitely has it's moments

Cannibal Corpse - Bloodthirst
My favorite release by them

Immortal - Damned in Black
Right now my second favorite (Pure Holocaust is still no1)

Therion - Beyond Sanctorum
Depending on who you ask... This is for me head and shoulders above the symphonic stuff




I also like the mentioned Kill 'em all, Given to the Rising and Show No Mercy a lot.

Non-Metal:
AC/DC - Let There be Rock
The Flower Kings - The Rainmaker
King Crimson - Lizard
Taylor Swift - debut

I think this one might be slightly divisive among those who love the old stuff, but it's really a masterpiece and has just stunning show-stopper after show-stopper. Great all around. This was where they really balanced the riffs and the classier, more sophisticated stuff the best, with everything becoming a tour de force.

I'm still convinced that The Chasm's From the Lost Years... is the band's peak. Less flashy and more down to earth, it's a cinematic death metal epic that takes the listener on an introspective journey. I like some of the band's later works too, but none of them come close to this one.

Cynic's demo from 1990 is one of the best death metal demos ever and it's easy to see where Death got his inspiration from by the time he had released Human. It also beats the crap out of Focus.

Darkthrone's Goatlord is one of the best DT albums. Yeah, the production isn't ideal... but the music is freakin' brilliant.

Some of you are REALLY not understanding the post and are just taking the opportunity to rant about your favorite albums that are really well liked by literally everyone, haha

Edge of Thorns was the easiest Savatage album for me to get into back in the day. Gutter Ballet was my first exposure to them but I find the awkward transitional moments make it tricky for a first time listener. EoT feels so much more realized in comparison and Stevens suits the symphonic style better than Jon for the most part

The story is so visual when listening to the album. Has a real gothic tone, more so than most of his albums. I think the "cheesiness" of some of the tracks ("Sleep Tight Little Baby", "Daddy", "Up From The Grave") is what is off putting to most, but I personally loved it. Production could be argued as well. I'm probably bias to this album as I bought it right when it came out and played the hell out of it.

But I don't know how KD fans skip songs like "Trick or Treat", "Digging Graves", and "Lucy Forever".

The 80s material has some incredible highlights, and sometimes I'm really more in the mood for the dirty, feral riffs, but Edge of Thorns is almost unquestionably the best one for me. I love the bluesy rock stuff mixed with the symphonics, and the lyrical aesthetic is really unlike anything else. Zak is such a great singer and this was one of the only times when the music was as good as his vocals too.

It's this, exactly. Two-thirds of that album is outstanding, and I love the production. But the silliness goes a little bit too far.
Some of it borders on parody, as if some King Diamond hater decided to mock him.

The "die die die die diiiieeee" screams at the end of "I Am" are silly (and it's an otherwise tremendous, great song).

There are no bad KD albums, but some of "Graveyard" is cringe-worthy.

I'm surprised My Dying Bridge - The Light at the End of the World has come up, but if it is the case then I'm also going to count it. I think MDB made one mistake in using Sear Me III as the closing track, which is an awful song and should not have been included on the record at all, but ending on that note can alter the listener's perception of the album.

Destroyer of Worlds by Bathory (So much material of good quality)
Goatlord by Darkthrone (Raw as shit, I also love the vocals)

Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier - I am genuinely baffled this doesnt get the love it deserves. Its the most varied, well rounded of all post reunion Maiden, has shorter rockers, throwback to old Maiden, epics and more progressive songs. The chorus repetition of BNW DOD is gone and its a lot more varied than AMOLAD. I think the intro at the beginning threw people off initially

Slayer - Diabolus In Musica. I get why people dont like it but fuck it, i enjoy it

Those guitars do conjure up a sort of fever dream. I like it.

I think this will eventually have a change in opinion like we've seen with No Prayer/FOTD and X Factor... it's a really good album and has quite a lot going on; definitely their best post-80s release.

My opinion on The Final Frontier has changed a lot since release. I was quite disappointed initially, but I've grown to like it a fair bit over the years. I still think it could be better sequenced (all the 'epic' songs are in the latter half) though, and I'd lose a song or two (I'd cut the Satellite 15 intro, and maybe The Man Who Would Be King).

Isle of Avalon, Starblind and The Talisman are great.

I absolutely love the way they had the tracks arranged. The epics are all really different and it becomes a good flow of things.

I still can't get into that one past The Alchemist and Coming Home.

I just really like "Imaginaerum" by Nightwish. I'm sorry, folks. The one part of the album I can't stand is the *7 minutes* of shitty spoken word poetry near the end... but other than that, I love it in all its over-the-top Disney rock glory. It doesn't beat "Oceanborn" for me but whatever.

I also dig "One Second" by Paradise Lost. It's not my favorite PL album, but it's incredibly catchy and fun to sing along with. I still really like it... and it's in my top 5 of their discography, at least, lol.

"Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder" is clearly the best of the Paul Allender-written Cradle of Filth albums post-"Midian". Definitely faster and more aggressive than "Nymphetamine" and "Thornography", and more symphonic too. Maybe they went a little overboard with the sheer amount of Doug Bradley spoken word bits... but I'm always up for hearing the voice of Pinhead, thus I don't mind.

The Man Who Would Be King is one of my favourites on that album. I remember people complaining about 3 epics at the end, but The Man Who Would Be King is just a traditional verse chorus verse chorus song, with the quiet into and outro.

But yes, the intro probably could be cut.

Indeed. The weakest song is the title track, IMO. And that's not a bad song by any stretch.
Killer album.

Iron maiden- the x factor and virtual
Judas priest- Nostradamus
Bathory - Requiem, Nordlands
Slayer - Divine intervention

Judas Priest - "Point Of Entry"
Like Turbo, there are some duds here, but the good stuff is phenomenal.

"Heading Out To the Highway", "Desert Plains", "Solar Winds", & "Hot Rockin'" are all stellar...classic Priest tracks.

Yep. Its a laid back more on the rock end of things but those are some excellent cuts. A good summer Priest album.

Turbo is probably my favorite Priest album. Definitely not their best, but easily one of the most enjoyable to listen to. It's a really fun album.

Sorry but I laughed out loud at that line. If it's your favorite, wouldn't you consider it their best??

I'll probably get a lot of shit for this, but my favorite In Flames is Reroute. I like the turn they took at that point in time. Up until Come Clarity they were pretty sweet.

Speaking of Point of Entry, Halford would do a pretty good live version of "Solar Angels" when he was with Fight.

Absolutely. Starblind is particularly excellent IMO.

Coming Home got me through some tough times, I'll always have a soft spot for that one.

Nah.

Citizen Kane is objectively a better movie than Dumb and Dumber, but I enjoy D&D more lol.

I agree with this, although I'm not sure it's an overly divisive album among Nightwish's fanbase (I tend to take MA review scores with a significant pinch of salt and then some) despite it deservedly losing a few people for that godawful spoken word crap in 'Song of Myself'. Most Nightwish fans I've met, myself included, consider Imaginaerum to be their best post-Tarja work.

This one for sure.

Immortal- Sons of Northern Darkness could go either way for the fandom. It's usually either Pure Holocaust or At The Heart Of Winter, but that's precisely why I love SOND. It's the brevity (with one or two exceptions) of PH with the production and grand scope of ATHOW.

Accept- Stalingrad
Overkill- The Electric Age

Queensryche - Promised Land
Lush atmospheric production that flows from song to song.

For me its nile - in their darkened shrines

thats like the stand out from the band - i really find all their oother albums boring