Yes!

I'd also argue that the latest Blut Aus Nord album was a great redemption album after a handful of relatively sub-par releases. It's different than their previous styles, yet it absolutely floors me every time I listen to it.

It's actually beyond that - you're arguing that Metallica have absolutely no redeeming features. But I bet you happen to like a lot of stuff influenced by Metallica - The Years of Decay for starters. You can dislike Metallica, fine, but to deny the good influence they had in their early years is a little beyond personal opinion. That is, unless you hate a lot of the thrash scene.

Ultimate redemption albums: Virgin Steele after Life Among the Ruins - everyone has forgotten about that one considering how great they've been for the past 15 years or so.

Dream Theater with Scenes from a Memory. Falling into Infinity made the band lose a lot of its fan base and it seemed like nothing was going right with them. But Scenes became a prog-metal masterpiece and now the band has an even more dedicated fan base, even if some of their recent albums have polarized some.

Ram It Down is cheesy as fuck, but still rather good. I am no big fan of Screaming For Vengeance however.

Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder. Was really dissapointed with Thornography and I was semi skeptical when I heard this one was going a bit back to Cradle's roots, but they did and it's a fun albume.

Is it really good? I gave up on them after Nymphetamine. In what way did they go back to their roots?

More complex and interesting song structures, heavier outcome, less lolgay-cheesiness (Temptation ) and all the way more symph/black feel of their old stuff.
VAST IMPROVEMENT from Thornography!

You say that like it's an achievement.

'This Godless Endeavor' greatly redeemed Nevermore taking the few good qualities and moments from scattered across their previous albums and condensing them into an album that you could actually sit through from start to finish.

'Electric Wizard got their shit together on 'Witchcult Today' after the decent but lacking 'We Live' and 'Let Us Prey'. It wasn't another 'Dopethrone' or 'Come My Fanatics' but it was definitely an Electric Wizard album and damnably good one at that.

http://www.metal-archives.com/board/vie ... hp?t=53373

???

I'm not holding my breath...

It's close to Cruelty and the Beast, so if you like that album you should like the new one as well.

Monotheist a million times over....

And then they split up again.... What the hell.

Almost the same as with Gorefest. It seem like a new trend for old metal bands:

1- Starting with great, classic albums.

2- Making some really awful shit

3- Trying to fix it with no good results

4- Splitting-up

5 - Reform

6 - Making one or two awesome albums

7 - Splitting-up again for good (perhaps even just for fun)

Helloween's done it twice first with "Better than Raw" after a terrible first half of the nineties.

Then they topped off a middling first half of the 00's with the amazing "Gambling with the Devil"

I love how somebody made the same topic as me on the same day, except mine gets locked and people are actually able to stay on topic with this one instead of arguing back and forth about Blooddrunk.

Anyway, Monothiest was a comeback but Vanity/Nemesis was by no means a bad album.

I have to disagree. To me it sounds a lot more like "Damnation and a Day" and "Nympetamine" - but yes, a VAST improvement over "Thornography", which I found to be absolutely disgusting....

In my opinion "Cruelty and the Beast" crushes "Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder"....

I agree on your last statement, but I really find Godspeed... to be close to Cruelty and the Beast the most in the band's discography. I didn't believe them when they said it was going to be a "back to the roots" album, but I was surprised that it was much, much better than what I expected.

Burzum never needed a 'redemption' album. If anything, Hliðskjálf was it.

Twilight of the Idols seemed to be a redemption for Gorgoroth. Both Incipid Satan and Destroyer were inconsistent and a step down from albums like Pentagram or Under the Sign of Hell. Twilight of the Idols was a 100% full fist to the face with very few inconsistencies.

Yes, for me Metallica has no redeeming features at all. And "The Years Of Decay" is my least favourite amid the first five albums of Overkill (sooth to say, now I really like only "Elimination", "I Hate" and "E.vil N.ever D.ies"). Sure, they were very influential in their early days, but I don't consider that influence to be positive *cough*Testament*cough*.

Destruction - The Antichrist. Sure they had another album prior to this after the whole Least Successful human cannonball period, but this is the one that got them really going again. Still my favourite modern thrash album. DEVOLUTION is really the first disappointing album they've done since then too.

Nice play on words (insipid)

God dammit guys. Am I going to have to go buy that fucker now? I am intrigued, but still skeptical.

In my opinion, Cruelty and the Beast crushes most black metal. It's a shame that the band got such a bad reputation, just because they got really famous and started to suck.

Just dropping by to agree with everyone who named Monotheist. That album is a beast.

Absolutely. That album is a monster...and it wasn't at all hyped for me because my expectations were about as low as they could possibly get before this thing came out. I can't really think of a metal band that went out in such an astonishing fashion after being pretty much uselesss for so many years. Hell, I don't even like "Into the Pandemonium" much at all, but "Monotheist" is a behemoth that got my respectt and then fascination against all the odds. It even sounds like crud if youu try and describe what the album sounds like...it's so slow, the guitarwork is mostly rudimentary in the extreme, and ther'es that infamous "oh god, why have you forsaken meeeee?!"...but when you put the thing on, you hear it has atmosphere, subtlety and class that make it more than the sum of its parts.

So, you like the song which sounds a lot like 'Master of Puppets'? Must be a good riff, eh? Metallica's influence in the thrash scene extends far beyond the bands who blatantly ripped them off, as Testament did. I can hear their influence in loads (no pun intended) of albums. You can't write it all off as negative. Hell, even if it boils down to a case of "Keeping up with the Hetfields" with Megadeth, it's still an influence (and a positive one). Regardless of your opinion it's just downright stupid to write of Metallica as completely worthless. It's usually something to do with that historical revisionism bullshit that's so wonderfully prevalent in thrash.

Of course, Metallica's influence extends beyond thrash, I was just using that as an example.

Sorry, but I can't hear any similarity.


For the record, I don't like Megadeth as well.


Once again, I don't claim that Metallica is utterly worthless and all must agree with me. What I claim is that personally I think that Metallica is worthless. Why? Because not only I don't enjoy any of their songs the slightest bit, but also I find many of them to be offensive to me as a metalhead.

If you can't hear any similarity, you're either deaf or in denial.

"but also I find many of them to be offensive to me as a metalhead."

.....

Yes, but you enjoy bands that have been influenced by Metallica and therefore the band can't be worthless to your tastes. It's just that you personally don't enjoy their music. You could - not that you have to, by any means - respect the influence of their early work, which surely counts for something.

I, for one, think Bob Dylan's music is shit and I don't enjoy any of the stuff I've heard from him; but I'd never write him off as worthless as he's influenced artists (positively) who I do enjoy. It's the same deal.

Our definitions of "worthless" are different, then.

Can't hear the similarity between the riff in "Elimination" and the riff in "Master of Puppets"? I always thought they sounded quite a bit similar.

Maybe not exactly the same, but they're still similar.

"Elimination"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln8-iokzGOI

"Master of Puppets"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-hEyVQDRA

Well for this band it IS! I like the old CoF and even some of their later songs are cool (Swansong for a Raven) but Thornography was just atrociously laid back and cheesy. Really I lost my hope for CoF completely when I heard that goddamn record and I thought they'd never be able to produce a listenable album again but they DID. And that means something.

Within Temptation's The Heart of Everything. The Silent Force wasn't a bad CD, it's had some good tracks See Who I am, Aquirus and It's the Fear. It's just it went more pop and less away from the sound that made Within Temptation. The Heart of Everything was darker and more like what there music was.