Sacramentum - Far Away From The Sun
- ignoring their EP, this album was by far their best. They had some good riffs in their later albums, but gone was the combination of great guitar work and the dark atmosphere of Far Away From The Sun.

Dimmu Borgir
- EDT is close and more refined than For all Tid, but i enjoy the rawness and the almost mid-tempo style of early Dimmu..plus the atmosphere is good as well without relying too much on keyboards

Necrophobic - THe Nocturnal Silence
- can't quite put a finger on why i like this one over their others, but its such a dark album and perhaps its cause Strokirk only does vocals on this album

Others i'd consider their first the best:

Nocturnus - The Key
Ahab - Call of THe Wretched Sea
Extol - Burial
Limbonic Art - Moon in the Scorpio

Listen to "The Gathering"... NOW.

As for the OP's question, I'd have to say Bloodbath is one of those bands for me; RtC was just such a metal album, so unbelievably crunchy, gory, and groovy... I mean, Nightmares was a very good record as well, but with more duds and fewer highlights then Resurrection, and then TFM had good energy, but that's it; pretty much completely forgettable songwriting all-around, basically.

Darkthrone

I'll second Exodus. I also think Sadus never topped Illusions/Chemical Exposure in terms of sheer intensity.

Anthrax's "Fistful Of Metal" definitely destroys all their other albums, which is saying something because they've put out some great stuff. There is just something ferocious and occasionally demented about that album - they were still goofy thrash, but more urgent than they later became.

Someone said Incantation. I think Mortal Throne of Nazarene is even better than Onward to Golgotha.

Someone said Bloodbath. Wtf? NMF easily rapes that album. Eaten alone or Pete alone rapes RTC.

Darkthrone? I think they accomplished way more playing black metal than death metal. Under a Funeral Moon or Transilvanian, one of those is their best.

Dark Tranquillity might work too, I like both Skydancer and The Gallery the same.

Emperor's ITNE is their best album hands down.

Rotting Christ for sure, Thy Mighty Contract has all their best riffs and songs, same as Varathron's His Majesty At The Swamp. Both bands went downhill after that.

Rotting Christ released at least 3 fine albums after that: Non Serviam, Triarchy and Theogonia. About Varathron, Walpurgisnacht is as good as His Majesty. Also try their latest Stygian Forces of Scorn, it's the best black metal album coming out of Greece in decades, just on par with their first releases IMO.

Yep. I've yet to find that albums equal in doom metal. For me its the vocals. Messiah/Lowe can't come close to the feeling on that album.

The highlights of Nightmares are "Outnumbering The Day", "Eaten", and "The Ascension", versus at least twice that number on RtC, in "Mass Strangulation", "Buried By The Dead", "The Soulcollector", "Trail Of Insects", "Like Fire", and "Cry My Name". Factor in Akerfeldt's much more unique vocals and the much less generic production, and Resurrection easily wins the day

Two of my favourite albums, but I'd have to go with Don't Beak the Oath as my fave. When I first heard it, many years ago, I was slightly disappointed as I loved all the acoustic passages on Melissa and DBTO didn't contain any, apart from a few notes at the beginning of Come to the Sabbath and To One Far Away. But over time I began to love it more and more. The solos are out of this world. A couple of slightly weaker tracks in Welcome Princes of Hell and To One Far Away, but then Melissa had Black Funeral, which to me was weaker than the rest. I reckon they should have replaced BF with Burning the Cross or Return of the Vampire. Actually, those 2 tracks would have fitted perfectly on the Nuns Have No Fun EP. Never mind!

Anyhoo, totally agree with the debuts from Testament and Exodus (although both bands released great follow ups). And Flotsam and Jetsam released probably their best album with Doomsday for the Deceiver (again, follow up was great). Also, I think the Big Four all released better sophomore albums. Perhaps Nasty Savage? They released a handful of cracking albums, but their debut is truly fantastic!

Strange, I Think the strongest songs in NMF are Cancer of The Soul, Brave New Hell, Soul Evisceration, Eaten, Outnumbering the Day and Year of the Cadaver Race.

About the vocals, I think Pete recorded one of the most ferocious performances in death metal, ever.

Darkthrone is a useless choice for this thread; it doesn't say anything at all about the band, just your genre preferences.

I agree about Sadus. That first album (whichever title you call it by) was sheer unbridled agression, energy and speed. I think Sadus did what a lot of other thrash and death bands did with their subsequent albums- sacrifice intensity in favor of more technical riffs, arrangements, and so on. But the overall feeling and intensity was lost in the process .

He was good, but I prefer the unique sound of Akerfeldt more.

Mind explaining this? I've never heard DBtO described as a compilation before. Not being critical, I'm just interested to hear your opinion.


On the topic at hand, I was discussing this subject with a few of the members here a few months back. I put forward the idea that most bands debuts are the best, as this discussion and the amount of lists written up seem to indicate. My theory is that the time between the band forming and the band recording their first album is often quite a few, if not many, years. This gives the band time to perfect their material. After this initial period, the band is then often contracted to release a follow up, which is often recorded and released within 2 years of the debut. This is often a much shorter period of time than what the band initially had. Add on to that the fact the band would often be touring for much of that time - especially the case with professional full time bands - and the results are often rushed, and not as well executed as what they should be.

This ruthless existance does, so to speak, sort the men from the boys though. The bands that are unable to release quality follow ups often fall by the wayside and make way for the more talented (or perhaps just luckier) bands. NWOBHM and thrash, the two genres I'm most well versed in, are littered with examples of bands being unable to create solid follow ups beyond their debut records. An easier discussion would be to invert this discussion, and name bands that actually improved beyond their debut.

I find Akerfeldt's vocals to be extremely generic, atleast Peter mixes his vocals up, Mikeal is totally monotone.

Pantera

Which one, though?

^confused^

He doesn't use as much range as Pete does, but Pete's general growl tone is still much more standard than Akerfeldt's; I can actually distinguish his growling from the rest of glut out there in DM.

2 bands come to my mind first are Pagan's mind, after excellent Celestial entrance they kept repeating same formula and while releases after that are good, and im listening them often, they are not reaching same "classic" - level.

Almost identical case is Cloudscape, classic first, then fading into the more mediocre/generic level, but still including some excellent songs.

Edit: i was shocked when i found out that Celestial entrance is Pagan's minds second full-length, my bad

I will second the person who said Dimmu. I do enjoy their more commercial albums like Sorte Diaboli, but that first album is hard for them to top, especially since they don't even play "real" Black Metal these days.

I still was holding onto a small thread of hope for them until they released Abrahadabra and I saw their new music videos. All hope lost...all hope lost...

'Stigmata' is their second album, though. 'Black Earth' was the debut.
And come to think of it, I do love the rawness and riffs on 'Black Earth', but the songwriting on 'Stigmata' is stellar.

Exodus - Bonded by Blood
Testament - The Legacy
Atheist - Piece of Time
Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
Terrorizer - World Downfall
Grave - Into the Grave
Aura Noir - Black Thrash Attack
Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Gospel of the Horns - A Call to Arms
Vomitor - Bleeding the Priest

To name some

Van Halen
Death
Sarcofago
Angel Witch


Don't Break The Oath >> Melissa

Ah, good call there~!

I might add:

Deathrow - Riders Of Doom. My favorite, anyway. That said, I'm not super familiar with their entire discography.

He has a point. On RTC and Unblessing the Purity Akerfeldt sounded like Satan bellowing through my speakers. Who would you be more afraid of? The unholy lord of darkness himself? Or some ferocious, cannibalistic beast? I guess it's more subjective than that.

Slayer, Morbid Angel, Mayhem, blink-182.

You really like Show No Mercy the best from Slayer? I'd easily put two or three albums ahead of that one. Certainly, Reign In Blood is hands down their best album for me, personally.

The Berzerker- The Berzerker. This is their debut after releasing various demos, and holy shit it's still just as good as when I heard it 9 years ago. Extremely chaotic, rapidly delivered vocal lines, short and sweet songs... everything about it is awesome and nothing after it remotely carried a candle to it.

Not sure if anyone posted this one yet, but Rotting Christ. Anything after Thy Mighty Contract is quite poor in comparison. Also, Destruction - Infernal Overkill. Or Passage To Arcturo and Sentence of Death if we're counting EP's.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Surely you jest

Non Serviam had a horrible production and weak songs. Dead Poem was plain boring and the change in style didn't excite me at all. It was all down hill from there. But that's just my personal feelings. Thy Mighty Contract was their best work in my eyes. They didn't sound like anyone else back then, unlike their later work.

....what the hell are you?

Morbid Angel, Deicide and Emperor spring to mind for first albums being their best.

Actually yes, someone did it just in this very same page.

I'm not sure how you can say that TMC is that great but Non Serviam is that bad, I can't see the huge drop in quality there. Also, If you consider Passage to Arcturo their best, why do you dispose Triarchy? many songs on that album reflects that mid paced highly melodic black metal portrayed on the Ep, whereas Non Serviam was faster and straightforward like the debut. IMO, Passage and Triarchy are the closer Rotting Christ has been to the hellenic sound portrayed by Varathron and Necromantia.

Anyway, besides those albums, Theogonia is massive.

Does it need to? I find the pure black metal albums to be quite boring to be perfectly honest; and yeah while Darkthrone being the band they are is all due to those albums, I still don't like them.

Also going to nominate Dismember and Entombed here, they've never topped their first albums far as I'm concerned. People who say Clandestine is better are deluded.

Except it is better. Better songwriting, more original sound, etc. Clandestine is awesome.

Hate Eternal - Conquering the Throne
I've always looked at Doug Cerrito as being the reason why this is the most focused and memorable Hate Eternal album, even though he wrote only three tracks from the album. Maybe he rubbed off on Rutan a little because the quality here is coherent in a way that stands out to me from the monotone of everything since the debut.

Deeds of Flesh - Trading Pieces
Along with the debut EP Gradually Melted, the first releases from Deeds are the best and definitely the most unique in their career. Their songs became interchangeable after Path of the Weakening and really just less inspired I think. Good of course, but just a bit stale, even with all their new tech-death features.