Really? Like, really? Wow...

Well, I suppose everyone is entitled to an opinion. Never thought any metalhead in their right mind could hate early Sabbath, though.

Yes, there is such an amazing diversity of opinions in the metal world. Almost as if metal fans were a highly opinionated bunch all trying to forge their own paths by severely interpreting anything considered orthodox before accepting any kind of conventional wisdom. Well, maybe not.

I can't stand pretty much all so-called 70s (pre-NWoBHM) "metal" in general, though there are a couple exceptions, mostly Judas Priest and Deep Purple stuff.

I don't hate it but no early sabbath would get more then an 80%. For every Electric Funeral there's Fairies Wear Boots, War Pigs, Rat Salad etc etc etc...

Really the whole pre-NWOBHM love is retarded. Most of it's superseded.

Pro tip for everyone: you have an album with high ratings? You want to see it keep high ratings? then don't post it here

Oh yeah, while we're on the subject: Demilich's Nespithe has 9 reviews and a 97% average.

That's stupid.

I agree. Same moronic argument Noktorn uses against old school death metal. That I share a negative opinion about 70s "metal" does not make it any better, as following such an argument is disliking the stuff for the wrong reasons. Personally I'd still think it fucking sucks if the NWoBHM started in the late 60s through the early 70s and was followed by Ozzy-era Black Sabbath type of stuff in the late 70s/early 80s. The order in which it occured does not matter to me.

I agree to a certain point, most music is great whenever it was made, or suck for that matter, but I still value innovation.

Innovation is a logical and unavoidable by-product of honest and talented musicians creating music they fully believe in. Any band that has to actively pursue innovation is an automatic failure and of no musical value whatsoever.

Does that have anything to do with Black Sabbath? I agree with your post, though, but not to the extent of labelling a band an "automatic failure".

Do you claim Sabbath actively pursued their innovation? Otherwise I don't understand what point you're trying to make, but I agree with what you said. I don't find Sigh (a band I like though) innovative, even if they're playing what is generally considered as "avantgarde" music.

No, my post was in response to the last bit of Jarnoth' previous post without reference to Black Sabbath. Basically my point was that I only value good music, and that any good music is automatically innovative so there is no point in deliberately valueing (valuing?) it.

Hmm. That point I can't agree with though, but if that's how you feel about things, who am I to say different.

Eh, with a bit of reflection the whole "superseded" comment was pretty stupid. I certainly stand by the rest of it though. In fact you could include 95% of NWOBHM in with my statement and I'd be fine with that.

Not everything can be Metallica.

The statement's a general pre-thrash deal. I can count the pre-thrash that I really like and listen to regularly on one hand. FTB, Maiden, Priest, Diamond Head, Motorhead. And Cirith Ungol and Trouble, I guess. Ok, so you'd have to have a pretty deformed hand,

This isn't punk rock; this is heavy metal.

pre-NWOBHM has a lot to offer to metalheads, and certainly isn't overrated as caspian implied.

You got it mixed up. Punk rock is the scene with the herd mentality. Metal is the one supposedly for people willing to use their brains on occasion (though that of course always depends on the varying popularity of the genre with the teenage clientel).

I don't think either scene has a herd mentality. But the difference is that with punk you can oppose just about anything, even in your own scene; you just wind up becoming a new faction of punk. Metal has traditions that we value more, and things that separate themselves too far from those traditions are ostracized.

Why generalise an era when the exceptions to the rule cover a great deal of examples?

...and since metal traditions were established in the 80s, the whole proto-metal deal really has very little to do with them. There were no metalheads and therefore no metal traditions before the genre cut the umbilical cord to the rock'n'roll scene, only a few rock staples that would later be adapted into metal traditions, such as the motorcycle rocker affinity for black leather and studs, and the long hair. Though of course bikers weren't a prime audience for 70s "metal", bands such as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were really directed more towards the hippie crowd.

Metal traditions mostly started with Black Sabbath, for example an intense interest in the occult. Of course, doom metal tradition traces itself directly and almost entirely to Black Sabbath.

Since it was Black Sabbath who was being criticized, that's what's really important.

Or, moreover, happened to fall upon them. Black Sabbath certainly weren't aiming for a hippie audience, at the time. In fact, if you read any number of interviews with the band, they'll say how their music -- naturally rather than intentionally -- was getting away from the "hippie sound". With Purple you maybe have more of a point; but neither were "hippie" bands.



Zeppelin, Black Widow etc etc dealt with the occult before Sabbath. Besides, I'd see people having a damn hard time denying the metal-ness of a whole load of Sabbath stuff (S/T, 'Into the Void', 'Children of the Grave', 'Wheels of Confusion', 'Symptom of the Universe', 'Snowblind', 'It's Alright' just off the top of my head).

As for people thinking an interest in pre-NWOBHM (by which, I assume most of you are refering to pre-Maiden ) as insincere. I just see that as rather short-sighted -- after all, who could possibly want to see a genres roots and forging in a time when there weren't too many set rules and everything was a sort of free for all? And, of course, it must be pretty fucking boring to see rock music be taken down new, exciting paths, right? For me, it's all part of being excited and enthusiastic about heavy metal and rock music -- for some of the same reasons I might want to explore, let's say, bands from all over the world nowadays. I would like to explore a genre's beginnings and not just for the sake of "knowing its roots" but wanting to find something sonically exciting. If you can't fanthom why someone would like that, then, urgh, I simply don't grasp your reasons for listening to music. For me, it's all about having a passion for something and wanting to explore all of it (or, as much as I can).

Strawmanissimus Extremus! Being interested in something and liking something are two different things, genius. Basically what you're saying is that somehow who doesn't like every single note of metal music that has ever existed in history is automatically not passionate about the music. What a fucking load of horseshit.

Well, sure, but that doesn't explain how exactly liking pre-NWOBHM stuff is retarded.

Oh, I forgot caspian said that. That makes ANA's post a non-strawman, provided that he wasn't referring to me, because I never said anything about what people shouldn't like, only that I personally dislike that shit. If that's the case then my apologies for that outburst.

He's already backed away from that statement. Ye casp knows well enough when he's been shown to be wrong.

You shouldnt. Black Gives way to Blue is kickass while Superunknown sucks ass (atleast the 60% of it that I ve heard). I ll be doing a crazy negative review for it once I hear it in its entirety. I dont think that the few songs I havent heard will change my opinion much.

And somebody write a venomous negative review Reverand Bizarre's debut for satan's sake. That album is fuckin boring. Human is a good album but purely overrated.

On a more positive note, Rush's Moving Pictures has a 96 rating after 9 reviews and unlike a lot of albums mentioned so far, it actually deserves that rating.

EDIT : DT's Awake has a 96 from 16 reviews. Incidentally, if Kruel's review is deleted then Images and Words' rating also flies to 95.

Yeah, I phrased that badly. I'm interested in looking into bands of that period to see not only where certain traits came from but also because I like that style -- because the style itself was in its infancy and a lot of it was fresh and exciting. And what caspian was saying was that people who said they enjoyed a lot of the pre-80s stuff seemed to have some ulterior motive for doing so (as if it is somehow cooler to say you enjoy older music) -- but it should be pretty obvious why people would want to hear a lot of that early metal and that was the point I was trying to make. Whether I like the band is, of course, different. But I might be interested in listening, anyway (in a sort of "heavy metal history lesson" way).



Probably should have phrased that as "If you can't fathom why something would want to do that".

Edit: Was refering to what caspian had said -- but if he's already gone back on it then I am too fucking late for this.

Are we talking aqbout the same thing? I know Black Sabbath are metal, but they're also pre-NWOBHM.

As for bands doing the occult thing before Sabbath, of course they did. I'm saying Sabbath carried it from hard rock into the metal genre. I don't consider bands like Led Zeppelin to be metal.

And Deep Purple? I find it strange you can make such arbitrary distinctions between bands at virtually the same level of "metalness".

Back to the original question about highly-rated albums, I can provide some actual data. Counting only albums with 10+ reviews, and disregarding reviewers who have only written one review, there are 16 albums with averages of 95 or higher:

# album | reviews | average
1 Lykathea Aflame: Elvenefris | 13 | 97.385
2 Evoken: Antithesis of Light | 10 | 97
3 Dream Theater: Awake | 13 | 96.538
4 Death: Human | 16 | 96.375
5 Atheist: Unquestionable Presence | 12 | 96.25
t King Diamond: Abigail | 12 | 96.25
7 Judas Priest: Stained Class | 11 | 96
8 Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny | 12 | 95.917
9 Disembowelment: Transcendence into the Peripheral | 10 | 95.7
10 Deicide: Legion | 15 | 95.667
11 Iron Maiden: Seventh Son of a Seventh Son | 12 | 95.583
12 Primordial: To the Nameless Dead | 14 | 95.429
13 Death: Symbolic | 15 | 95.4
t Immolation: Close to a World Below | 10 | 95.4
15 Katatonia: Dance of December Souls | 10 | 95.3
16 Heathen: 2005 Demo | 11 | 95.091

If you drop the requirement to 5 reviews, then 92 albums qualify, so I won't list them all here. The 3 albums with averages of 99 or higher from at least 5 reviews are:

Terrorizer: World Downfall | 8 | 99.375
Reverend Bizarre: In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend | 7 | 99.143
Pagan Altar: Mythical & Magical | 5 | 99

And the only one with 4 100s is:

Nokturnal Mortum: Lunar Poetry | 4 | 100

Reverend Bizarre... for shame...

Deep Purple are a hard rock band, but certainly played a role in metal.

It's worth keeping in mind that 10-20 are, statistically speaking, very small sample-sizes. Antithesis of Light has 9 100s and 1 70. To the Nameless Dead has 4 100s, 4 99s, 1 98 and 1 40. Drop their lowest scores and they'd both have higher averages than Elvenefris, even with its lowest score dropped.

And from just having listened to Elvenefris myself, having never actually heard the thing before, I feel pretty confident that it'd get more 70s and 40s and 10s if more people had heard it. Its appeal is very specific.

King Diamond - Abigail 13/97
Negurã Bunget - Om 6/99

Come on, while many of those top albums are very good, only a few are 90+ material in my opinion. Distinct lack of conflicting opinions here.

World Downfall is now 100% with 8 reviews.

Haha! this thread got so off topic it's crazy. Interesting discussion, though.

I have yet to actually listen to Lykathea Aflame's album all the way through, but it's something I've been meaning to do. Another album perhaps worth mentioning is Burzum's Hvis Lyset Tar Oss which stands at 91% with twenty reviews. It depeneds what you think is more important; the average itself, or the number of reviews.

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane 20/90