As promised here's the second disc of the Samael compilation, this one presenting a look over their industrial period with years from 1996 to 2011 being covered. Reign Of Light only sees the title track here to be represented because the album is sub-par when compared to the other four. Era One is also absent because those songs have little to do with the rest of the discography, however there's some cool stuff on that one. But for the purpose of this listing it would be kind of awkward to mix songs from that album. Here it is then.

The Industrial Years:

01- Rain
02- Slavocracy
03- Reign Of Light
04- Ailleurs
05- The Ones Who Came Before
06- In The Deep
07- The Cross
08- On The Rise
09- In Gold We Trust
10- Shining Kingdom
11- Valkyries' New Ride
12- Let My People Be!
13- My Saviour
14- Solar Soul
15- Infra Galaxia
16- Together
17- Antigod

Again I had some work into giving this a flowing sense but that may falter at points. I hope you guys enjoy this, it was actually fun to do.

I like convenience. So I made Youtube playlists out of all the compilations that had enough links (if you didn't bother to dig for links at all go do your job you lazy bum and then tell me about it so I can include it ). I made the playlists regardless of the completeness of the linking plus there are a few cases where my ProxTube add-on wasn't able to bypass the regional lock on certain videos and I couldn't find replacements so some songs will be missing. Here you go:

Agalloch (by Pale_Pilgrim)
Amorphis (by Shadoeking)
Anthrax (by Mayhem1349)
Asphyx (by mysogynisticfeminist)
Bal Sagoth (by grauer_mausling)
Between The Buried And Me (by triggerhappy)
Black Majesty (by Zelkiiro)
Blind Guardian (by Folkemon_)
Blut Aus Nord (by CoF)
Bolt Thrower (by reven)
Crimson Moonlight (by Erosion Of Humanity)
Deceased (by Ecliptik)
Deströyer 666 (by Bishop_Drugsalot)
Devin Townsend (by Cinerary)
Edguy (by Empyreal)
Emperor (by DaBuddah)
Fates Warning (by Thiestru)
Gardenian (by Erosion Of Humanity)
God Dethroned (by shouvince)
Gorefest (by Evil_Obsidian)
Killswitch Engage/Aftershock/Times of Grace (by Goatfangs)
Leviathan (by Forbinator)
Manilla Road (by Jophelerx)
Megadeth (by Kigo7)
Morbid Angel (by Xlxlx)
Nadja (by Caspian)
Neurosis (by dystopia4)
Pharaoh (by Ancient_Sorrow)
Primordial (by CrushedRevelation)
Primordial (by Evangelion2014)
Reverend Bizarre (by Metantoine)
Riot (by I_Am_Vengeance)
Rotting Christ (by Poisonfume)
Sabbat (JPN; by Wilytank)
Slauter Xstroyes (by Jonpo)
Slough Feg (by Empyreal)
The Ruins Of Beverast (by Ilwhyan)
Type O Negative (by PhilosophicalFrog)
Virgin Steele (by Jophelerx)

And here are those that were alread posted as Youtube playlists by their authors:

Autopsy (by inhumanist)
Enslaved (by draterami)
Horn (by DeathForBlitzkrieg)
Jesu (by Cinerary)
Megadeth (by Ecliptik)
Nagelfar (by inhumanist)
Primordial (by Nyaricus)
Woods Of Ypres (by Nyaricus)

All of those seem to be coming up as single-videos for me, as opposed to play-lists, I'm afraid.

Edit: I think I've posted before you fixed it... I'll be back in a while.

Everything should work now.

Great work!

Metal Archives appreciates your crippling OCD, inhumanist!

DeathForBlitzkrieg, nice to see a Horn list! /m/ love Naturkraft, such a complete album.

Pfff, took me barely three hours
It was nothing compared to my toenail collection

"The Very Best of Solstice"

It was on this site that I discovered Solstice, the UK epic-doom band, and they've been one of my favourite bands consistently ever since. Like my last list, with Pharaoh, their back-catalogue isn't particularly big, but nonetheless, I've consolidated some of it into a "best of". I'd recommend their sound to anyone who seeks epic, vast and thoroughly traditional heavy metal. Once again, the only logic I can appeal to is that I've arranged it chronologically, and picked songs which have always stood-out to me.

While theoretically still existing on a single CD, The track listing is divided into three, purely for mildly pretentious aesthetic purposes, and to give the listener a better view of the contrast between the bands eras, and to let them easier find the parts they will most gravitate to.

I)
01. Lamentations IV [Not on Youtube, to the best of my inept searching]
02. Neither Time nor Tide
03. Only the Strong
04. These Forever Bleak Paths
05. The Man who Lost the Sun

II)
06. The Raven Master [Nobody uploads the short instrumentals these days... grumble grumble]
07. To Ride with Tyr

III)
08. New Dark Age [On "The Sleeping Tyrant" below]
09. The Sleeping Tyrant
10. Cimmerian Codex
11. Hammer of Damnation
12. Cromlech

...And here it is as a playlist with the occasional track missing, but generally intact.

Very nice work inhumanist! Even if you did get my username wrong... twice

Sorry, fixed!

RAGE

This band has a shit ton of albums and many different eras. Very difficult to do a compilation of them since they have so much material. I will try to make it a reasonable length and include all the eras, just what you would need if you haven't heard of them and are trying to get into the band.


01. Don't You Fear The Winter
02. Invisible Horizons
03. Enough Is Enough
04. Firestorm
05. Refuge
06. Black In Mind
07. Under Control
08. Incomplete
09. Love And Fear Unite
10. Paint The Devil On The Wall
11. Down
12. Great Old Ones
13. Soundchaser
14. Lord Of The Flies
15. Into The Light
16. Twenty One

This is as short as i could make it, considering the huge amount of material they have. I don't think these are the best songs of each album, but their most representative.

That Rage one is really good actually. Nice representation of all their eras. Would probably be fun for new listeners.

Awesome work inhumanist!

Someone should do a Savatage best of, hint hint. Always wanted to listen to a good cross section of their stuff but not yet tackled it.

That exists already. It's called "Hall of the Mountain King".

I personally think the idea proposed earlier of being able to 'upvote' songs on albums (or even albums themselves) was a good one. I don't know anything about the programming behind it, but if it isn't an extreme bother it could be a cool feature.

Also: inhumanist, you are the MAN for making that list. Checking out the Bal Sagoth playlist now

This thread is fucking awesome, I've been wanting to find out about new bands for a little while now-this is a perfect method.
EDIT : Deceased is awesome

Excellent job, inhumanist!
I believe a custom title is due. How about "humanist"?

I've opted to have a go at a Bruce Dickinson best of. I've gone for chronological order and included at least two songs from every album (as well as two b-sides/bonus type songs) so it covers his whole solo career. It is quite 'ballad' heavy, but that's because he has many excellent ballad style songs that I feel were impossible to leave out. I've tried to limit myself, so it's 16 songs that should fit on to a single disc.

Tattooed Millionaire (1990)
Tattooed Millionaire
Born in '58

The title track is a good, catchy opener. Born in '58 is the best from the album with a powerful vocal from Bruce.

Balls to Picasso (1994)
Gods of War
Tears of the Dragon

Tears of the Dragon is a mandatory inclusion as one of the best songs he's done. Gods of War is the best of the rest and shows the heavier side to the album.

Skunkworks (1996)
Inertia
Solar Confinement

The album I'm least familiar with, although I'm confident these are the two best songs on offer and would do well to represent this slightly underrated effort.

Accident of Birth (1997)
Road to Hell
Man of Sorrows
Accident of Birth

These three tracks all got videos, but I think they're also the best on Accident of Birth. Man of Sorrows has one of Bruce's best vocal performances and the other two are both high quality heavy metal songs.

The Chemical Wedding (1998)
The Tower
Jerusalem
Return of the King

This was probably the most difficult choice. I had to have Jerusalem as it is simply incredible. Return of the King is a song that was far too good to be a b-side and has an incredibly infectious chorus. The Tower is the best of the more traditional heavy metal songs on the album. I don't want to even think about the fact that I couldn't put Book of Thel, The Alchemist or the title track on here...

The Best of Bruce Dickinson (2001)
Silver Wings

Amazing song sadly consigned to the best of album. One of his most Maiden-esque tracks.

Tyranny of Souls (2005)
Soul Intruders
Navigate the Seas of the Sun
Devil on a Hog

Another superb 'ballad' in Navigate the Seas of the Sun. Soul Intruders has a nice mix of relentless riffing and slower, more epic moments. A real highlight on what I think is his strongest album. I feel it's appropriate to finish with Devil on a Hog, as Bruce himself noted how the song sort of revives the spirit of the Tattooed Millionaire album, so it's almost as if the playlist is coming full circle.

Skepticism

playlist

Sign of a Storm (Stormcrowfleet)
The Organium (Lead and Aether)
The March and the Stream (Lead and Aether)
Nothing (Farmakon)
March October (Alloy)
Pendulum (Alloy)
Oars in the Dusk (Alloy)

There's not much to be said about Skepticism. One of the bands that shaped the funeral doom sound and now, about twenty years after their inception, they can call a rather small but terrifically consistent back catalague their own. Even if Farmakon seems to be the odd one out, the album's closer 'Nothing' is quite simply the best song of all. You aren't new to Skepticism and you haven't listened to Alloy yet? You've got something to do now. The ending is magnificent, 'Pendulum' and 'Oars in the Dusk' have convinced me that their latest release is also their best so far.

I'm sorry but a Skepticism best of without Aes simply isn't good enough! It's probably their best and most dynamic song (OK OK, it's 27 minutes long and it wouldn't fit...).

No.

Anyway, would be nice if Inhumanist's work would be edited into the OP.

I absolutely agree. I thought about posting two best-ofs - the one above and then just 'Aes' as the second one.

Great thread! I offer here a Best Of: Darkthrone. It was a lot of fun making this list (I'd almost forgotten how amazing some of these albums are). Fans of Darkthrone will realise quickly that there are several ways one could make a 'best of' compilation for this remarkable band. I considered a few methods, but decided in the end to make it short and sweet, with one track from each album. Here are my choices:

1. Cromlech

2. Paragon Belial

3. Under A Funeral Moon

4. En As I Dype Skogen

5. The Hordes of Nebulah

6. Earth's Last Picture

7. Ravishing Grimness

8. Sin Origin

9. In Honour Of Thy Name

10. Sjakk Matt Jesu Krist

11. Underdogs and Overlords

12. These Shores Are Damned

13. Norway In September

14. Black Mountain Totem

It was easy enough once I accepted that I would be missing a huge number of great tracks (mortifying as it is to exclude personal favourites such as 'In The Shadow of the Horns' as well as genre heavyweights like 'Transilvanian Hunger'). I suppose I've tried to pick songs that stand alone better than the others on the albums, as well as (in their chronological order) being representative of the changes (and continuities, I suppose) in the band's style. I am very interested to see if anyone else wants to offer their version of a Darkthrone Best Of.

Mine would only include the first six albums, but I get the impression that Darkthrone best of's have been done to death (no offense), mostly since we already have tribute albums. If I want the essential darkthrone I give "Darkthrone Holy Darkthrone" or "The Next Thousand Years Are Ours" a spin, but a simple compilation just doesn't seem very interesting to me in that it necessarily is either very lacking or very predictable... though I guess this generally applies for anyone who is that familiar with a certain band, so just ignore my babbling.

Uuuuh I mean: Neat list! I like that it starts with Cromlech.

Helstar is one of my favorite bands but any compilation wouldn't do them complete justice. Their first four albums are some of the purest and near perfect Power metal albums the US can proudly hold up and need to be devoured in full as they were intended. 2008's The King Of Hell was a return to the throne after a few years of uncertainty and should be your next stop after the fabulous four that began the Helstar story.
But if you want a peek before you plunge, you can't go wrong with these 21!

THE BEST OF HELSTAR

1. Conquest
2. Witch's Eye
3. The King Is Dead
4. Scorcher
5. Rhapsody In Black/Baptized In Blood
6. To Sleep, Per Chance To Scream
7. Harker's Tale
8. Benediction
9. Remnants Of War
10. Tyrannicide
11. Toward The Unknown
12. Evil Reign
13. Angel Of Death
14. Pain Will Be Thy Name
15. Dracula's Castle
16. The King Of Hell
17. Caress Of The Dead
18. Shadows Of Iga
19. Abandon Ship
20. A Good Day To Die
21. Winds Of War

I noticed that the newer albums are rarely stacked together with the 'best of' (which is, rightly or wrongly, heavy on Blaze, UAFM and TH) so mainly I thought it would be fun to put them all side-by-side. I expect a bit of derision for this egalitarian approach.

quickbeam, I love the list. A bit more spread out and that's cool.

I'm going to take on Pain of Salvation! I was disappointed by Scarsick and the Road Salt albums. Everything from Entropia to "BE", on the other hand, is a work of goddamn genius. The concept behind this collection is of a slightly more accessible newbie's introduction to those first five albums, with two songs from each. I tried to cover a wide spectrum of what PoS is about. I tried to keep it under 80 minutes in length, which unfortunately meant that a lot of awesome epic songs had to be cut (believe me, it was hard settling on just one of those).

1. "! (Foreword)" (Entropia, 6:11). Awesome start to a career! Heavy riffs, awesome melodies, Daniel wailing away like a boss - sums up everything you're going to get.

2. "Nightmist" (Entropia, 6:49). Just a great song, and absolutely headbang-worthy. The funky bass break in the middle and the drum solo outro are pretty unique in the PoS catalogue, but they're damn surprising and fun. Kind of makes me sad they didn't do much else like this.

3. "Inside" (One Hour by the Concrete Lake", 6:12). The best aspect of Pain of Salvation, and almost any fan of theirs will tell you this, is Daniel's ability to convey emotions through his singing. This is one of the best displays of that. Oh yeah, and it rocks too.

4. "Water" (One Hour by the Concrete Lake", 5:06). A great example of the way in which PoS can start out with a mellow introduction and really build the song up into something else. The guitar melodies are some of the best in their catalogue. Beautiful and heavy at the same time.

5. "Ashes" (The Perfect Element, 4:28). Probably their best known song, and good for introducing people to the band. This has all the qualities that make Pain of Salvation great - catchy guitar riffs, great singing from Daniel (who mostly sticks to his lower range here, which I've always liked, and the layered vocals are a great touch), emotional lyrics, and gorgeous atmospheric keys. A better introduction you couldn't find.

6. "Her Voices" (The Perfect Element, 7:56). A song of two halves. One half is a pretty piano ballad with some nice singing from Daniel and interesting synth effects. Good, but nothing too special... but it explodes in the middle section, turning into an Arabic/Indian-inspired technical workout which absolutely takes it to a new level. And it flows naturally between them too!

7. "Beyond the Pale" (Remedy Lane, 9:56). Honestly, it pained me to have to cut a lot of great epic songs ("Idioglossia", "The Perfect Element", "King of Loss" etc.) for length constraints, but the one I chose for this collection is probably the best of them all. Goes through a lot of tempo and mood changes, but stays consistent through all of it, and that is HARD to do. A true class act in prog-metal epics.

8. "A Trace of Blood" (Remedy Lane, 8:17). Another heartfelt performance from Daniel (not surprising, considering what it's about), and it's pretty amazing overall. That keyboard theme in the opening is one of my favorite pieces of music in the entire PoS canon, and the chorus is catchy as fuck. Remedy Lane is my favorite PoS album overall (The Perfect Element was dragged down by too many filler-ish ballads), and it's songs like this that make it great.

9. "Iter Impius" ("BE", 6:21). A fantastic mini-epic that just builds and builds, and has one of the best choruses PoS have ever written, which is definitely saying something. "BE" is probably best listened to as one piece, but this is its crowning moment.

10. "Imago" ("BE", 5:11). Very cool use of a Celtic theme, which fits right in with the album's concept as well. Great vocals as well, but if you've got this far, that hardly needs to be said.

Ya' got it backwards man. It's [url=url here]Title here[/url].

I turned my best of Neurosis into a playlist. I changed "Water is not Enough" from Given to the Rising to "Fear and Sickness" because I thought about it and Fear is a better song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U64kHFwK ... re=mh_lolz

Accept. Surprised I haven't seen a best of list for Accept yet considering their remarkable comeback and the renewed success of the past couple of years. One of the great classic speed/heavy metal bands known for fast and anthemic songs. Truth be told though, every Accept album had its share of fillers (some more than others, which is why they were completely left out of this list). They were never an "album" kind of band. Their songs tend to have the same effect as either as part of the album or standing on their own. So, as an attempt to trim out the unnecessary fat, here's my best of Accept list. Enjoy

1. Breaker (Breaker, 81) For me this always felt like song #2's twin brother.
2. Fast as a Shark (Restless and Wild, 82) Should have an mp3 of this song next to the word "classic" on online dictionaries.
3. Restless and Wild (Restless and Wild, 82) A showcase of Accept's mid-paced side.
4. Balls to the Wall (Balls to the Wall, 83) Even rocks know this song.
5. Winter Dreams (Balls to the Wall, 83) My favorite ballad of theirs. Feels natural, like they wrote it while jamming.
6. Metal Heart (Metal Heart, 85) Makes you want to pump your fist till you pull a muscle.
7. Wrong is Right (Metal Heart, 85) Why this isn't a live staple is beyond me. One of their faster tracks. Fucking awesome.
8. TV War (Russian Roulette, 86) Another song I wish they played live. Interesting subject matter even if the lyrics are kinda bland.
9. Aiming High (Russian Roulette, 86) My favorite Accept song.
10. Objection Overruled (Objection Overruled, 93) One of their few great 90s songs. Great main riff but production is kinda muddled.
11. Beat the Bastards (Blood of the Nations, 10) Jesus, what an opening track to my favorite Accept album!
12. Teutonic Terror (Blood of the Nations, 10) Galloping, anthemic, epic. A modern day metal masterpiece.
13. Blood of the Nations (Blood of the Nations, 10) My favorite comeback-era Accept song.
14. Pandemic (Blood of the Nations, 10) Chose this over Rolling Thunder because of the solo. One of my favorite solos. Ever.
15. Stalingrad (Stalingrad, 12) Gave me goosebumps when I saw it live.
16. Revolution (Stalingrad, 12) Catchy as fuck.

Cool list but the lack of Undertow makes me a sad panda. I also loved both of the Road Salt albums but I may let that slide...

Has anyone checked out my Fates Warning playlist? If so, what did you think? I'm rather curious if I managed to convert anybody to the ways of Fates, or at least if I satisfied the requirements of the other existing fans.

You certainly included the best songs from New Dark Age. Cromlech just has to be there! Well, the rest of the songs on that album are mostly acoustic interludes anyway.

New Dark Age is some record. Perhaps I should dig their earlier material from the shelves too. Haven't given them enough time yet.

Here's one for Mastodon, another one of my favourite bands.

1. March of the Fire Ants
2. Trainwreck
3. Mother Puncher
4. Blood and Thunder
5. Seabeast
6. Naked Burn
7. Hearts Alive
8. Sleeping Giant
9. Colony of Birchmen
10. Hunters of the Sky
11. The Czar
12. Ghost of Karelia
13. Crack the Skye

Perhaps I'll post some descriptions later, I'm tired and bummed out as hell right now.

tehfoks, love the list but honestly, an Accept compilation without SON OF A BITCH?

Here you have the latest playlists on Youtube:

Accept (by tehfoks)
Bruce Dickinson (by lordcatfish)
Darkthrone (by quickbeam)
Helstar (by VirginSteele_Helstar)
Mastodon (by triggerhappy)
Pain Of Salvation (by jerk)
Rage (by metroplex)
Solstice (by Ancient_Sorrow)

He also forgot "Heaven is Hell," which I would say is one of the group's Top 5.