Just out of curiosity, what 5 albums have influenced your music and style of songwriting the most? And one honorable mention.
Mine would be, in no particular order:

Death "The Sound of Perseverance"
Fleshgod Apocalypse "Oracles"
Carcass "Heartwork"
Arch Enemy "Black Earth"
Bloodbath "Nightmares Made Flesh"

My honorable mention would probably be Metallica "Master of Puppets."

Now that I sit back and look at this, I notice that I do have a lot of modern influences, as opposed to the classics. While I learned how to play guitar via 80's Metallica, I didn't really develop my own musical style (which is still evolving every album) until about a year ago. Most of my lead guitar work is still based on a lot of Kirk Hammett and early Michael Amott-style stuff. Still trying to break that habit though, hahaha.

From what I've noticed, my writing and singing styles seems to be inspired by a mix of:
1) Lucifuge by Danzig
2) Master of Reality by Black Sabbath
3) Day of Reckoning by Pentagram
4) Born Too Late by Saint Vitus
5) The Wretch by The Gates of Slumber.
Honorable Mention: Back In Black by AC/DC

Yeah, take a guess at which of my bands I do the actual writing for.

This isn't my entire list but it comprises my list regarding black, black/death metal since I'm working (or scavenging together, rather) Goat Martyr right now.

In no particular order

Lucifer Incestus- Belphegor
From the Devil's Tomb- Weapon
Plague Angel- Marduk
Paracletus- Deathspell Omega
The Secrets of the Black Arts- Dark Funeral

Thinking about this a good bit and thinking what most of my projects have in common with established bands and what I know had directly influenced me to create or laid the ground work for my bands/projects. I compiled this list and these specific releases

Gorguts: Obscura- Is absolutely my favorite band and release ever so obviously it's going to influence me greatly in both how I construct riffs and create songs to overall composition even if it's not directly noticable to anyone but me. Also was the main band that really pushed me towards wanting to see how strange I could make a guitar sound without resorting to alternate odd tunings/pedals/effects. And I remember when I started out I always focused on doing the strangest riffs to make them more second nature to me when writing and then later on focused on learning and playing 'normally'
my bands this is most noticable influence in: Uzumaki, later 54R, Eats Aids

Incantation: Diabolical Conquest/ Owards Towards Golgotha- I know this is two albums but when I first got into Incantation it was actually picking up both of these albums at the same time and I was just so blown away at the total bulldozer riffs and just pure abysmal atmosphere of the band. Just love everything about this band to how riffs can be simple but still sound so amazingly thick sick and to a degree complex. The deep guteral vocals are the main influence in my own death metal vocals. I never thought I could ever get that deep, it mainly took growing older to be able to honestly hit that low. no matter how much practice before hand it wasn't till i was 29 that i was able to really get it low enough and i've been finally smashing it ever since. Also this is largely how I like approach mixing my music, it's raw and oppresive yet you can make out most everything and the drums sound like someone actually playing drums and going back to the above that would be the next one cause while everything is clear as day it still sounds like people performing songs live and not a bunch of cut and paste robotic bullshit.
my bands this is most noticable influence in: Filtheater, Corpse Arise, pretty much anything I'm doing low death vocals in.

Ehnahre: The Man Closing Up- This is a more recent release that really just made me eat up anything this band has done and actually further expand on how I approached in thinking how a song is constructed, again organic clear production, extremely odd and more 'feel' in how a song is created than any sort of standard structure. To a degree it was like a further expansion on Gorguts's writing but heavily influenced with the acid/free jazz I enjoy so much. Largely this band is great to me but there are a few not so great ideas that I don't like as much as the more interesting multilayered and parted songs.
my bands this is most noticable influence in: Yzordderrex, Uzumaki, a tad of later 54R, bit of Ishimura

Deathspell Omega: Chaining the Katechon- I know this is an ep but this was the breakout release for me. prior to this I really didn't investigate or spend much time with them even though I had a couple of other releases, but when this ep came out I was just floored. I loved the bizzar riffing with the relentless blasting. Just really was interesting and a very plesant surprise and ever since I have enjoyed everything and really went back and relistened to everything they had previously done with renewed ears. This has really become one of my top favorite bands as well. well within the 5. It immediately had such an impact that this was while I was writing for a split release that 54R was doing and I immediately penned 'Everything and Nothing' that's me doing my best to rip off Deathspell at that time.
my bands this is most noticable influence in: later 54R, lesser degrees of Uzumaki and Ishimura


Khanate: Things Viral- Always was my favorite band out of the Stephen O'Malley bands. Worship of the riff and tone... not just as in Sunn tone but as in just the epic dirtiness of a tone and riff. I loved the open odd painful sounding guitar lines and how everything sorta just comes together to a degree is still a fasination to me how 4 people were able to create and make such ugly drone-y open ended structured songs. It's the direct reason why I even started Yzordderrex. Which strangely enough I still didn't even think I could achieve fully on my own. This is one of the bands on this list that I wouldn't consider in my top 5 favorite bands but it would be right below the 5. Anyway it's also another one of the bands that has that great organic yet clear mix.
my bands this is most noticable influence in: Yzordderrex



Well that's my top 5 bands and albums that directly influenced me in a decent percentage of what I record. If was going to do a quick run through of the next ten that are also some direct influences for riffs and songwriting ideas.... Sourvein, Benumb, Nasum, Soilent Green, Portal, Human Remains, Demilich, Immolation, Ulcerate, Angelcorpse

Carnivore - Retaliation: Carnivore is one of my favorite bands. The first album is a smorgasbord of heavy metal influences, while Retaliation has more thrash and crossover influence. The sound on that album is perfect, and the bass tone makes me drool. Perfect way to mix a lot of things together and make it sound really cohesive and unique.

Napalm Death - Scum: I don't need to explain this. If you are a grind fan, you know this. A blitzkrieg of an album, hardly ever letting up. You can hear the thrash, crust and hardcore influences and the creation of something new.

Cryptopsy - None So Vile: I have listened to this album to death and it will never not impress me. What I really enjoy are the great tremolo picked melodies, great bass work, and sick breakdowns/slams. To me, it is the definition of brutal. I want to use stuff like this with Controlled by Fear in the future.

Possessed - Seven Churches: Brutal as fuck thrash, it shows you that even when things are a bit sloppy that great songwriting shines through. It's a bit frenzied at times which adds a lot to the songs. The way the songs flow are a huge influence to me even when I am playing stuff that isn't death metal.

Dark Angel - Darkness Descends: It's fast, it's heavy and it's intelligent for a thrash album. From the song structures to the lyrics to the heavy production. One of my favorite drum sounds too, with Covenant being my overall favorite. When paired up with other thrash albums at the time this one reigns supreme. Definitely the most influential thrash albums for me.

Honorable Mentions: Deicide - S/T & Legion.

I like a lot of thrash-y death metal stuff, The number one thing that influences me at one time can range from d-beat to OSDM to stoner metal. However these are the albums that I listen to the most and have had a profound effect on my guitar playing. Since Controlled by Fear is going to more death metal sound I will be going back to some of these albums as inspiration, Possessed and Deicide playing a bigger role.

Annihilation of the Wicked - Nile was probably one of the first death metal bands that I listened to, and when I discovered them I didn't really like them because it just seemed too ridiculous to me, I think I only heard Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka at the time. After hearing Annihilation I looked at them differently, and through time it became one of my favorite albums. I think it just sticks out in their discography. I definitely need to stop pulling a George Kollias and doing basically the same fill over and over.

None So Vile - After I became more familiar with death metal I found this one, the first song I heard was Phobophile (the youtube version with the intro cut out) and I probably played it five more times before listening to the album version and thinking, "now why would you edit that out?" I was probably fifteen and I called my friend and told him he needed to go listen to this song right now. To this day it's one of my favorites simply because, I don't even have to explain. This is [the Cryptopsy album in my eyes. Flo, although he's a douche, is one of my favorite drummers and motivated me to get better at the drums moreso than any other band, really. I just thought that the drumming was so badass, and it's not really all that special but I just wanted to play like him. Slit Your Guts is still my warmup song.

Indricothere - If you aren't aware of them, this is Colin Marston's solo album he made sometime in high school apparently. He just did another but I haven't been able to listen to the whole thing yet. For maybe a month or two this was the only album I listened to because there's just so much going on all over the place. It's completely instrumental which is good because if there were vocals you'd just be pissed that you couldn't hear what everything else was doing. Really got me interested in the more complex side of metal.

Gorguts' Obscura - Not much to say here, the lineup on this album are basically gods in my book. Significant enough for me to name my account after a song from it.

Chaining The Katechon - I was tempted to put Paracletus here, after all it was the first album I heard and that was the one album that completely changed how I looked at music altogether. But after listening to this album (EP shmeepee, regardless of length there is enough music in this to be deemed an album) it took my already altered view of music and shoved a fist up it's ass. There's nothing you can really compare this to other than other Deathspell Omega efforts. This one is constantly playing in my head, and it's probably my favorite song ever. The lyrics are something else as well, I know people spew shit about them being "way too pretentious" and the like, but I really enjoy their writing style. This album inspired me to make my own really long song/album in the vein of chaotic madness. Hopefully it doesn't come out an atrocity, this is the first song I've ever written.

Nice we picked 2 of the same albums for main influences.. never thought I'd see that in this thread. 2 people with the same ones nevertheless 2 of them.

that Indricothere, I kinda wish did have vocals.. and actual drums but it is fantastic. I have the st one on vinyl. (wasn't aware there were 2)

Yeah, I didn't know it was one guy for a long time let alone Colin Marston so I thought it was a real drummer but I wasn't really aware of the use of drum machines yet. I saw a couple songs posted on facebook awhile back, never looked into it further. And what can I say, they're great pieces of music.

Yea Colin Marston is great and extremly active composer. Always enjoyed his work best in Behold the Arctopus and Time of Orchids.

I learned to play metal guitar mostly through the classics so a lot of them are going to come up.

Slayer - Reign In Blood. As with everyone else, I loved this album and listened to it every day on the way home from school, and even today I sometimes warm up with something like Postmortem. This is a great album to give your right hand a workout and to practice making your chugging heavier and tighter. I try to play every death metal song like how I would play Angel Of Death.

Megadeth - Rust In Peace. I didn't exactly learn many songs of this album(they're very difficult ) when starting out, but learning Holy Wars.. and Lucretia helped me break out of the mentality that metal is just pedalling and power chords. Also how to play something that isn't "heavy" in a manner that IS heavy, if that makes any sense. Also, every young metal guitarist wants to downpick everything like James Hetfield, but Megadeth is one of those bands where that technique just won't make the mark and you have to learn more rhythm techniques to play their songs.

Bolt Thrower - Realm Of Chaos. BT are one of those bands with many albums spanning a long career, and they don't have a single riff that isn't groovy enough to pummel your neck into dust. This was one of those things that made me break out of the whole marvelling at technical wizardry thing when I was younger. The best metal riffs make people want to break shit, not wow at eight finger tapping progressions.

Vader - Litany. This is more influential on the songwriting in our band. Usually my vocalist will write the song and the rest of us will add on, but this album, along with several other Vader works, influence all our ideas very heavily, be it drum dynamics, riff arrangements or even just inspiring us to be tighter and more intense just like them.

Torture Division - With Endless Wrath We Bring Upon Thee Our Infernal Torture. This is actually a compilation of their first three demos. I love their approach to songwriting and the unreal level of tightness in their live playing and strive for that every day.

1. Deicide: Serpents of the Light: Glen's voice on this album is so deep and clear. Most death metal sounds like the singer is moving his tongue up and down, but this is just an all out attack.

2. Minor Threat: Complete Discography; not a metal album, but intense in it's own way because of the brutal honesty and the speed of their riffs.

3. Black Flag: Damaged; another punk album, but greg's guitar sounds dangerous. very influencial on my own playing

4. Black Sabbath: Master of Reality; just plain great

5. Cannibal Corpse: Eaten Back to Life; the combination of the Alex, Bob, and Jack line up is my favorite of the bands because their riffs are just truly innovative and nasty. As far as riffs go this is my favorite album

Honorable Mention: Megadeth: Killing is my Business...and business is good

Interesting topic and posts here.

When I listen to my own back catalog, I hear :

Killing Joke - Night Time
Just a perfection of gothic new wave songwriting and that immaculate groove estabilished between the bass and the drums. Also, the minimally used but effctively haunting open ended chord progressions.

Fields of Nephilim - Elizium
Gothic Rock that manages to be epic , ethereal, heavy , dark, progressive , song-oreinted and still work as a strane eerie concept album. Its like the grail. The fast arpeggio based semi clean guitar work and the Gilmour on sterioids leads seal the deal.

Neurosis - Through Silver and Blood
The mix of sludge, post-metal and industrial was and is eye opening. It showed me the power of slowing down and layering.

Mindrot - Dawning
The first album that mixed samples with gothic metal , doom , sludge and dissonant death metal. It showed me a new defintion of heaviness via intense dissonant riffing contrastingw ith melodic lines.

Slayer - South of Heaven
Slowing down again results in intesnely evil sounding music. Plus it illuminates the drums as an expressive instrument on par with, and sometimes over shadowing the guitars. Seriously, an abject lession in how to write drum rolls / fills to complement the songs.

SYL - City
Loud, frentic, precise, chaotic and epically melodic all at the same time. This and most of Devy's subsequent work has been an inspiration in composition and production.

1. Iron Maiden - Powerslave and Piece of Mind because these albums are the reason I picked up the bass and started writing.

2. Megadeth - Rust in Peace. Got me into the more aggressive side of metal like thrash, which opened up to the extreme metal genres

3. Voivod - Fix my Heart because of the guitar tone and riff progression which back when I first heard it was completely foreign/strange/impressive to me. The way Piggy used the weird chords was ridiculous.

4. In Flames - The Jester Race and Whoracle, I love those guitar melodies and their lyrics.

5. Pantera - Cowboys from Hell and Far Beyond Driven, I love this albums for both their aggression and bluesy/southern influence. Also got me into groove metal.

Honourable mentions: Annihilator - Never Neverland, Death - Symbolic, Acrimony - Tumuli Shroomaroom, Nightingale - Nightfall Overture, Edge of Sanity - Crimson I & II, Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos

Cool thread, let me see wich ones are for me:

Nocturnal - The Black Dahlia Murder
It was the first TBDM album that I listened to, and loved the way they were fast, agressive and melodic at the same time, specially in their "chorus" sections were the galloping riff are catchy as hell, also, lyrics wise this album was like a nightmare-ish book to read along with the music, something that I love to acompany some of the music I made (If it has lyrics, most of my music is instrumental).

Planetary Duality - The Faceless
The strong point of this album are the leads, at least in my opinion, every solo and every other leadwork here was stuck in my head from the first time I listened to it, and many of my own personal lead improvisation seems to have the "diminished" and "haunting" sound stylen wich I love.

On Letting Go - Circa Survive
It was tough for me to choose one Circa album, because all of them have aspects that I love and have influenced great part of my non-metal music, the drums with their solid perfomance and variated changes, the guitar work full with a bunch of big chords, cool progressions and passionate leads, vocals are just magnificent, wished I could sing like that.

Opalescent - Jon Hopkins
This just migth be the most beautiful, touching and relaxing piece of music ever made, I love to listen to this, and a big part of my ideas for making ambient stuff comes from here, slow melodies, surrounding atmosphere and the calmest mood ever. I would love to take a look at Mr. Hopkins head

Erotic Cakes - Guthrie Govan
As I said earlier, most of my stuff is instrumental, I just can't get enough of this guitar work, is simply amazing in every sense, and I try to emulate this kind of sound many times in the rhythmic as well as the melodies and stuff, there is a lot of craziness here too, almost like a structured chaos.

nice topic!

1- megadeth - rust in peace - Seeing as I kind of learned how to play guitar by playing along with 'deth cd's I figure they still in some way shape my playing, even if I don't really think about them at all anymore.

2- The gories - their entire discography, especially " I know you fine, but how you doin" - made me rethink my guitar playing in a big bad way. Started to focus way less on playing things "right" and more on trying to get some emotion into the music

3- Cryptopsy - none so vile - my favourite drumming in metal (until I started listening to revenge, conqueror and axis of advance)

4- Siege - Conform - because music doesn't need to be pretty, thought out or even in tune to be good.

5- Dirty Three - toward the low sun - again this album (came out last year) kicked my ass so much. Really great ideas and stark contrasts between chaos and serenity. Also the greatest guitar tone since Hendrix on Bold as Love(also mandatory, but I thought I should stick something recent and relatively unknown in here, instead of the same old Hendrix stuff, but still > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8tdI1q3VoI godlike) , and it's not even a guitar playing! (talking about the song that was was > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WbSE6nJPk4


Worthy mentions :
Hendrix - Bold as Love
Blues Brothers - was like the first music I listened to religously, and made me fall in love with the artform.
Radiohead - In rainbows
Manowar - Battle hymns
Anal Cunt - Morbid Florist

Suffocation - Effigy Of The Forgotten: I really love the arrangements, I really try to emulate that kind of complexity mixed with barbaric bludgeoning brutality. Plus, there's that one riff that 90% of death metal bands use: you KNOW the one I'm talking about.

Last Days Of Humanity - Putrefaction In Progress: For the nonstop ridiculous speed and intensity. Maybe it's just because I don't listen to a lot of grind, but I've never heard anything quite like it.

Pig Destroyer - Prowler In The Yard: amazing riffs and sick grooves.

Devourment - Molesting the Decapitated: I play in a slam-y death metal band, so this one's pretty obvious. I think it might be weird if this album wasn't a main influence.

Exodus - Bonded By Blood: just my opinion, but I don't think thrash has ever topped this or ever will. Reminds me to keep things good, friendly, violent, and above all FUN.

Seconding Bonded By Blood and Prowler In The Yard. Both relatively simple but just gosh dern amazing. Both bands are also insanely tight live (Y)

Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger
Slayer - Reign In Blood
Nirvana - Nervermind
Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks

Great topic, nice picks Sulieman.
The first two should come as no surprise to anybody who knows anything about my tastes:
1. Neurosis - Souls at Zero
Yup, one of my favourites of all times. I try to integrate the layered approach in my music, it inspired me to try sampling and I love the powerful riffs. I love intergrating elements of crust punk into metal, and this definitely does that. This isn't attempting to play an established style and can't really be categorized beyond the catch all "post-metal" that doesn't really cover it.

2. Cobalt - Gin
Yeah, I know I've gushed way too much about this album already on the forum. I like the tribal drumming, filthy vox, sharp riffs that you wouldn't really expect in black metal and the subtle americana. This album has really influenced how I approach riffs and I like that it is thematically different than what you would expect from black metal.

3. Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
I write a lot of punk and hardcore oriented stuff, and I know this is a bit obvious, but damn has it ever influenced what I do. I've learned a lot of these on guitar, and while simple, it is really effective. I also love how they incorporate outside influences into their hardcore.

4. Cursed - III: Architects of Troubled Sleep
Yeah, I think this came out a lot for the song I did for the last songwriting challenge. For a lot of it I really tried to go for a sludgy crust sound.

5. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
This is probably the album I try to emulate most, but this should include all the early Sabbath albums, really. A lot of my solos are really bluesy and the Iommi's riffage has had an immense impact on me.

No particular order:

Thoughstreams - mp3s from their website
I never liked jazzy sounding guitars when I was in high school, it always bugged me when they played the "wrong" notes. But this band changed my mind. The song structures also influenced me. Pretty weird and crazy stuff. Alex Nagle is my fav guitarist. I found that band from a link on Dysrhythmia's old website.

Hella - The Devil Isn't Red
Zach Hill is my fav drummer. Fast and weird beats without blasts or double bass (though he does a couple blasts on later albums). I love blasts in general, but his drumming is so intense as it is that he doesn't need blasts for me to really like it. The guitar and song structures also influenced me a lot.

Normal Love - 2007
I found this band by searching to see if Alex Nagle was active in anything. It took a little while to get into this album but it's probably my fav album ever now. It's pretty complex and weird. Everything in this album influenced me and how the drummer added blasts sometimes in chamber music.

Witt - There's Blood EP
Apparently these guys were in high school when they recorded this. My fav songs are Happy Birthday and See Attached part3. The song structures and riffs influenced me.

Gorguts - Obscura
The first five songs are the most influential for me on this album. I like the riffs, drumming and song structures. This is the only album in my list that has vocals.


Also some honorable mentions:

Exhumed - Slaughtercult
I think of this album like a goregrind Reign in Blood. The high/low vocals are my fav and the riffs are fun and catchy. Very influential for straight-up metal stuff.

Slayer - RiB, DI, SnM
Slayer was my fav band for a while in high school and later. Very influential riffs.

Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated
This was my first death metal album and I still love it.

Uhhh, for me it actually varies quite a bit depending on what sort of stuff I'm writing. For my current Coma Void stuff, it's probably this list:

Lustre - Night Spirit

Probably the main influence. I just can't get over how devilishly effective the combination of low-pitched heavy guitar chords, some extra keys and those glorious synth leads works to make a really magical atmosphere for this band. Sometimes he changes things up a little, but I think Night Spirit remains the best example of Nachtzeit's vision.

Mogwai - Come On Die Young

Strangely, this isn't even my favorite Mogwai release (that honor goes to EP+2). However, there was a really gloomy atmosphere on this album and a darker take on the band's usual approach, evidenced on tracks like "Ex-Cowboy" and "Christmas Steps". In particular, I've always liked the band's use of piano to set moods, really potent basslines that often act as the lead melody while the guitars swirl around them, and the sparse but propulsive drumming.

Jesu - Silver EP

Really it's the song "Wolves" that does it for me. The contrast between those gloriously 80's synth lines and those huge, roaring guitars is truly inspirational to me for this project. Other elements of Jesu's style, such as Justin's vocals and the sometimes too-upbeat chord progressions (in other songs) weren't really as important, but shit, when those guitars come in at the beginning of "Wolves" I just wanted nothing more than to create moments like that, and what better way than via gigantic walls of beautiful, crushing guitar with soaring synths?

Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing

The band has kind of let me down lately, bringing familiar electronic music tropes into the fold and eschewing what made this debut album special. That thing was mind-numbingly simple: introduce a beautiful, minimalist synth melody, then drench the whole thing in mountains of static, distortion and noise. That shit was so dense you could cut it with a knife. I wanted my guitars to do that, but more importantly I tried to bring some of that sonic terror into heavily manipulated noise elements throughout the music I've written so far.

Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet

Shit, man. The whole first part of "Sign of a Storm" is about as close to spirituality as I'll ever get. Again, it's the juxtaposition of those pulsing melodies (organ this time, but that may as well be a synth since the recording adds so much haze to it) and those huge guitars that gets me. Not to sound like an utter dick, but I feel like the overall production on Stormcrowfleet actually feels a bit thin yet murky at the same time, not really doing full justice to what's being played. So, wanting to capture that mood and sound but in a way that better conveys the power of what's going on there was important to me.

I guess the common thread through all of that stuff is pretty evident, so hopefully it winds up sounding like a coherent project rather than a hodgepodge of unrelated bullshit, heh. I'm still slowly bashing away at getting this thing finished so maybe in a month or so you guys can tell me whether I succeeded in making something neat out of all of these influences.

Dark Angel - Darkness Descends: It's fast, it's heavy and it's intelligent for a thrash album. From the song structures to the lyrics to the heavy production. One of my favorite drum sounds too, with Covenant being my overall favorite. When paired up with other thrash albums at the time this one reigns supreme. Definitely the most influential thrash albums for me.

Lord of This World (Master of Reality) is the song that got me into playing guitar.


Pentagram - Be Forewarned (Everything, this album brought my tempo down, I love slower rifts & the lyrical style.)

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality/Paranoid (guitar/soloing)
Slayer - South of Heaven/Seasons in the Abyss (guitar/lyrics)
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease/Among the Living (Guitar/rifting)
Megadeth - Rust in Peace/Countdown to Extinction (guitar/rifting)
Rush - 2112/Moving Pictures (Drums/Musicianship)
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (lyrics)

Okay that's more than 5 but I enjoy lots of instruments..

In the 80s:
1) Metallica - Ride the Lightning
2) Possessed - 7 Churches
3) Voi Vod - Dimension Hatross
4) Pestilence - Consuming Impulse
5) Dark Angel - Darkness Descends
(Honorable mention: Venom - Black Metal, Megadeth - Killing is My Business, Exodus - Bonded by Blood)

90s:
1) Entombed - Left Hand Path
2) Unleashed - Where No Life Dwells
3) Obituary - The End Complete
4) Bolt Thrower - 4th Crusade
5) Bolt Thrower - For Victory

2000s:
1) Living Sacrifice - In Memoriam
2) Opeth - Black Water Park
3) Soul Embraced - This Is My Blood
4) Demon Hunter - Summer of Darkness
5) Opeth - Ghost Reveries

2010s:
1) Living Sacrifice - The Infinite Order
2) Demon Hunter - True Defiance
3) Fit For A King - Creation/Destruction
4) Impending Doom - Baptized in Filth
5) Becoming the Archetype - Celestial Completion

I've started to type out a post for this thread and promptly deleted it about four times now. I really can't narrow it down to five albums, there's so much I draw upon as either a guitarist or a drummer that it's just too frustrating.

Do what I did and picked based off what you might have recorded or released or done in a band already. Cause otherwise mine would've been much larger than what I listed.

1. Metallica - Kill 'Em All
2. Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark
3. Ramones - Ramones
4. Slayer - Show No Mercy
5. White Stripes - Elephant
Hon. Mention: Nirvana - Nevermind

Metallica - Master of Puppets
Cradle of Filth - Dusk...And Her Embrace
Slayer - Reign In Blood
Death - Scream Bloody Gore
Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated

Honorable mention: Slipknot's Disasterpieces DVD/live album, as that was the album that made me want to be a drummer in the first place.

1. Death - "The Sound Of Perseverance"

Chuck Schuldiner has brilliantly written this album. All the solos are nifty. I love this album and it has inspired me to great extent.

2. Obituary - "The End Complete"

No special remarks here. John Tardy's vocals is just impressive. Also I love the riff of the intro song "I'm in Pain".

3. Kreator - "Endless Pain"

Well, this album inspired me to switch my guitar playing to Thrash rather than groove metal. 'Tormentor' is the first Thrash metal song I covered.

4. Slayer - "Show No Mercy"

Fast. Raw. Heavy. Thrash Metal at it's best.

5. Iced Earth - "The Dark Saga"

I might could do that! Let's see...

1. Napalm Death - "From Enslavement To Obliteration"
2. Assuck - "Misery Index"
3. Morbid Angel - "Altars of Madness"
4. Gorguts - "Obscura"
5. Grief - "Come To Grief"

Most of my current musical projects are some sort of amalgamation of these records and the records that either influenced them, or the records that these ones eventually influenced. Heavy, monolithic, and depressing, or fast, noisy, and Satan. My current baby, a sort of goregrind/sludge/noise thing, is my effort to kind of put a different spin on elements from these albums.

When I was in my metal band I was influenced by bands from all different subgenres. If I remember right my goal was to try and mix them all together. The blast beats of death metal with the melody - and harmony for that matter! - of Maiden with the heaviness of any Crowbar or Pantera song. That being said this 5 definitely were in my head whenever I would write something.

Megadeth - Rust In Peace

Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill

Death - Human

Iron Maiden - Piece Of Mind

Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality

Megadeth - Peace Sells
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Megadeth - Killing is My Business
Exodus - Bonded By Blood

Overall, my influences are slam friendly:

Cryptopsy - Blasphemy Made Flesh - Brutal, melodic, fast, unmatched. No album ever gets better than this for me
Cryptopsy - None So Vile - Same as above, except not as melodic. This is where I get my drum pattern writing skills from.
Waking the Cadaver - Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler - The art of melodic slam. It is a great album provided you dont hate slam already.
Devourment - Molesting the Decapitated - The art of standard slam. You can open up a one person pit with it, always, no matter the time of day.
Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious - Great riffs.

And at the moment, the music im trying to write is a brutal/melodic death metal hybrid, Melodic Brutal Death Metal, perhaps? One time depressing tremolo riffs, then 4 seconds afterwards you $lam da FuQQ d0wn. Melodeath riffs slathered in Molesting the Decapitated gurgles with rare pig squeals as accents and ultra high shriek-y highs which sound like a harpy or something. Oh, and melodic solos over slams. Can't forget the melodic solos ripped straight from Necrophagist which is not listed as my influence because I only really like the two songs with dem two awesome solos and you probably know the titles already. All I need now is to pull off a slam version of Winds of Plague and slather the music in tasty 5$ synth from Wal Mart. Not really.

1. Blind Guardian- Imaginations From the Other Side

The perfect union of power metal epic melodies and angry, aggressive riffs. This album really pushed me to work more melody into my songs, more layering, more orchestration, and all of those things. Andre Olbrich in particular has been a massive influence on my lead playing as well, as I've started worrying more about melody than the ungodly shred.

2. Queensryche- Operation: Mindcrime

Not too much, but this album taught me the importance of having a strong chorus, and also the importance the rhythm section has on dynamics and the movement of the song. Essentially moving me even more into the power metal genre.

3. Exodus- Tempo of the Damned

What's that? An Exodus album that's not Bonded by Blood? Yes indeed. I loved this album when I first heard it, and it's had a big influence on my riff writing, really thrashy and heavy.

4. Heathen- Victims of Deception

I don't think you know how much the song "Hypnotized" changed my life. I love that song, and the rest of the album. This album is the perfect blend of melody, (not so much on the epic though) thrashy aggression, and technicality. It really pushed me to take what I learned from the Exodus album up there and turn it up a notch, especially in my song structures, which can get really complicated.

5. Grave Digger- Rheingold

And following up Heathen's technical style, comes Grave Digger's hard-hitting simplicity. This one inspired me to sometimes scale it back, have a killer riff and a chorus, and let them do the talking.

Copy and paste this, more or less, for my top 5 favorite albums, except throw Death's Human somewhere in there.

In no particular order:

1. Rotting Christ - Passage to Arcturo/Non Serviam/Thy Mighty Contract (can't just list one)
2. Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
3. Hatespawn - Ascent from the Kingdom Below (demo)
4. Severe Torture - Feasting on Blood
5. Repugnant - Epitome of Darkness

Honorable mention: C64 sid tunes from various games. You can actually pick out some great ideas in arrangement and harmonies from those old tunes.

Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness
Behemoth - Demigod
Opeth - Deliverance
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant

1.Black Sabbath- Paranoid

2.Iron Maiden- Powerslave

3.Symphony X- Iconoclast

4.Overkill- Years Of Decay

5.Trivium- Shogun


These are kind of all over the place musically, but all contain some amazing bass playing that helped define who I want to be as a bass player

Yea... not really slam friendly at all.

1. Dream Theater - Images and Words
2. Necrophagist - Epitaph
3. Nevermore - Enemies of Reality
4. Cynic - Focus
5. Meshuggah - Catch 33

Honorable Mention: Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2

Just metal stuff:

Pig Destroyer-Terrifyer/Natasha-Furious, tasty riffs and creepy, angry, passive-aggressive Lyrics. Disc 2 is 37 minutes of an amazing mind fuck. I'm so proud to be from Virginia.

Deathspell Omega-Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice-I would kill to be able to play and write something this dark. Perfect presentation, they have no interest in being known or playing shows.

Opeth-My Arms, Your Hearse-A truly gloomy vibe without being pathetic and immature. Incredible musicianship without ever turning into a wank fest. Their riffs and arrangements are complex but the amazing part is that most of the riffs make me think "I would never think to arrange those notes like that". It makes me want to buy a 5150.

Morbid Angel-Altars of Madness-Lovecraft on record. This album has fucking rats in the walls.

Motorhead-Ace of Spades-It saddens me that this generation of metal musicians will never create something this badass.