It's pretty common that a band with a unique style needs to release an album or two before they find that sound which they want and will be remembered by. My question is, what are some of your favorite albums which fall into this category and why?
I'll start with a couple...

Electric Wizard's st. I like the cleaner guitar tone on this album and the imagery painted here. It's still pretty evil stuff, but there is an element of fantasy here that isn't really there later in their disco.

Summoning's Lug Burz: I think Summoning made a really good more "traditional" black metal band. This album has a great mix of standard black metal and the sound which they would later be incorporated full time. Plus, I think Summoning with a live drummer is pretty cool. Might be my favorite Summoning album to be honest.


What about you guys?

This is a hard one to judge because when does a bands sound stop evolving? But I get the jist of it and I'm fan of Electric Wizard's self-titled as well.

Does something like Mystic Palaces of Dawn count? Obviously SepticFlesh would move far away from the sound of this wonder in recent times, but it's not really a 'before they found their sound' type album. It's an early melodic death metal classic, devoid of all the orchestral stuff and more exploratory, searching song structures.

Slow, Deep and Hard is a must. Type O go on to become monolithic, this tidy thrasher still rocks.

Darkthrone's Soulside Journey is a fucking epic meisterwork.

Lugburz is the only Summoning album that actually matters. Everything else is pure inoffensive midi crap.

[edit] Darkthrone's Soulside Journey is an obvious example. It's an excellent death metal album [already mentioned]

First one that comes to mind is Eaten Back To Life by Cannibal Corpse. It's sloppier than their later stuff, still pretty thrashy and not as brutal as their signature sound. And Barnes didn't have his trademark growl by then. But I find it a great record.

Also Pestilence's debut comes to mind. They later became famous for their death metal, but their thrash debut is great as well. It had some death metal hints and it hints at wat they would later become. But this ones already a gem too.

I'm a huge fan of My Dying Bride's debut, "As the Flower Withers", which was basically a death metal album containing a healthy dose of gloom and doom. Probably the most notable feature of the album is it's use of violins, which create an extremely dark, creepy atmosphere that very few bands have ever been able to replicate (it sounds like a rotten, undead orchestra). It's massively underrated, I think, both from fans of death metal as well as My Dying Bride fans, and I've never really understood why. I've met a lot of people who consider the band's other death/doom album, "Turn Loose the Swans" to be a milestone and masterpiece, and it certainly is! But it's much more melodic to my ears, never again did the band achieve such a dark, downright evil sound as they did on this album.

Sentenced - Amok

Thankfully, Taneli Jarva went and started The Black League where ONCE AGAIN the formative first album ended up being their high water mark with 'Ichor'.

ha, a few of my favs already been mentioned. Slow Deep and Hard, Amok, Soulside Journey, Ichor... all great.

On the Sentenced note, they more or less experimented for their first three albums. I can't think of any other bands that've done that - the debut sounds nothing like the sophomore, which in turn sounds nothing like Amok. And all three albums are decent! I guess Shadows of the Past is second-tier at the end of the day, but it's still an enjoyable listen (I find it hard to actively dislike that style; even when it's bad, it's usually pretty good. Maybe it's hard to fuck up, haha)

Paradise Lost deserves mention for the album just before they hit their stride in the mid-90s - Gothic is a great blend of what would become their signature sound and the earlier death metal stuff. I prefer the Icon style in the end, but it's still great as a standalone.

It's a bigger name, but I prefer the biker rock-ish style of Battle Hymns to the Conan-inspired stuff Manowar put out after it. Again, I'm still a big fan of almost everything, but their first album is by far their best. And I NEVER say that about bands! The debut has a songwriting maturity that not many bands have/had, especially not for a first album in 1982. There aren't any "oh they got better at playing/writing" thoughts to be had about it, and that's saying something.

One final one: Meshuggah's Contradictions Collapse (and the None EP). Now I hate me some later Meshuggah; their stuff from Chaosphere onwards barely registers as music to me, but the first album is great. It wears its influences on its sleeve, but I found it genuinely cool. I wish they'd explored this for another album or two rather than going in the direction they did.

Enslaved "Frost". Thousands will disagree with me on this one but that's the only album by them I really give a damn about. After that they slowly but steadily started to go into more mainstream side of BM that I simply can not stomach. Their first EP is pretty cool as well.

Immolation - 'Dawn of Possession' has a much different feel to anything else they've done. Much less angular and more flowing.

Immortal - 'Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism' is an odd one out in their discography. It's not my favourite album by a long shot but it's often overlooked due to being slower.

Absu - 'Barathrum VITRIOL' needs more love too. Perfect blend of their older death metal sound beginning to evolve into the black/thrash they're reknowned for.

'Valley of the Damned' is easily my favourite Dragonforce album. No blastbeats or video game music, just straight-up traditional power/speed metal.

Judas Priest's Rocka Rolla was the first album that came to mind. I suppose it's not THAT far off from Sad Wings or Sin After Sin but the proto-Sabbath/Jethro Tull sound is pretty awesome in my eyes.

Forest of Equilibrium is another album that could be an example of this sort of thing. It's easily Cathedral's most influential effort but it's not really what I would consider to be their "signature sound."

Anthrax - Spreading the Disease

Because it was where they were transitioning and on the verge of finding their sound. Among the living came out after and was where it all came together. Spreading the Disease was new singer and developing the sound for him, but had a lot of excellent tracks on it.

Well, of course there is JUDAS PRIEST - "Rocka Rolla". Really enjoyable hard rock with good musicianship and some metal moments. The title track is almost danceable and I can't think of another later JP song with that kind of feel. "Dying to Meet You" is pretty doomy and might count as metal. "Never Satisfied" is kind of riffy and might also count as a different type of metal (70s metal?). The rest isn't anywhere as dark or uptempo as they would get later on. The guitar work overall too, although being quality is tame compared to the dual stuff they would do later on.

Guys, please put some thoughts in your posts. This is a good thread and it's a shame to get 1 liners. Explain why you picked said album.

Yeah, Forest of Equilibrium is quite far from their signature sound, they tried to (somewhat) go back to it with Endtyme but they didn't manage to grasp the same magic it had. It's fun to hear their transition after their debut.


It's true that it's a different album in their discography even though Blodhemn is not that far from its sound. Eld is much more epic as well but calling their later stuff "mainstream" is certainly a mistake, it would be like calling Arcturus mainstream because they're progressive as well. Let's call it a softer evolution!

I'll surprise absolutely no one with my pick for this thread, it's Opeth. Blackwater Park is often seen as the standardisation of their sound or at least it's viewed as its most popular designation but I think it's one of their worst albums. My favorite albums from the bands are Orchid and Morningrise, their 2 first albums. Even My Arms, Your Hearse is exceptional. They had this very classy sort of progressive approach to extreme metal and Mikael was a precocious genius with a clear vision of what he was doing. I also like the less than perfect production by Swano, it's lovely. I certainly like all their discography but these 2 albums have a special place in my heart.

I don't know, my idea of a second-tier album would be Tiamat's "Sumerian Cry" (and that fits into your description of 'even when it's bad, it's still pretty good'). I actually really like "Shadows of the Past", though, perhaps it's derivative and certainly not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's very solid and enjoyable, filled with great riffs and some killer vocals. Kind of a shame that it gets left in the dust when people talk about 'Finnish death metal'. All of this said, "North From Here" is their true high-point and classic, a masterpiece.

Another "before they found their sound" album is Cemetary's "An Evil Shade of Grey". The song "Sidereal Passing" is one of those songs that is just perfect, all the riffs fall into place perfectly (and that melody at 2:36 is so beautiful, yet haunting). From what I gather the vocalist/guitarist kicked out everyone who was on the album and eventually turned it into a goth rock band, but I've never heard any of that so I can't really comment.

Protector - Protector of Death

Not really an album, but still a significant enough departure from everything else they've done to warrant its mention. This is possibly the most vicious death/thrash of the decade... It's everything other Teutonic death/thrash albums like Pleasure to Kill should've been and more. It really is a shame they didn't record more songs in the vein of this demo during the recording session(s) or afterwards. Some would argue everything that came after is still pretty brutal, but I beg to differ; they're just not as focused on unmitigated aggression as this. Don't believe me? Listen and be blown away.

It seems like every thrash band that was going for a more brutal sound only did one album in this direction and then opted for more "diverse" and technical songwriting with subsequent releases (e.g. post-Reign in Blood Slayer, post-Darkness Descends Dark Angel, post-Pleasure to Kill Kreator, etc.). I suppose my post would be better suited for a topic like "Bands you wish wrote more material in the style of such and such album" than this, I think.

I really love the music on that one but the production makes it unlistenable. There's a horrible weird squeaky echo all over the guitars,, and the over-loud snare drives me up the fuckin wall

Nokturnal Mortum - Twilightfall

This album (it is a full-length, though it is listed as a demo) is early 90s gothic/doom/death, clearly inspired by the Peaceville Three. There's even an acoustic ballad with female vocals, like on Anathema's early releases. Guitar solos, growling vocals, lyrics about a woman dying, emotional synths... very different from the sound that made them famous!



Wow, that's an unexpectedly narrow-minded and stupid thing to say. I obviously can't argue against your own opinion, but it's incredibly dismissive and ignorant to reduce their long and influential discography as "midi crap".

I thought I was the only one out there thinking this!
That song with clean vocals on None ("Ritual"? Haven't listened to Meshuggah in literally years) might be the greatest thing they've ever done as far as I'm concerned.

Nokturnal Mortum's Twilightfall definitely fits here - it's pretty much in a league of its own, and boy does it rule hard. A ton of killer riffs in each song, amazing variety for such a young band at the time, and on top of it all liberal amounts of exhuberant, tasty and memorable classic lead guitar.

Deep Purple's first three albums have quite a bit of amazing music number mixed with some unnecessary but not offensively bad filler. Still pretty damn overlooked IMHO.

Marduk's pre-Those of the Unlight material I still find very enjoyable. Some of those riffs are insanely catchy.

Inquisition's early thrash material is technically very impressive if a bit disjointed in terms of songwriting. The ep/split with Profane Creation shows a more extreme direction, still a bit different from the crazy ritualistic hymns they'd soon be writing, but still a very worthwhile chapter of their legacy.

It's also important to notice that back then Mike and Peter wrote the material together and they had a way better bassist in De Farfalla. Once Mike took the leadership is when Opeth achieved their signature sound [which to me existed until Damnation, GR onwards is something else]. I like how black metal those albums sound, especially In Mist, Under a Weeping Moon, Forest of October (my fav track of them), Advent and Black Rose Immortal. The only thing they kept from that era was the melody nature of their music.

BWP has like 3 good songs and the rest are pretty meh. Their best albums to me are Orchid, MAYH and SL (at least the first half of it).

2 other albums I think might fit here are Arcturus' Aspera Hiems Symphonia and Solefald's The Linear Scaffold.

AHS is a truly majestic black metal album, very cold sounding with incredible orchestration (symphonically speaking it's to me better than Emperor's ITNE). It's not ferocious but it has a class that almost no other album has; it's really balanced and consistent in atmosphere despite the variety of the songs.

TLE' is a more avantgarde than AHS but it's also more aggressive in general terms and it's a less drastic change in direction. It's packed with great riffs and vocals, but also has an excellent fusion of other influences. Definitely an overlooked and forgotten gem.

The only good material from Meshuggah is Destroy, Erase, Improve. Chaosphere onwards is a total boredom, rehashed thousand times with different names of albums and tracks.

Show No Mercy is by far my favorite Slayer album. The youthful sloppiness and energy they put into is too damn fun and every song is a near masterpiece. They should never have started to take themselves too seriously.

The first two that came to mind:

Dream Theater - When Dream and Day Unite

Not just because this has Charlie Dominici as the singer, but also because the music is pretty much completely different from what they would do on Images & Words and beyond. It's like if you took Rush and filtered it through a lens of classic Queensryche and Iron Maiden rather than the straight up progressive metal they became known for. The production being very wet and echoey gives it a much different feel that none of their later albums had, and I've always said it's a heavy metal album that sounds like a soft rock album. The songs are still great though, and some of the songs like YtseJam show what the band would become capable of later on.

Bal-Sagoth - A Black Moon Broods Over Lemuria

This is the only Bal-Sagoth record I can stand, entirely because it's got none of the overblown absurdity that their albums past this one had. It's pretty much a straight blackened death metal record, with a fairly low quality sound, a lot of blast beats, and not a whole lot of keyboards, at least not compared to the music they became known for. Not really much else to say besides this is where they peaked and hit their summit before losing me completely with everything else they ever did.

Regarding Opeth, I'm appreciative of all their works, and I think they were trying something new on every album. I wouldn't be surprised if their next album is a large departure from the Heritage/Pale Communion sound. As far as the early (pre-Still Life) albums go I like Morningrise the best, followed by Orchid and the MAYH. But their best album to me is Watershed and I'll be surprised if they ever top it. Storm Corrosion is on Watershed's level but in a whole different way.

Storm Corrosion is a truly boring album and a disappointment since I'm a fan of both Mike and Steven. You're probably the only person on earth with Watershed as your favorite album haha, I mean it's not bad but it's far from the quality of even Ghost Reveries.

And yeah, I feel that Pale Communion, an album I really liked (see my fanboy review) is perhaps the end of this part of Opeth's career. I don't think they can top the quality of it. They need to do something different, perhaps a return to metal.

@Kveldulfr: I really wonder if Peter's involvement was really important to their first two albums, it's still the basis of their sound and you can definitely say it's Opeth with the leads and everything.

Swordmaster (the crappy precursor to the even sillier Deathstars) had a really, really enjoyable melodic black metal EP before going bland death/thrash for a while. Its absurdly catchy and full of riffs, and they immediately abandoned that sound after it. Bit of a shame, really.

That was fucking awesome! Thanks for recommending it!

I am rather surprised to hear that Meshugguh were ever good. That band has always been the utter embodiment of terrible. Then again, I've never heard their first album so, I don't know what to think.

Viral makes a good point, I think a lot of bands that go for the ultimate in brutal/heavy/thrashy/whatever quickly tire of it after a couple albums and try to broaden their sound, though not always with the best results. Maybe they get bored or burned out or dont want to be "one dimensional" or whatever. I do see this a lot. And sadly, the albums that were at the peak of aggression, passion, heaviness and so on typically are remembered as being their best (though that isn't always the case.)

So on that note, I kind of lost interest in what Death did after "Leprosy." It became more of a Chuck Shuldiner solo project from that point on, and the music got much cleaner and more technical, but it was missing the brutality and extreme heavy underground feel that the first two albums had. And also, the first Therion album- good example: great ultra heavy death metal riffs, catchy as heck, and the keyboards, when present at all, merely accentuated the music or provided an intro or interlude here and there. They got all gothic and progressive on us later on, and consequently I found them rather boring. It was definitely more sophisticated and ambitions, musically, than their heavy raw death metal stuff from the "Of Darkness" album- but I just didn't like it.

Didn't Samael (Switzerland) ultimately turn into some kind of Dieter-esque "Nows za time on Sprokets Ven Ve Donsse!" techno goth band? I remember kind of liking their first album, kind of a doomy black metal sound not unlike early Celtic Frost, but I heard their later stuff was pretty radically different.

I guess Show No Mercy fits this description pretty well. While they were still more extreme than everyone else in 83, they still have plenty of NWOBHM/Judas Priest-esque tropes, complete with competent structured guitar solos. I would love for Slayer to kick the Reign In Blood/extreme-Slayer sound to the curb and make another album like it, even with only Kerry and Tom left.

Considering Tiamat were able to change sound drastically and somewhat get away with it (unlike Samael), I'll also list Sumerian Cry as a favorite. It really ought to get mentioned more alongside Left Hand Path, Like An Ever Flowing Stream etc.

This. I don't even consider their post-Leprosy material death metal, even though Spiritual Healing and Human technically are. They just deviate too much from the heaviness and morbid atmosphere of the first two for me to view them in the same light.


I kind of agree here. While they definitely had the right idea with Of Darkness..., it was too in the realm of thrash than it was death. Were it tweaked in certain places, and had there been a greater emphasis on it being death metal, it could've been a great album.

When I first heard Beyond Sanctorum, I was impressed by the improvements made in production and heaviness (it was more in the direction of death metal than thrash this time), but those annoying prog and symphonic/operatic sections, which are plentiful, make the album unlistenable for me, minus a few songs that are straightforward headbangers.

Winner. My favorite CC album by orders of magnitude.

I think this applies to a lot of 90s death metal bands that turned into progressive death metal bands. The two big ones in my mind are Gorguts and Deeds of Flesh. Considering the style that Gorguts went with with Colored Sands, it seems to me that they're gonna be remembered as avante garde metal band rather than the sweet oldschool technical style on the first two albums. And as for Deeds, during Gradually Melted and Trading Pieces they were 90s style proto-slam, then played forgettable technical stuff with too many hyperfast riffs with no hooks (think Origin) and now they're a Decrepit Birth-style group.

Watershed is a top ten album for me. It has a consistent atmosphere through the whole thing that no other album, not even their other works, has. Storm Corrosion is just a taste thing I guess. I still listen to it regularly and love it. It's sparse but it works.

Iron Maiden comes to mind pretty quickly. I like the first seven albums relatively equally, but there is definitely a stylistic change between Killers and Number of the Beast. It is not only the change from Dianno to Dickinson, but also the transition from the grittier punk influenced style to more of the NWOBHM/power metal sound, the latter of which being what most would consider "their sound." Powerslave is probably my favorite Maiden album, but I still love to play the self-titled and Killers as well. There is something about the energy on those albums that I think always brings me back to them.

In Flames arguably had at least three eras, but if Subterranean fits into their first then it counts. It's got the ultra-melodic leads of the 2nd era starting with Whoracle (or perhaps Jester Race) but some aggression and roughness which that era lacks, and it's more epic. If you'd only heard Whoracle onwards you wouldn't recognise it as In Flames.

You're crazy! That album is up their as one of my favorites. I would probably choose Still Life over it, though.


Dimmu Borgir's first two albums impacted me greatly in a way that their later albums haven't fully been able to. There's just something more majestic and yet melancholic about the relatively straight forward black metal they use to play.

Katatonia's Dance of December Souls on the metal side, and Discouraged Ones on the rock side. I liked Brave Murder day and some of the albums after Discouraged Ones, but those two albums are the pinnacle of their work to me. The only criticism I'd have is that the vocals on Discouraged Ones kind of suck.

An album that I'm on the fence of knowing whether it counts or not, but wanted to mention anyway:
Ahab's Call of the Wretched Sea. They've been moving further and further away from the style of funeral doom that's on that album, but it remains as my absolute favorite release by them, and one of my favorite funeral doom releases in general.

As a few have mentioned, Death is one example. I like a few songs here and there from their later stuff, but on the whole, I find the slow, aimless melodies of the progressive era to be dissatisfying.

I am also partial to the first two Defeated Sanity demos, at least what little I've heard of them. They're much more atmospheric than the band's later work, while still fitting within the realm of death metal. The wistful, otherworldly melodies are also very interesting, reminding me a bit of Houde-era Kataklysm.

Speaking of which, Kataklysm is a big one to me. The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation EP and Sorcery both contain some of the best metal I've ever heard. The raw savagery and strange but emotional melodies, not to mention the completely over-the-top vocals, create an unforgettable experience. However, Temple of Knowledge suddenly switched up the formula to really watered down melodeath. Even the parts that recalled the insanity of their previous work seemed confused and faltering. Then, after a few more changes in style, they became essentially melodeath with a few nods to BDM. I still like some of their later songs, and the latest album Waiting for the End to Come is actually quite good, but Sorcery and Mystical Gate are where it's at for me.

I'm going to jump out there and say Amorphis. I truly believe, from their past two, that they have settled into the sound that is right for them. Nonetheless, The Karelian Isthmus is a killer slab of death metal with just enough melody and a folky sound that made that album unique.

Lunar Strain was interesting, it had some very good songs, but it also had some that weren't as well developed in terms of structure nor the instrumentation and composition which defined the band on The Jester Race. The acoustics on the demo and that album were also not yet really integrated with the music - the outro on Behind Space worked, but the others didn't really work. On TJR, they really blended the acoustics in to Moonshield well, and the acoustics and heavy guitar sound on The Jester's Dance. I recall that they told the label they had ten songs written, when they only actually had a few. Seems to be like they had Behind Space and Clad in Shadows, which would become definitive In Flames songs, as well as Upon an Oaken Throne, which was a more death metal song, and then they had the acoustics and some other hastily-written songs which weren't as well written.

Subterranean had even more variety, and it really showed the variety of collaborators the band had in their ever-changing lineup at that point. Four vocalists and two drummers on that EP, in addition to different vocalists/drummers on the albums before and after it. Every band in Gothenburg was involved, except At the Gates!

Dark Tranquillity's Skydancer was a great album. In Flames hadn't come together and come into their own, musically nor in terms of lineup. DT, however, had been working together for several years, and had begun to develop their own style. The contrast of the frantic, chaotic tremolo riffing of early At the Gates with the overt melodic element was something special. While there were still clean, melodic parts, the female vocals here were integrated much better than In Flames did on Hargalaten, for example. The way in which the band hadn't found their sound - the vocalist situation - still worked to this album's advantage, with the "Shadow Duet" of Stanne and Friden being a highlight of the album. Oddly enough, guitarist Niklas Sundin continued writing the lyrics for both Stanne and Friden on the next couple IF and DT albums!

Yeah I was just about to mention Skydancer.. nice freeform songwriting on that one, it has a much less regimented feeling to it. Like a stream-of-consciousness made sound.

I love Zyklon's début album World of Worms. Everything is excellent and the style still feel fresh and original to this day. Great performance throughout and some thought provoking lyrics. Simply put, one of my favourite albums in the genre. The follow up's seemed to me to be just uninspired death metal. At least Disintergration which I bought and I was quite disappointed with. Its not bad but everything that felt original with the début is lost. This could be any competent but unoriginal death metal band.

Finsterforst-Weltenkraft

Awesome folk metal with loads of accordions. In this album they played a faster/happier folk metal than in the later albums with a much bigger use of the accordion. And its not the typical crap of short/repetitive songs, they are long and enough varied.

I also like the mid-tempo/epic albums they released after the debut but I wish they could go back to this album´s style. (plus they are starting to sond repetitive with the new stuff)