It depends on the purpose of the intro. If the intro has a lot going on musically, and it perfectly flows into the next track, then it should be a part of the same track. An example of this done right is Black Hole's Demoniac City. An example that is two tracks when it really should have been one is Helloween's Initiation/I'm Alive. It bugs me when one of those two songs come up on shuffle because neither sound right without the other.

Now if an intro is mostly ambient mood setting, then make them separate tracks. An example of an intro on the same track as the main song that's SHOULDN'T be is Dio's Holy Diver. That intro should be skippable. An example of an ambient mood setting intro that is its own track, and as such I think is done as it should be, is Count Raven's Intro: Count Raven.

I've been listening to I'm Alive without Initiation for over 10 years.

this is a very simplistic idea, but you might ask yourself, is it an intro to the first song, or an intro to the album - the former should be a part of the song, the latter its own entity

Just found another one: Opeth - Porcelain Heart.

I've warmed up to Watershed somewhat over the years after being thoroughly unimpressed for a long while, but this trainwreck I just can't stand. Potentlially decent ideas throuwn together haphazardly, driven into the ground by endless repetition and sprinkled with more dumb ideas, like those drum fills the second time the "heavy" riff is played - yeah, I get that it takes serious fucking chops to go berserk on the skins while following a completely different tempo from the rest of the instruments and ending perfectly on cue, but hearing an instrument totally out of synch with everything else still sounds awful.

To whoever said the following: Escape, Gangland, Invaders, Perennial Quest and The Thing That Should Not Be, meet me outside and catch this fade nigga!

For real man those songs are great. I don't understand the hate for them ESPECIALLY Gangland. It's borderline speed metal and it fucking rips!

"Gangland" isn't too bad but it's easily the worst song on the album. People mostly seem to not like it because of how it compares to anything else on there, except maybe "Invaders" which is also maligned. I don't skip either one - but compared to the title track, "22 Acacia Avenue," "The Prisoner," "Hallowed" or "Children of the Damned"? Pretty clear I think.

But why is it the "worst" as you say? To me Run to the Hills is easily the worst track on NotB. I can't stand that damn song.

Just simpler and less interesting. Run to the Hills is better for me because the chorus is a lot of fun and it has that rocking beat. Gangland just isn't that impressive.

Been listening to a lot of Alice in Chains lately so may as well state the two obvious ones:

'Iron Gland', because it's one intentionally horrible riff and some yelling from Tom Araya (according to Discogs, certain Japanese editions of the album omit it entirely, and retain 'Down In A Hole' as the penultimate track - best version of the album!)

'Love Song' is the other - it's at the end of the album so no skip button is needed but I never play it, again cos it is awful. Why even have it there?

From someone who hates intros: no!

The only sane reason I can think of anyone hating Run To The Hills is overplay. The thing is they don't even play it that much live anymore. Wrathchild, Sanctuary and even NOTB are way more overplayed.

Escape owns.

I feel a little guilty when I skip overplayed stuff like Paranoid, Iron man, war pigs etc cuz it's not like they know I've heard those songs literally over a thousand times a pop

Oh, back on the topic of should intros be their own separate tracks or not:

The Hellion/Electric Eye should've absolutely been one track.

Unlike War Pigs or Iron Man, Paranoid is entirely undeserving of its status. It's literally a throwaway song that they wrote in an hour or whatever, and it contains precisely none of the things that made Sabbath great! There's no atmosphere, no hard hitting riff, no ass-kicking tempo change, and a total throwaway solo! Blegh.

That's basically it. The remainder songs were simply far greater than Gangland (and Invaders). The thing that annoys me about Gangland is during the solo part. You get the twin guitar bit, which is cool, and then you get a short solo that could have quite easily gone on for longer before the verse comes in again. Just listen to it. You get an 8 second solo followed by 8 seconds of riffage. Why was no solo played over it? Were they rushed in the studio?

No. Listen to your instincts, not the producer. I think you have the right idea.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree! You can't imagine how many times I'm initially pumped up when listening to music and 'The Hellion' comes on only to end up disappointed when it moves to a different track (I play music on shuffle) and not 'Electric Eye'.

No, do not trust your instincts. Most people skip intro tracks after the first few listens. Sometimes, they are a decent build in to tracks, but the ambient sort of FX-ish ones rarely do anything that the album itself does not do better. If you tack it onto your track, you risk people skipping that track with the shitty intro. That would be my main concern.

That said, and I'm about to totally contradict myself, I didn't like the way ITNE was reissued with the intro attached to 'Into the Infinity . . .". I suspect my main reason was that I was used to the original release where the crappy intro (also heard in a Katatonia song, cannot rememember which) was seperate. The reissue seemed to be missing something to me.

Long noise/ambient intros work better on different tracks, unless it's something really nice, like Hell Awaits or Raining Blood or... hum, I can only think of Slayer right now, but I'm sure that there's other ambient intros that aren't filler.

I'm okay with "You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise" and "Living After Midnight", they're better than "United" anyway, definitely the low point on "British Steel".

However, "United" is still better than "Take On the World", what an absolute track of horseshit stuck right in the middle of "Hell Bent for Leather", I make a point to skip it every single time. I almost feel like "British Steel" needs to be rated higher than "Hell Bent for Leather" just because of "Take On the World" (and "Evening Star" to a lesser extent) reallly making the album inconsistent. At least "British Steel" is more consistent.

Also completely agree with "Changes", skip it every time as well. Would 100x rather listen to "FX".

I have to rate the three "anthems" as getting better over time. "Take On the World" is awful, gets skipped every time. I don't like "United" but I find it less annoying. For some reason I love the hell out of "Heavy Duty/Defenders of the Faith": I agree that it's pretty boring when seeing Priest live, but on the album it's just absolutely reverb-ridden to hell and back and is super-anthemic. It's good that they stopped trying to do those though, given how they know how to right commercial but good rock/metal songs that don't require crowd participation to be energetic.