Big 4 poll part V

[PrincessHades]

I'm going to eschew the 1-2 day intervals between polls as these seem to produce a very definitive and heavily imbalanced answer within a few hours.

I like The Black Album. It has some good songs. It gets some undeserved shit, but the second half has some good thrash metal holdovers (dare I say gems) that sound like reworkings of rejected songs from MOP and AJFA. Still, this album tries to hard to create hits that it bypasses the band's characteristic personality. There are no songs like "Orion" or "One" to be found, which sucks.

Countdown to Extinction is a great album, but as a whole it is slightly stale. It is consistent, but less aggressive and intense than Rust in Peace. The more pedestrian song structures is what kills it the most.

Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss is very enjoyable. It has lots of great songs, but the middle of the album is cohesive to the extent that it kind of runs together. It is the origin of some of my favorite Slayer songs, though.

Persistence of Time is my favorite of this run. I haven't listened to it in full, though I will eventually, but it has songs like Keep it in the Family, Blood, Time, Got the Time, and Belly of the Beast, all some of my favorite Anthrax songs, with Belly of the Beast being my favorite.

I'm looking forward to these result, I think this will be much broader and more divisive.

 

[CiG]

Seasons in the Abyss > Countdown to Extinction > Metallica = Persistence of Time

 

[CiG]

You should do the German big 3 albums next dude.

Or even the German big 4, since it seems like some people also include Tankard in that honour.

http://www.nuclearblast.de/en/label/music/band/about/2812694.the-big-teutonic-4.html

 

[PrincessHades]

You should do the German big 3 albums next dude.

Or even the German big 4, since it seems like some people also include Tankard in that honour.

http://www.nuclearblast.de/en/label/music/band/about/2812694.the-big-teutonic-4.html

I was going to do that as well as the other American big three.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Black Album - great hooks, perfect production, the worst songs are still decent, can't ask for too much more from radio metal, 7/10

Persistence of Time - Anthrax ditches the disgusting dry sound and goofycore influence of the previous two and goes slightly Voivod pronk-thrash, and surprisingly well, I think there's some stuff I don't like here, but a lot of it is really good, for being an obviously conscious "maturation" album it's quite enjoyable, 6.5/10

Seasons in the Abyss - starting to drain the well a bit, but still pretty consistent with a couple highlights, 6/10

Countdown to Extinction - fucking amazing riffs which tells you how terrible the songwriting and quality control are here for me to not love this, if you cut away all the total bullshit this would be the best album here, 5/10

EDIT: Good call on Belly of the Beast. It's hard for me to decide whether it or the more USPM stuff on Spreading the Disease is my very favorite. One of a handful of excellent Anthrax songs.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Easily Seasons of the Abyss, although Countdown to Extinction has grown on me. Looks like another landslide in the making...

 

[Baroque]

This one is actually really fucking close, have to think about this.

 

[EspaDa]

CtE
Seasons
Black Album
Persistence

 

[The Ozzman]

All 4 are great albums. Seasons is my favorite Slayer album and one of the first extreme metal albums I ever purchased so probably that one but I agree with HBB that Belly of the Beast is an amazing track off of Persistence of Time.

 

[Sirjack]

Seasons by a country mile