Not a Top 5, but you should mention 5 albums that really SHOULD be heard. Explain why briefly if possible.
1) Autopsy - Mental Funeral. For me this is everything death metal should be. It's nasty, sickening and disease ridden. It sounds like it was recorded in a damp tomb. There's no tuned-down bay area riffs ala-Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse (despite where Autopsy came from...). The vocals sound like they really fucking mean it. Perfect.
2) Crumbsuckers - Life of Dreams. The ultimate in metal with a punk attitude. I'm just glad it came from a band with a metal background and not one of the 100's of punk bands that tried to turn metal at the time. A seriously great album.
3) Razor - Shotgun Justice. Having finally gotten rid of M-Bro, the drummer that held them back until Rob Mills joined the fold on the previous album "Violent Restitution", Dave Carlo finally found a sticksman who could match his intense riffage. Shotgun Justice is EVERYTHING that is right about thrash metal. It's fast from beginning to end, it's as pissed off to hell and it almost revels in the cliches that infest the genre. The production is thin and the lyrics are are times laughable (I won't even mention the artwork...) but musically you won't hear another thrash album ready to take your face off with such extreme velocity than this. Buy or die.
4) The Beyond - Crawl. The UK has a habit of knocking it's own bands. The Beyond is no exception. I remember hearing this band's demo back when they were all 16 year olds and being blown away sideways. They ended up signing a very lucrative deal with EMI and releasing "Crawl". Unfortunately it was at least three years too early. Tool and Quicksand came along later and stole their thunder. Those two bands never came close to what The Beyond might have become. The press decided that they were the "UK's answer to Faith No More"! Utter crap. Bad label promotion and bad management meant that the guys are now working in record stores and the drummer scratches a living thumping the tubs for Therapy. A HUGE waste.
5) Korpse - Revirgin. Okay, I put this out on Candlelight many moons ago, but no one bought it at the time, so... There was nothing worse for me that reading a shitty review for this band in the press. I really couldn't take it. It's almost like the journos read the band's name and imediately tagged them as a generic death metal band. They were a death metal band but they were also so much more. They had wah-wah bass. Their riffs were stolen from the theme tunes from TV game shows. They had a slow, meandering psychadelic track immediately followed by a fast raging track. What almost everyone didn't notice was that the music on the two tracks was identical, just played at different speeds. They mixed fantastic, doomy Sabbath style riffage with VoiVod-esque weirdness. A great band indeed.
Okay, I'm done.
1) Autopsy - Mental Funeral. For me this is everything death metal should be. It's nasty, sickening and disease ridden. It sounds like it was recorded in a damp tomb. There's no tuned-down bay area riffs ala-Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse (despite where Autopsy came from...). The vocals sound like they really fucking mean it. Perfect.
2) Crumbsuckers - Life of Dreams. The ultimate in metal with a punk attitude. I'm just glad it came from a band with a metal background and not one of the 100's of punk bands that tried to turn metal at the time. A seriously great album.
3) Razor - Shotgun Justice. Having finally gotten rid of M-Bro, the drummer that held them back until Rob Mills joined the fold on the previous album "Violent Restitution", Dave Carlo finally found a sticksman who could match his intense riffage. Shotgun Justice is EVERYTHING that is right about thrash metal. It's fast from beginning to end, it's as pissed off to hell and it almost revels in the cliches that infest the genre. The production is thin and the lyrics are are times laughable (I won't even mention the artwork...) but musically you won't hear another thrash album ready to take your face off with such extreme velocity than this. Buy or die.
4) The Beyond - Crawl. The UK has a habit of knocking it's own bands. The Beyond is no exception. I remember hearing this band's demo back when they were all 16 year olds and being blown away sideways. They ended up signing a very lucrative deal with EMI and releasing "Crawl". Unfortunately it was at least three years too early. Tool and Quicksand came along later and stole their thunder. Those two bands never came close to what The Beyond might have become. The press decided that they were the "UK's answer to Faith No More"! Utter crap. Bad label promotion and bad management meant that the guys are now working in record stores and the drummer scratches a living thumping the tubs for Therapy. A HUGE waste.
5) Korpse - Revirgin. Okay, I put this out on Candlelight many moons ago, but no one bought it at the time, so... There was nothing worse for me that reading a shitty review for this band in the press. I really couldn't take it. It's almost like the journos read the band's name and imediately tagged them as a generic death metal band. They were a death metal band but they were also so much more. They had wah-wah bass. Their riffs were stolen from the theme tunes from TV game shows. They had a slow, meandering psychadelic track immediately followed by a fast raging track. What almost everyone didn't notice was that the music on the two tracks was identical, just played at different speeds. They mixed fantastic, doomy Sabbath style riffage with VoiVod-esque weirdness. A great band indeed.
Okay, I'm done.
