GMD Poll: Mercyful Fate's Discography Ranked

[crimsonfloyd]

Directions: Rank Mercyful Fate's studio albums. Order and number each album 1-7. Ties are OK. Your first place album earns 7 points, your second place album earns 6 points, etc.

Rules:

• You may rank as few as 5 albums. Lists with less than 5 albums will not be counted.
• If you list less than 7 albums, the first placed album will still get 7 points, the last placed album will still get 1 point, and the albums in between will have points distributed proportionately. The average points earned for albums that are not listed will not be impacted positively or negatively, so if you don't rank an album, you neither help it or hurt it.

At the end, the albums will be ranked based on their average number of points per vote.

You have until Friday July 13th to finalize your list, re-familiarize yourself albums you haven’t heard in awhile, familiarize yourself with albums you haven’t heard at all, lobby for any albums you think are underrated, and lobby against any albums you think are overrated.

And please, no pseudo-Machiavelli shit. Just rank them as you see them.

Melissa (1983)
Don't Break the Oath (1984)
In the Shadows (1993)
Time (1994)
Into the Unknown (1996)
Dead Again (1998)
9 (1999)

 

[Phylactery]

Cool, forgot this was next. I haven’t actually listened to anything post In the Shadows so this will incentivise me to do so.

 

[Slammed]

Yeah looks like time to do some more listening, been a long time since I listened to all of MF's stuff.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Yeah I really only know their first two albums. Thankfully, this is a small discography to familiarize oneself with.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

1. Melissa - absolute masterpiece of pure metal songwriting and riffcraft, 10/10
2. Don't Break the Oath - lacks the purity of Melissa, tries harder and gets less out of it, but still amazing, 9/10
3. In the Shadows - weak drumming and sometimes a little too basic and even happy, but the writing overall is still stronger than 90% of metal bands, 7/10
4. Time
5. Into the Unknown - cringed at about half of these songs, bored through the other half, 2/10
6. 9

In the Shadows only has a few highlights and Time and 9 are both very bland, the latter painfully so. I'll listen to the other two later.

 

[The Ozzman]

1) Don't Break the Oath (Top 10 GOAT metal album)
2) Melissa

Haven't liked anything else I've heard from MF which is disappointing.

It's also time to vote on the next 5 or 6 of these

 

[B_Creamy]

I haven't even heard In the Shadows yet.

I think with a discography as small as this one a whole 3 weeks may not be neccesary. But I'm not gonna complain, its better to have time left over than not enough.

 

[Krow]

All Mercyful Fate is good. Some is untouchable. Everything past the first two is underrated. I dont really like Time and its still a 7/10 for me.

1. Don't Break the Oath
2. Melissa
3. Into the Unknown
4. In the Shadows
5. Dead Again
6. 9
7. Time

 

[The Ozzman]

Listened to Into the Unknown again. There are some good tracks on it but overall unmemorable to me. It would probably be #3 for me. I think the quality of the riffs hook me into the first two.

@crimsonfloyd are you going to do a list for the next several bands?

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Listened to Into the Unknown again. There are some good tracks on it but overall unmemorable to me. It would probably be #3 for me. I think the quality of the riffs hook me into the first two.

@crimsonfloyd are you going to do a list for the next several bands?

Graveland is next and then we're onto a new set of bands. I'm 50/50 on how I'm gonna select the next batch of bands. One option is doing what I've been doing. The plus is it's democratic. The negative is people choose discographies they don't actually listen to and therefore don't actually vote in the threads.

The other option is people lobby me for bands they would like to do. They need to present me with compelling reasons why we should do that particular band. The positive is I can seep out any bullshit (for example, I could have told you ahead of time Overkill's discography was gonna be a slog and I'm not surprised this one is going slow, as I've never heard anyone on this forum mention any Mercyful Fate album other than their first two albums, while I could have guessed that Morbid Angel would be a hit because people actually talk about their whole discography). The negative is I would probably get more people bitching at me since it was my final call. I guess a third option is I could give people a list of bands whose discographies people actually know and have them vote.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I don't think advocating will do much because even a couple passionate lobbyists can result in a bunch of less-invested people finding said lobbied band a slog. If there needs to be some way past simple voting, then maybe using M-A or RYM and picking bands with the right balance of popularity and low standard deviation of rating quantity would be the way to go.

 

[Phylactery]

Perhaps it’s an idea to use the results of the most consistent bands when it’s finished as a template for which bands to do.

The Chasm is an obvious candidate as they’ve done well in nearly all of the yearly polls they’ve featured in so far.

Perhaps Venom as well? Although there’s a lot to slog through. Have we done Bathory?

Helstar and Slough Feg as well seem to have many popular release.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

I don't think it's about consistency, it's about knowledge. For example, most people don't like the last three Morbid Angel albums, but most people have heard at least two of them. Bands with small, but well-known discographies are the best for this game, examples being Emperor, At the Gates, and Gorguts. The next best are discographies that are bigger, most the albums well known but there might be a few more recent obscure releases, i.e. Burzum, Bathory. The worst choices are bands with one or two classic albums and then a set of very similar "decent" albums.

 

[The Ozzman]

negative is people choose discographies they don't actually listen to and therefore don't actually vote in the threads.

They need to not be fucking cunts and just not vote then

 

[Slammed]

I don't mind these smaller discos where I get a chance to hit Youtube up and possible find something new, or what I haven't listened to in ages. I'm liking listening to MF's stuff again and will get a list organised soon. But for a band like Bathory (to pick one mentioned) I doubt I'd bother because I've never been a fan and they have too many albums for me to hunt down and find time to listen too.

I don't think there is an easy answer on what to do next, some will like the band some wont, some will try, others wont. Not every poll can be for the most popular bands.

 

[Krow]

They need to not be fucking cunts and just not vote then

No one here listens to metal, they just discuss it on a message board.

 

[Bloopy]

The later Mercyful Fate albums have generally been making it into my top 10 lists for their respective years. I enjoy them more than most of the King Diamond stuff. I just need to hear them again before I have a clue how to rank them.

I'm 50/50 on how I'm gonna select the next batch of bands. One option is doing what I've been doing. The plus is it's democratic. The negative is people choose discographies they don't actually listen to and therefore don't actually vote in the threads.

Stick with that method but keep a naughty list of those users so their nominations don't count unless they had a legitimate excuse. Then the rest of us can get on with nominating discographies we'd actually rank.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

The later Mercyful Fate albums have generally been making it into my top 10 lists for their respective years. I enjoy them more than most of the King Diamond stuff. I just need to hear them again before I have a clue how to rank them.


Stick with that method but keep a naughty list of those users so their nominations don't count unless they had a legitimate excuse. Then the rest of us can get on with nominating discographies we'd actually rank.

That’s a really good idea.

 

[The Ozzman]

No one here listens to metal, they just discuss it on a message board.

Some people here don't even discuss metal at all.

I choose bands I want to rank. It makes zero sense to choose bands to have ranked when you don't plan on ranking them yourself. You're just cheating people by doing that.

 

[Omni]

1. Melissa
2. Don't Break the Oath
3. In the Shadows
4. Into the Unknown
5. Dead Again
6. 9
7. Time

I don't hate any of these, but 4-7 are fairly boring overall. In the Shadows at least has some enjoyable songs.