Essential Studio Albums

[liebzz]

those two Green River and Soundgarden album remain untouchable classics for me, even if i dont listen to them that much. I remember getting to listen to Green River and actually understanding what Mudhoney was trying to do and what Jeff and Stone brought to MLB afterwards.

Re: Green River, especially the latter, meaning Dry As a Bone/Rehab Doll you can hear those roots even more than on Come On Down.

yeah, totally.
And i can understand also why the break up too, if you think about Jeff and Stone love´s for Janes or Gnr and Mark and Steve love for The Stooges for example, you can listen to those two paths on MLB or Mudhoney.

Wholly agree. Could they have managed those divergent directions, come up with some great stuff, and likely had a small but dedicated following? I think so. I also think all of the bands that came out of this particular band were better though.

[liebzz]

Poison - Open Up and Say Ah

There are those albums that you can’t help but turn up the volume and immerse yourself. And then there are those albums you turn way down so no one near you can find out what you are listening to. This falls into the latter category. A fun cover of You’re Mama Don’t Dance, this album is pretty terrible. Can’t figure out why I would have vetoed Bon Jovi and New Kids but didn’t refuse this band. Maybe because I had the CDs when I was 10? If you were waiting for an album to fall below Rick Astley, this is certainly one.

The Essential Track: Your Mama Don’t Dance

Up Next: Metallica - And Justice For All

[wease]

Poison - Open Up and Say Ah

There are those albums that you can’t help but turn up the volume and immerse yourself. And then there are those albums you turn way down so no one near you can find out what you are listening to. This falls into the latter category. A fun cover of You’re Mama Don’t Dance, this album is pretty terrible. Can’t figure out why I would have vetoed Bon Jovi and New Kids but didn’t refuse this band. Maybe because I had the CDs when I was 10? If you were waiting for an album to fall below Rick Astley, this is certainly one.

The Essential Track: Your Mama Don’t Dance

Up Next: Metallica - And Justice For All

Why are you doing this to yourself?

[LoathedVermin72]

Seriously, I think you've tackled more than enough hair metal, liebzz. No one deserves this kind of self-flagellation.

[VinylGuy]

yeah dude, thats enough. Im worried.

[liebzz]

I had a theory when I initially curated this list, which had a lot to do with setting up the hair metal to juxtapose against alternative and 90s rock - a mental demonstration of just how much profoundly greater the moment was when I indeed threw away all my CDs (to be fair a lot of them belonged to older brothers who in turn likely just took a lot of them back), and started over. Early 90s pop just replaced in an instant with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots, then Led Zeppelin, The Who, and the list goes on. The questions that gnawed were whether hair metal was as bad as I projected it to be against what was a changing social tide. Was it shame alone that made me toss all of it or was it that the new stuff was so much better than I recoiled at what was fed to me by MTV, my brothers, and the pop rock world. This is sort of the space where I find that out. So far, I have figured out that the hair metal is as bad as I recoiled, but some of the purer forms of metal, Metallica and GNR’s Appetite in particular, was far better than I gave credit in bunching them with the nonsense…so it has a longer term investment. It doesn’t make it suck any less, which was sort of my hope - I thought I just had major conformity bias. Turns out even if I did, I wasn’t wrong.

[liebzz]

Metallica - …and Justice For All

Shockingly, I haven’t heard this album since the aforementioned purge of CDs maybe 35 years ago, and yet, I seem to remember this album pretty distinctly. I had in recent years revisited Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, but that was largely it. The Black Album probably lived on my shelf long after these, but all that said, I still remember nearly all these riffs, and again note that Metallica was a collateral casualty that should never have been tossed. Speaking of which, this album deals in impacts of war, and of life. It feels like the aftermath of a broken world. It also trades on one of my favorite aspects of this band - long instrumental passages that are as expressive, if not more, than James Hetfield’s vocals. One is their moment to have an MTV hit but it’s no less brilliant, and there’s nearly all amazing songs here, but the 9 minute instrumental To Live Is To Die is my favorite here, and apparently the last co-written with the late Cliff Burton. This album is intricate and massive all at once.

The Essential Track: To Live Is To Die

Up Next: Megadeth - So Far So Good…So What!?

[wease]

I lived thru all the hair metal shit. You could’ve just asked me.

I will say that Skid Row did kind of rise above all the shit. Maybe not to GnR levels but pretty damn good. (And they blew GnR off the stage when we saw them).

[liebzz]

I lived thru all the hair metal shit. You could’ve just asked me.

I will say that Skid Row did kind of rise above all the shit. Maybe not to GnR levels but pretty damn good. (And they blew GnR off the stage when we saw them).

Good news: Skid Row is on the list.

[Birds in Hell]

Just a few more for '88:

Dinosaur Jr - Bug
Happy Mondays - Bummed
Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Harold Budd - The White Arcades
Bill Frisell Band - Lookout For Hope
Nels Cline - Angelica

I think you skipped Rollins Band's Life Time from '87, unless I missed it somewhere (or it was an intentional omission!)

[liebzz]

Just a few more for '88:

Dinosaur Jr - Bug
Happy Mondays - Bummed
Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Harold Budd - The White Arcades
Bill Frisell Band - Lookout For Hope
Nels Cline - Angelica

I think you skipped Rollins Band's Life Time from '87, unless I missed it somewhere (or it was an intentional omission!)

I am keeping a list of albums I skipped somewhere to get them fit in where I can.

[liebzz]

I think I have small runs of hair metal here on out through 1991, when we properly kill it with 90s rock. I don’t recall going back after that. It’s a small percentage of the overall list as well.

[liebzz]

Megadeth - So Far So Good…So What!

This wasn’t one of the more heralded of their albums, but it made its way to this list somehow. I am actually glad it did because it’s much better than given credit. The instrumental opening track, Into the Lungs of Hell, really shows off what this band is capable of. Liar and Hook in Mouth at the end are both also quite good, but the moment here is taking on the Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK, a nod to punk rock that works fabulously. They even got Steve Jones to play a solo on it to really bring the mash up together.

The Essential Track: Anarchy in the UK

Up Next: Slayer - South of Heaven

[liebzz]

Slayer - South of Heaven

Slayer combines speed and heaviness in such a way, that for me, it becomes cacophonous. I have my moments where I am good with this, and moments where it’s just too much, and so if I needed to learn where the line was for metal music to cross my imaginary line, Slayer is the band teaching me that lesson. I’d say I enjoyed the first four songs here and then it just sort of lost me in that pure heaviness and blinding speed. They deserve their credit but I admit it’s just a shade too much for me to get properly.

The Essential Track: South of Heaven

Up Next: Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

[wease]

How similar are you finding Megadeth and Metallica?

[liebzz]

How similar are you finding Megadeth and Metallica?

At 1988, Megadeth still seems to mostly focus on a thrash not so dissimilar to Kill ‘Em All. They are indeed becoming more operatic if that’s a term, but it’s not to the level of Metallica, who at this point had focused at least the last two albums on multi-part epics with shift changes. Megadeth is maybe incorporating some of that across the whole album, and it’s not one dimensional speed for them, but it’s more focused on shorter songs though somewhat similar sounds and themes. I’ll admit to this point, I am enjoying Metallica a lot more. Megadeth is at this point producing good albums while Metallica is hitting us with all timers. Some of that will shift in the 90s for sure.

[liebzz]

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

Damn this is a great band. Again Iron Maiden remains undefeated in the world of studio albums, with another full of great songs and what feels comparatively like a mix of hard rock and British metal here. Dare I say they come out the gates soft on Moonchild? Doesn’t matter since they bring the house down on Infinite Dreams, Can I Play with Madness, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, The Prophecy and The Clairvoyant. It’s tough to top these guys in the metal-verse.

The Essential Track: The Clairvoyants

Up Next: Cinderella - Long Cold Winter

[wease]

Even tho you’re in a genre that isn’t really my cup of tea, damned if you don’t have me almost wanting to give Iron Maiden a try.

[liebzz]

Even tho you’re in a genre that isn’t really my cup of tea, damned if you don’t have me almost wanting to give Iron Maiden a try.

It’s not really my cup of tea either, but sometimes great bands are great bands.

[liebzz]

Cinderella - Long Cold Winter

I’m not going to sit here and tell you this thing is on the level of many of the great albums we’ve covered, but I will say for a glam metal album, this is pretty damn good. Bad Seamstress Blues/ Falling Apart at the Seams, Gypsy Road, The Last Mile and Coming Home are legit. Don’t Know What You’ve Got Til It’s Gone is their hit here, and it’s not terrible - not that I would really reach for it. Long Cold Winter is a bluesy track that really works well for them. In fact, this band itself is really good, and the only thing really keeping them from taking off is the vocals for me, which are basically like taking AC/DC, twisting their balls, and dumping a gallon of whisky down their throat. Maybe not as offensive as I put it but still.

The Essential Track: Long Cold Winter

Up Next: Kix - Blow My Fuse