Okay, after much promises and stuff to several people, I have FINALLY gotten my sh!t together and actually got a list of my Metal Faves.... You have absolutely NO fukkin' idea how difficult this was.... We are talking about covering a period of time of almost 40 years (in other words the history of Metal), from the late 60s to the 00s.... It's been tough as hell to work it all out, but I've persevered and I got there in the end.. I only hope this list does justice to the sheer wonder and breadth that is Metal.....

 

So, here goes, and I'm gonna get this one out of the way first.....

 

NUMBER 60 - WHITESNAKE -STILL OF THE NIGHT

 

This is embarrassing, I'll 'fess up to this, but there is still that very small part of me that likes a bit of this bloody awful 80s Cheese Rock... But this is the real thing, none of yer Darkness 'Novelty Act' bollocks, this is the sort of thing Justin aims for, but falls WAY short of achieving... It's a dreadful cliche now, but when I was 12/13 I bloody loved this tune... Singer David Coverdale was a member of Deep Purple, he left to form Whitesnake and they had a fair measure of success... He then decided to quit Britain and go off to LA, and that is where the story gets interesting.... He teams up with utter GENIUS guitarist Steve 'God' Vai and Whitesnake version 2.0 are born... He then hooks up with model Tawney Kitaen (a real gold-digging bint, but one of the iconic 80s Big-Hair Rock Chicks really, who basically took him to the cleaners when they got divorced.....) and she appears in this and several other of Whitesnake's videos (notoriously straddling cars in the "Here I Go Again" video..). I really like the structure of this song, much more than most other Whitesnake songs, and the guitar work is just breathtaking...

 

NUMBER 59 - HEART - ALONE

 

Yep, a wee bit more 80s Cheese here.... But this was seriously classy and I genuinely still love this tune.... This is the greatest 80s Big Hair Rock Chick Ballad EVER!!!! You can stick Bonnie Tyler "Total Eclipse" up your ARSE... Horrid bloody wonky-faced, split-ends caterwauling Welsh bint..... Horrid.... The Wilson sisters were an altogether more class act than Tyler, and Ann Wilson's vocal range could easily outstrip Tyler's anyday.... As far as I'm concerned, however (and this is probably an even more important point..) there is a direct link between Heart and a lot of these female-fronted Symphonic/Gothic Metal bands.... Nightwish, Within Temptation, Evanescence, Lacuna Coil, et al, have all borrowed something or other from Heart (Amy Lee more than the others I reckon..), and I reckon it's pretty plain to see and hear...

 

NUMBER 58 - TESTAMENT - TRIAL BY FIRE

 

Our John has been quite the Cheerleader for this cool Thrash Metal band, and it's easy to see why... They were very unfairly ignored in the rush to salivate over the likes of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer, because they did some bloody fine tunes as well.... "The Legacy" and "The New Order" are extremely solid records full of high quality Metal tunes, as good an example of the genre as you'll probably find..

 

 

 

NUMBER 57 - NUCLEAR ASSAULT - CRITICAL MASS

 

What's that you say....A Thrash Metal band with an environmental conscience....??? Blimey..... Strange, but true, Nuclear Assault, despite their aggressive-sounding name, really were something of the Proto-type Eco-Warriors... Mind you, I dunno how much carbon one of their shows pumped into the atmosphere.... :lol: , but hey, it's the thought that counts innit..? And these days all is talk of 'carbon emissions' and 'green taxes' and every ruddy pop star and Politician is jumping on the Eco bandwageon these days, so it would seem the Nukes actually started something off without even realising it... It really is sad to think that brilliant music like this will never be played again... The Metalcore bands do try, but I dunno, they just lack that special something the 80s Thrashers had....

 

NUMBER 56 - ALICE COOPER - WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE

 

This man is a fukkin' Rock LEGEND, bow down to him, you are not worthy.... This song is probably gonna be a bit of a surprise to those of you who know him for stuff like "Poison" or "Feed My Frankenstein", but he was a pretty Avant Garde performer in the 70s, and he always put on these spectacular, amazing live performances, well, it was more Performance Art in many ways really, and then, just because he could, he actually appeared on the Muppet Show. Brilliant!!! :lol: .... He almost hung himself once onstage, his 'trick gallows' almost went disastrously wrong.... The likes of Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and Wednesday 13 have basically pinched every trick in the Alice Cooper book.... Enjoy...

 

NUMBER 55 - CELTIC FROST - A DYING GOD COMING INTO HUMAN FLESH

 

Okay, this is probably NOT the best place for the novice fan to start with Celtic Frost, but as a veteran fan of this old-time (and incredibly influential, particularly on the Scandinavian Black Metal scene..) 80s Swiss Thrash/Doom band, I was frankly shocked and utterly gobsmacked by their 2006 release "Monotheist", so this is what yer getting I'm afraid.... :P 'Intense' is a word that gets bandied about so much, and often inappropriately... But for this band, the word barely does them justice at all.... They've come back after a 15-year hiatus with an album that would make most of today's Death/Doom/Metalcore/Nu Metal mongers just totally sh!t themselves..... Simply astounding, but a very difficult song to get into....

 

 

I've decided to be nice, here's one of their 80s tracks - "Circle of Tyrants"....

 

What a great list so far! My faves are definitely Alice Cooper and Testament, and we all have a cheesy rock kid screaming deep inside our souls, so it's okay to have Whitesnake and Heart in the list. They were top classic tunes anyways!

Testament are f***ing ACE! great to seem them in the list, The Legacy is my favourite thrash album.

 

Nuclear Assault are a great band as well imo. Handle With Care is another great thrash album.

 

hmmm not really liking the song from The Frosties, the other video for Circle Of Tyrants isn't as good visualy but i preffer the song. I got Into the Pandemonium, quite a good album when you get into it, which took me some time.

 

Not a fan of hair metal.

 

Not a fan of hair metal.

 

Still better than Emo though.... :lol:

 

Still better than Emo though.... :lol:

true :D

NUMBER 54 - GUNS N ROSES - IT'S SO EASY

 

It's easy for us in 2007 and judge Guns N Roses as being an absolute joke, Axl Rose himself makes this so easy for us to do... If ever there was an example of a Rock Star totally destroying their own band, then this is it... G N R were Axl, Izzy, Duff, Steve and the legendary Slash, only one of those is still in the band today... But when "Appetite For Destruction" came out in 1988, it really did breathe some new life into the bloated LA Metal scene which was already beginning to collapse under the weight of big hair... Axl and Co came along with a dirty, sleazy sounding Hard Rock music which recalled the likes of New York Dolls and had more than a touch of British Punk Rock about it to boot, and "Appetite..." is still an album that should grace any Metallers collection.. "It's So Easy" is the perfect encapsulation of what G N R were all about (and yes, it really IS Axl singing, he's just using the lower end of his register as opposed to sounding like a screech owl... :lol: ), "Sweet Child O Mine" may have been the song that got them famous, but this was their first single and it is far more representative of the "Appetite..." album as a whole, "Sweet Child.." actually sticks out like a sore thumb when you listen to it, the rest of the album is total Sleaze Rock.... Then, unfortunately, G N R became the bloated Corporate scum that they were originally different from, oh dear.... Then accusations of racism and homophobia began to surface - not exactly without foundation, as anyone who's ever listened to that awful song "One In A Million" can attest, and it just got worse from there, internal band strifes, Axl's growing erratic and unreasonable behaviour, and "Use Your Illusion", two quite dreadful c**k Rock albums which were totally out of step with the changing times in the early 90s, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Stone Roses, etc came along and really saved us all from the further growing train wreck that was G N R... Slash and Duff formed Velvet Revolver a while back and never looked back... Axl continues to embarrass himself by trying to resurrect the G N R glory days, and "Chinese Democracy" STILL hasn't actually seen the light of day..... Better to remember them like this really, five young men who only wanted to play the music....

 

NUMBER 53 - TRISTANIA - EQUILIBRIUM

 

Oooooh, this is so gorgeously Gothic this one.... I love the contrasting vocals, the male vocals, very deep (but not growly, which a lot of Gothic Metal does) complementing the fragile beauty of Vibeke Steine's Operatic register... Tristania are a bit different to most of these other Gothic Metal bands, the link to 80s Goth music is so much more pronounced with them when they do tracks like this.. Tristania are Norwegian, and while Norway is well known for its Black Metal bands, what seems to get forgotten are the more melodic, tuneful Metal bands like Tristania and Theatre of Tragedy...

 

Looking forward to following this countdown. I will try and watch most of them when I have time.

Looking forward to following this countdown. I will try and watch most of them when I have time.

 

Hope you enjoy it, tell your brother about it as well... Hope you dont get put off by the Hair Metal though... But you cant really do a list like this and NOT have a bit of cheese.....

Watched them all so far, the Alice Cooper one was probably my favourite. It's weird coz I've never seen him actually look young...

And I admit to liking the Heart song lol. Sort of song you always hear on tv for some 80's compilation cd.

Class song ^_^ His voice sounds great in that type of register

Class song ^_^ His voice sounds great in that type of register

 

Yes, much better than his 'screech-owl' register if you ask me.... :lol:

 

NUMBER 56 - ALICE COOPER - WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE

 

This man is a fukkin' Rock LEGEND, bow down to him, you are not worthy.... This song is probably gonna be a bit of a surprise to those of you who know him for stuff like "Poison" or "Feed My Frankenstein", but he was a pretty Avant Garde performer in the 70s, and he always put on these spectacular, amazing live performances, well, it was more Performance Art in many ways really, and then, just because he could, he actually appeared on the Muppet Show. Brilliant!!! :lol: .... He almost hung himself once onstage, his 'trick gallows' almost went disastrously wrong.... The likes of Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and Wednesday 13 have basically pinched every trick in the Alice Cooper book.... Enjoy...

 

 

you should put up hes 1972 totp performance of "schools out". the one where he has that medieval sword

you should put up hes 1972 totp performance of "schools out". the one where he has that medieval sword

 

Not a fan of that particular song mate, it's been played to death....

 

ive only recently heard it, i think its really good, although it is a blatent atempt to cash in the glam rock scene of 1972, folowing bowie and mud, and the sweet. although bolan invented it and is the best person ever in my eyes and i know evrything ever about him....

 

but i really like the performance of schools out, it was a highlight of glam rock