These are few of the metal albums which have influenced me the most over the course of 20 years.
1. Ram It Down by Judas Priest : The albums which propelled me into metal. I have enjoyed this album so much I had refused to hear anything else for around 6 months.
2. ..And Justice For All by Metallica : I regard this as the best metal album ever.
3. Korn by Korn : Its Nu-metal but who cares. Its an excellent album with emotional swings you cannot find anywhere else. And its heavy.
4. Dreaming Neon Black by Nevermore : This is heavy thrash with a emotional depth which completely immerses you.
5. Vulgar Display of Power by Pantera : Album cover says it all ( punch in the face ). The most aggresive shit for its time. Still gets my blood boiling.
6. Close To The World Below by Immolation : Its angry, intricate, extreme, brilliant death metal. Got me back into death metal when I had started to lose interest.
7. Individual Thought Patterns by Death : Excellent technical death metal but unfair to single this one out. All the albums by Death are brilliant.
8. Angel and the Dark River by My Dying Bride : This album hooked me into Doom for 2 years. Its probably not the best doom album but its one of the best.
9. Countdown to Extintion by Megadeth : I should probably put this album next to And Justice for All just that I have not heard it as much but still it is one myfavourite. I do like this a notch more than Rust In Peace.
10. Altars of Madness by Morbid Angel : Definately the most insane, technical and enjoyable death metal ever.
11. God Hates Us All by Slayer : Yes, I am not putting Reign in blood. This is definately the most aggresive Slayer album and got in interested in Slayer again.
Freecycle is a grassroots movement ( in UK ) of people who are giving (and getting) still-usable stuff for free in their own towns. Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them.
Its goal is to keep usable items out of landfills. By using what we already have on this earth, we reduce consumerism, manufacture fewer goods, and lessen the impact on the earth
You can visit Freecyle : http://www.uk.freecycle.org/groups/toon/
This is particularly useful for people who are moving homes or students who have just moved to UK.
Families have set up their entire home from using things from freecyle. You can get everything here
1. Free Furniture
2. Free Color TVs
3. Free Electronics / Computers
4. Free Baby's good including stroller's, moses basket etc.
5. CDs and DVDs
For people who want to move home can find a way to get rid of their bulky old furniture.
Old mobile phones, electronics which generally end up in landfill can extend their life.
Baby's good which are of no use when they grow up can find use.
Hope more people start using it as it is the most effective way to save the planet.
Following are my favourite sites to get Metal via torrents
http://www.demonoid.com : There are huge number of active torrents on this site. The best thing I like about demonoid is that you can easily filter out non-metal stuff and choose the quality you want. So if you want only lossless albums you can easily tweak the search options to get them.
http://rockbox.psychocydd.co.uk/ : This is a metal only torrent site with all possible metal genres as sub category allowing you to easily drill down to the music of my choice eg Thrash metal, Death metal etc. As it stands now you can download without requiring a login.
Enjoy !!
I am been into metal for the last 19 year and have enjoyed all its flavours ranging from traditional metal to thrash, death to doom, black to nu-metal, hardcore to hair metal. During the early days I used to buy albums mainly on hearsay as a result I have ended up buying many albums I would not have bought. Then came internet to rescue, a world of metal sites which introduced me to all possible genres and all possible album recommendation.However with limited budget I could not buy all the albums and started cross checking reviews and asking friends before buying albums. Even though this helped me buy quality albums I still had to spend a lot of time cross checking reviews on various sites.
Following are some of the problems with metal review sites.
Some of the sites were biased to particular style
eg :
http://www.teufelstomb.com : Prefers it metal really heavy and biased towards Death, Grindcore etc. Apart from its bias this site is quite consistent with its review given that album belongs to the genre they like.
http://www.anus.com : Biased towards Black metal
Some of sites were not consistent with its reviews and rating. When I say consistent I mean that reviews end up being personal opinions of individual authors which is not much help because it does not tell if the album is really good in comparision to other albums on the same site. If some other author was to judge the album then he would give a very different review. I believe the site needs establish a set parameters and be neutral across genres while performing its assessment. Some examples of sites which suffer this problem.
http://www.metal-observer.com : ( though I like this site )
http://www.chroniclesofchaos.com/ : ( reviews here have definitely lost their consistency )
Some of the sites meet the above criteria, however their reviews and rating are not consistant with my liking. This means that I might like the album they don't and vice-versa or I just can't establish a pattern. Some examples of this are
http://www.seaoftranquility.org/ : Again I do refer this site from time to time.
http://www.rockeyez.com/ : Consistent but mainly features Rock / Hard rock ( not much metal )
So after all my search I have finally ended up with a metal review site which seems to satisfy all the above. The reviews are not biased towards a particular genre, they are consistent across all albums their site, they are consistent with my liking
So here you have it. The best metal albums review site is...
