Tag: Album Rankings

Slayer – The Album Ranking

On By bigbadburchIn Album Rankings3 Comments

Before I even get started, yes I was working on this post before last week’s news of the two reunion shows.

Slayer compiled a run of eleven studio albums in their 37 year long career* and have been one of heavy metal’s most prominent acts through that time. Finally today I offer up my ranking of their studio efforts.

Slayer is an interesting case in album rankings – often when I do a ranking there are one or two albums at least that I think are awful and not even worth listening to. In Slayer’s case I actually had to play a few albums to decide the bottom of the list, as everything from their tenure has merit. They don’t have, in my view, an album that should be thrown in the trash. But they still have some that are better than others, and in cases way better, so doing a ranking isn’t all that tough.

This will comprise Slayer’s full-length studio albums. It won’t include EP’s like Haunting The Chapel or the covers album Undisputed Attitude. Even with last week’s news that Slayer are reuniting for a couple of festival shows after a five-year retirement, I do still figure that this ranking will be final as I’m not expecting new studio material. My guess is that Slayer is not getting back into full-time activity and are simply doing a few shows as they previously said they might. But I could be wrong and they might screw around and cut another record someday, hell if I know.

I have covered a handful of these in detail before, I’ll leave links to those posts when applicable. That’s about all there is to go over, let’s have at it.

11 – Repentless (2015)

The bottom of the barrel here is the final album from Slayer. This was recorded and released after the death of guitarist Jeff Hanneman in 2013. Gary Holt, who had been filling in on tour for Hanneman since 2011, would play guitar but not contribute writing-wise.

This album is fine – it’s a no-frills, heavy metal attack that gets to where it needs to go. It is missing something, that probably being Jeff Hanneman. It doesn’t have much dynamic flair to it and doesn’t really stand out to me. I’m more than happy to play the album but I’m not really thinking much about it when the last song heads out.

10 – Diabolus In Musica (1998)

Slayer chose here to “fit in” to the times, which at this time was nü-metal. This record doesn’t lack for groove or chunky, downtuned riffs. It does retain the “Slayer sound” and isn’t some radical departure, but it does stand out as maybe Slayer’s left field moment in their catalog. There are nice moments on here like Stain Of Mind, but the production is honestly a bit undercooked and the album feels very samey.

9 – God Hates Us All (2001)

Infamously released on September 11, 2001, this album saw something of a return to form for Slayer. This one is straightforward and brutal, leaving behind the groove tendencies of is predecessor. This one still though lacks real memorable spots that define the band’s greater works. Probably most memorable is the line from New Faith, where Tom Araya screams “I keep the Bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies can affect me!” Pretty crazy stuff there.

8 – World Painted Blood (2009)

This marked the final album with Slayer’s original line-up, Dave Lombardo would leave and Jeff Hanneman fell ill and died after this. This album is a mixed bag but it’s full of songs that work well and get the job done. Stuff like Hate Worldwide and Unit 731 hits hard and leaves an impression. The band sound cohesive and maybe with a bit more bite than normal on this one.

7 – Christ Illusion (2006)

This marked the return of Dave Lombardo to recording for the first time since 1990. This one is a pretty special album, it really calls back to classic records like South Of Heaven and Seasons In The Abyss. It’s a lean and polished affair here, songs like Jihad and Skeleton Christ were great to hear after several years of Slayer being “in the wilderness,” relatively speaking. Massive return to form.

6 – Divine Intervention (1994)

Slayer entered this record with their first line-up change, replacing Dave Lombardo with Paul Bostaph. The results were pretty killer – the album could be called static but it still packs a hell of a punch. 213 is a haunting near-ballad about Jeffery Dahmer, and songs like Dittohead and Fictional Reality hit out at issues in the real world. It was a great way to get over the hump of losing a dynamic band member.

I’ve covered this one before as an Album of the Week.

5 – South Of Heaven (1988)

Slayer had just offered up one of thrash’s most unbelievable albums two years prior. Rather than try to record that again, they took the wise step of slowing things down and operating at a different tempo than before. While the departure from speed alienated a few fans, many more were drawn to the expanded dynamics found here. Mandatory Suicide is an absolute banger about the horrors of warfare and Silent Scream still thrashes even at a bit slower pace. Whoever tuned out on this album truly missed out.

4 – Hell Awaits (1985)

The second album took what worked on the first and tweaked the formula a tad, injecting more Mercyful Fate influence and also leaning more toward the thrash that Slayer would become famous for. This one is pretty lean and killer, with awesome songs like At Dawn They Sleep and Praise Of Death jumping out of the speakers.

3 – Reign In Blood (1986)

It is the seminal thrashsterpiece that is still spoken of in reverent tones 38 years later. This was a nuclear warhead dropped on the metal soundscape in 1986, played with such speed and ferocity that many people couldn’t comprehend what they were hearing. It is the landmark by which all after has been judged.

It is a fantastic album, bookended by a pair of more dynamic tracks in Angel Of Death and Raining Blood that really show the band in top form. And everything in the middle is a total beating, which is a compliment but also the reason this one ranks at number 3. I just honestly don’t always want my ass whipped, and this album does exactly that. I love it, but damn, lay off a bit, bro.

This one has previously been an Album of the Week feature.

2 – Show No Mercy (1983)

The debut was quite a piece of work – not even quite thrash, though it still gets that label. It’s a mashup of the band’s early influences, those being NWOBHM and the early extreme metal, like Venom and Mercyful Fate. It’s so Satanic that it hurts – in a hokey way, not an actual ominous, evil way. But songs like Die By The Sword and The Antichrist are still 100 percent killer and this one will always hold a special place in my black, cold heart. By 1992 I had all of Slayer’s albums and this one was the one I kept coming back to time and time again, well except for one.

This also has been covered in a past Album of the Week.

1 – Seasons In The Abyss (1990)

Up at the top is the album that Slayer ran into a new decade on. By then, people were used to the band’s new lower-tempo sound, though the faster pace got brought out in spots, such as the opener War Ensemble and the later Temptation. This one is just great from front to back, the militant crunch of the riffs work alongside Tom Araya barking about social ills or various evils. The ending title track is a total masterpiece and this album wins the crown here today.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve also covered this one before.

That does it for the Slayer album ranking. Maybe this is the last time I’ll need to rank Slayer albums, or maybe there’s one more down the road, hard telling. Feel free to share your own top Slayer picks and other ranking stuff below.

Album Rankings – Celtic Frost

On By bigbadburchIn Album Rankings11 Comments

I’m doing another album ranking today. This one wasn’t something I had planned but the gears started grinding on it when 80’s Metal Man did a post recently on one of the band’s albums. Cheers to him for that post and the inspiration to start thinking about this band’s albums.

It’s also a very, very easy album ranking – in the on-again, off-again course of the band’s history, they only had five proper studio albums and one EP that’s long enough to include. This isn’t a scholarly effort like that of ranking Iron Maiden or Saxon records, it doesn’t take a great deal of time or energy to rank the Celtic Frost albums.

For the purposes of this ranking I will include Morbid Tales as a full-length album. The US release was eight songs, which is essentially a full album anyway. I’m not normally a fan of including things that aren’t full-length releases on these rankings but in this case I think the length and the impact of the work are both warranted.

Celtic Frost were a unique entity in heavy metal – their work was along the lines of thrash, though so dirty that it’d help give birth to entire new subgenres. The band never stuck with one sound for very long and they would become a contributor to the emerging doom scene. Avant garde is a term often used to describe some of their music. There was always something more artistic to what Celtic Frost were doing, it was never just a day at the office.

Time to get down to business – ranking the six Celtic Frost albums.

6 – Cold Lake (1988)

The bottom slot, somewhat unfortunately, goes to the album that 80sMetalMan did his retrospective on. Cold Lake is a very complicated album in the Celtic Frost pantheon, being one often viewed with scorn and contempt. Said contempt comes from none other than the band’s main man himself, Tom G. Warrior.

Celtic Frost were derided for going “glam” in this era, though honestly that was far more in pics and videos rather than the music. The tunes themselves are fairly straightforward sort-of thrashy numbers. There are a few false starts and missteps among these songs, which is why I rank it at the bottom. But, the album does have its highlights, like Cherry Orchards, and is far from the disasterpiece it was made out to be. While the album isn’t necessarily a credit to the grim presentation Celtic Frost have in their defining moments, it’s not the boogeyman it’s been made out to be either. And it seems plenty of people have warmed up to it in recent years.

5 – Vanity/Nemesis (1990)

After Cold Lake and its disastrous reception, CF reconvened with founding bassist Martin Eric Ain and offered up this slab of thrashy, goth-rock inspired tunes. It was initially hailed as a “return to form,” but the truth is that it wasn’t really that. It was a different direction for the group, though in reality it isn’t that far removed from its immediate predecessor.

The songs here play out fine enough, but the album isn’t all that exciting. It’s one of those that, for me, is fine to listen to but also doesn’t really move the needle. While Celtic Frost were often a shape-shifting group in their time, this record didn’t necessarily shift into something terribly essential.

4 – Into The Pandemonium (1987)

Speaking of shape-shifting, Celtic Frost did it on this album and did it very well. This was a more refined approach to songwriting, leaving behind the rough and tumble nature of the early albums and investing more atmosphere into the proceedings. It still links to the early records but shifts its leanings to the doom and goth realms, areas where the band also had great influence. Songs like Inner Sanctum and Babylon Fell still offer that classic CF feel, though.

3 – Morbid Tales (1984)

CF’s debut effort was recorded less than a year after Warrior and Ain abandoned their Hellhammer project. This EP/album/what have you would go on to be massively influential in the metal world, and even beyond. Songs like Into The Crypt Of Rays and Procreation Of The Wicked have gone on to be covered by countless metal acts and are in rotation across “best of metal” playlists all over. This is a piece of metal history that is widely responsible for a lot of that godawful noise people are still listening to today.

This one finally featured as an album of the week in June 2024.

2 – To Mega Therion (1985)

The first true proper full-length from Celtic Frost shares the influential lineage spawned by Morbid Tales. This album was a blueprint for death metal, black metal and doom metal. It is one of the most important releases to extreme metal as a whole, joining with Venom and Bathory in that regard. It’s really impossible to overstate the influence of this album.

And what an album it is. Songs like The Usurper and Circle Of The Tyrants are masterpieces. The entire album is a great marriage of savage noisemaking and creepy atmosphere. It’s weird to think what kind of place metal would be in without this offering.

1 – Monotheist (2006)

With all that said, my favorite Celtic Frost album was their final one, released after a 16 year gap between albums. The return was highly anticipated and the resulting album delivered in a way that exceeded notions.

Monotheist sees CF lean heavily on the doom side of things and is a presentation even darker than their pioneering early works. Tom Warrior’s voice added qualities with age (not that he was that old, early 40’s at this point) – his delivery is very fitting for the music. And the riffs and arrangements found here are unrivaled. This was a majestic offering from the band, who looked poised to perhaps lead a charge for a new decade but split up again instead.

That does it for the Celtic Frost rankings and, sadly, this is certainly the final, definitive ranking. The band split up in 2008 due to seemingly perpetual tensions between Tom Warrior and Martin Eric Ain, and in 2017 Ain died at only 50 years old. Warrior has proposed a show or two comprised of former CF members purely as a tribute to Ain, but the book on Celtic Frost’s recording career is long closed.

Even with the long layoffs and a discography on the shorter end, Celtic Frost hold an undeniable legacy in the world of metal. They were one of the most important bands to the formation of the extreme metal scene and their influence is responsible for literal decades of music since.

Album Ranking – Metallica

On By bigbadburchIn Album Rankings9 Comments

It’s time to cap off Metallica week and that means it’s time for my album ranking. I’ll be going worst to first on the Metallica discography, sorting out the cream from the chaff (whatever that really means, I don’t know).

This ranking will include the ten full-length studio albums credited to Metallica. It will not include EP’s , singles, live albums with orchestras, live albums without orchestras, etc. It will also not include Lulu, the 2011 collaboration album with Lou Reed. That one is a bit tricky since it’s a full-length album that features the band in its entirety, but I’m going to go with the typical list that most people use. Also, Lulu is an abomination.

Let’s head into the waters here, I don’t think my list is radically unpredictable (mostly).

10 – St. Anger (2003)

This isn’t a hard call. I can find people in the wild who defend this album, but honestly I think it sounds bad and I have a hard time even listening to it. The production choices are beyond questionable, they’re flat out trash. And the songs are generally a mess. Finding a few diamonds in the shit doesn’t mean the album is redeemed in any way.

9 – Death Magnetic (2008)

This album is far, far better than its predecessor, but it’s still not all that great. The band did sound like they were trying again, but it also does sound like they are trying, rather than succeeding. And the album after this stands as proof that such is the case. There are a few nice songs on here, The Day That Never Comes stands out to me. But it’s not an album I feel like visiting much, or at all really.

8 – Reload (1997)

Kind of a “second half” album to their 1996 effort, Reload is a groove-based, almost blues and country styled album. A departure for Metallica, sure, but a pretty decent sounding effort overall. I do think this lacks real heavy hitters but it’s a collection of songs that are fine enough to listen to. I’d cite The Memory Remains as my favorite.

7 – Load (1996)

The band, not content with their 1991 reinvention, got haircuts and released some alt-metal. The world was abuzz about the physical and musical changes, but honestly they put out some stuff here that I really like. I think the first seven tracks are all bangers, that includes I think all of the singles. I like the last two songs as well – it’s the stuff inbetween that loses me a bit. If that were trimmed up some, I’d probably be ranking this one higher. I do truly think they wrote some really good songs here, regardless of what they were “supposed” to do.

6 – Hardwired … To Self Destruct (2016)

If Death Magnetic was supposed to be a return to form, Hardwired truly was, at least in places. Several of the songs here are the kind of bangers not really heard since 1991, if not even earlier. There are some secondary tracks on this huge album, to be sure, but even some of those are pretty nice. This album did recapture the magic in some way and it was damn nice to hear. The title track and Spit Out The Bone are the best work Metallica have cranked out in a very long time.

5 – The Black Album (1991)

I’d almost be cheeky and rank this lower but that would be dishonest – while I’m not in love with the whole thing, there some damn great songs on here. Wherever I May Roam and Sad But True are stellar songs, a handful of others are very nice and a few are good without being great. There are some, mostly towards the end of the album, that I can’t quite get into, but overall this was a success, both in my book and in the sales book. Can’t really argue with it.

4 – …And Justice For All (1988)

The first album without Cliff Burton could have went any number of ways, but Metallica were able to alter their formula some without sacrificing the core of their sound. Harvester Of Sorrow always gets me going, and One is a masterpiece and one of the band’s most iconic songs. While it sounds odd production wise (and lacking in bass), it makes up for that with a batch of great songs.

And this was the album I talked about in much more detail back on Monday – post here.

3 – Kill ‘Em All (1983)

The debut was a monster of a record – putting thrash on the map when the genre wasn’t a known quantity yet outside of local live scenes. This was very hard-hitting, fast and savage metal that pulled no punches and delivered a fist full of great songs. Not a weak note here and a still beloved collection of metal all these decades later.

2 – Master Of Puppets (1986)

The band’s third album is often cited as a “perfect” metal record, and for good reason. All eight songs are total masterpieces and every note hits hard. The album is crisp, clear and totally devastating. It set the band on a path of superstardom not touched by any other thrash act.

I had this record as an Album of the Week awhile back, here is that post.

1 – Ride The Lightning (1984)

Metallica’s second effort still possessed a bit of the savage energy found on the debut, but the songwriting refinement here ramped things up exponentially. Some stuff still hits heavy, like For Whom The Bell Tolls and Creeping Death. And the band’s first ballad Fade To Black was a metal masterpiece. While some find fault with a few songs on the album, especially Escape, nothing on the record bothers me any. I’ve played this album thousands of times and I’ll likely play it thousands more before I push up daisies.

Ride The Lightning has been an Album of the Week in the past, here is that post.

That does it for the Metallica album ranking. I doubt this is a “final” ranking as I would expect at least one more album, but all that can be sorted out down the road. And while I’ve talked plenty about them this week, this will be far from the final time I discuss Metallica on here – they are a lynchpin in heavy metal as well as my own musical formation.