Carcass clearly played a strong part in helping build the foundation of the melodic death metal scene, yet Necroticism still features ambitious song structures and complex song titles that’d have the average metalhead thumbing through the closest medical dictionary. The addition of young hot-shot guitarist Michael Amott helped push the guitar work into a more melodic territory, especially in the solo department, with him and founding guitarist Bill Steer delving deep into the classic rock and metal playbook for the multiple lead breaks on show. Moving further away from their grindcore beginnings, Carcass’ third album sees the English four-piece introduce more technical and progressive song-writing, yet also becoming more ear-catching than ever before.
Carcass – Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious Perfectly loose, unpolished and borderline muffled sounding, Forest of Equilibrium was an album created to become the deafening soundtrack to late-night bong-rips and ritualist incantations. The crushingly slow tunes crawl along at an almost lethargic pace, with the never-ending waves of downtuned riffs on tracks like “Ebony Tears” stretching well beyond the seven minute mark, while “A Funeral Request” and the epic closer “Reaching Happiness Touching Pain” add outside elements like acoustic guitars and gothic organs. With only the low-end heavy guitar tone and Dorian’s tortured vocals in common with Napalm Death’s material, the band took the sound of the underground proto-doom and stoner bands of the 70s and 80s (and Black Sabbath) and made it their own. Unquestionable Presence is a tremendous sophomore album that shows how ahead of their time Atheist were.įormed by ex-Napalm Death frontman Lee Dorian, who had grown tired of his former band’s growing death metal sound, decided to push extreme music in the complete opposite with his new doom metal group Cathedral.
BEST METAL ALBUMS FULL
While only just a notch over half an hour long, tracks like “Mother Man”, “Your Life’s Retribution” and “An Incarnation’s Dream” feature more notes and twists and turns than most band’s full discographies. Special mention must go out to bassist Tony Choy, who stepped in at the last minute to replace recently deceased Roger Patterson, and who’s powerful bass sound stands proudly along side the technical guitar work of Rand Burkey and frontman Kelly Shaefer. Featuring endless tempo and time signatures, dissonant guitar tradeoffs and an almost fusion/latin jazz-like quality to their rhythm section, Unquestionable Presence is truly the thinking-man’s metal. With the release of their second full length, Atheist firmly placed their foot forward as one of the forerunners of the progressive/technical death metal scene. Symbol of Salvation still holds up as a straight-ahead metal album, and deserves more praise and attention than it received in it’s day. Sadly it all fell apart after this release, failing to become a commercial success, and with Bush poached by Anthrax less than two years later, it would be nearly another decade before Armored Saint released another full length release. While the production was something of a kindred spirit to the first Alice In Chains album Facelift, thanks to their shared producer Dave Jerden, it’s style straddled the classic metal stylings of the early 80s, thrash metal and the European power metal scene. But this doesn’t mean that Armored Saint’s fourth LP wasn't of top quality, with the pumping opener “Reign of Fire” setting the tone with a driving guitar riff and John Bush’s massive vocals. So what albums stood the tallest and made the cut in our top 20 list? Read on and find out… Armored Saint – Symbol of SalvationĪn album that got somewhat lost in the massive musical reshuffle of the early 90s – the traditional heavy metal stylings of Symbol of Salvation were simply out of place in 1991.
From band’s releasing their debut efforts, to older acts finding their footings in a changing time, 1991 was one of the finest years in metal history. In their stead was a whole new crop of bands emerging from various scenes, countries and sub-genres some that would create and expand niche, underground extreme metal, and others that would go on to affect the music mainstream and beyond.