Stairway to Hell: The 100 Best Heavy Metal Albums of the '90s (pt. 1)!

let the fur fly, metalheads!

Nazareth. Not a lot to choose from tbh.

This is pretty bad.

Chuck kinda hated early-'90s ROCK, methinks.

hahahaha wtf

Oh kewl thanx for doing this! This is the first time I'm seeing these and I'm tickled, particularly by the Babe Ruth and Nazareth best ofs. Only artist I've never heard of is Dede Trake.

I'm going with my fave GnR, The Spaghetti Incident? which promised a much brighter future for Axl than the reality we got. Just think of how fun it would have been if he rode out the 1990s interpreting the hard rock/heavy metal/punk songbooks. By 2009, he would have already hooked up with Stephin Merritt.

But wait - were these addenda really about the 1990s only or just shit he forgot the first time through?

shit is the right word in this case

it is what it is. any '90s releases (or re-releases, in several cases) were eligible for inclusion i believe--so long as they were good enough, natch. as to why he picked these particular platters (as opposed to yr standard death/black/grind/doom/et al), i'm sure Chuck will be along sooner or later to enlighten one and all. don't shoot the poll-starter, ktxbye.

There was no sass in my post; just an honest question.

oh, i know, kjb--that wasn't aimed at you (or anyone in particular, for that matter). let's just call it a preemptive strike on my part, shall we. sorry 'bout that.

also, the GnR was more Duff's album--conceptually at least--than anyone else's, wasn't it? that's always been my understanding anyway. i'm pretty sure Axl just phoned his performances in for the most part--just happens that he's really great at doing just that. he kinda sucks when he's trying too hard, imo.

Oh really? I didn't know that. Well then substitute "Axl" and "he" above with "Duff" or just "GnR."

yeah, Duff was the Dolls/Thunders freak in the band, apparently, thus those particular punk covers.

Uh...what was the question again?

I'm voting Babe Ruth.

were these addenda really about the 1990s only or just shit he forgot the first time through?

Not so much "forgot" as "didn't think of" or even "didn't know about." But I don't get the first half of the question. These were all actual '90s releases, whether they had music recorded in the '90s on them or not.

is that still the best Babe Ruth comp available, Chuck, or are there better ones out there?

It's the only one I've ever heard. Their actual '70s albums are worth seeking out, though.

Chuck kinda hated early-'90s ROCK, methinks

Yeah, it pretty much sucked, right? Except for stuff that came from Mexico or places like that. But I probably did underrate it, a little. (And it's not like late '90s rock was all that much better -- these go through 1997 or so; second edition came out in 1998.)

"Yeah, it pretty much sucked, right?"

Man, last time I listened to Cowboys from Hell and Vulgar Display of Power, they pretty much slayed.

Bill, there must be loads of your favourite 90s albums on this list!

I didnt see anything up there that I'm especially fond of

Youth Gone Wild: Heavy Metal Hits of the 80's volume 1
1. Rock You Like a Hurricane - Scorpions
2. Talk Dirty to Me - Poison
3. Last in Line - Dio
4. Lay It Down - Ratt
5. Never Enough - L.A. Guns
6. Parental Guidance - Judas Priest
7. Blind in Texas - W.A.S.P.
8. Ace of Spades - (Ex) Cat Heads
9. Balls to the Wall - Accept
10. Street of Dreams - Rainbow
11. Screaming in the Night - Krokus
12. Summertime Girls [Studio Version] - Y&T
13. We're Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister
14. Cum on Feel the Noize - Quiet Riot

haven't heard the Ace of Spades cover & assume it sucks, but still, this. prefer Prodigy to all but I cannot accept Prodigy as heavy metal. am totally open to the possibility that this is a personal defect in my aesthetics btw not startin shit just saying I love that Prodigy album but cannot vote for it in a metal poll.

But I don't get the first half of the question. These were all actual '90s releases, whether they had music recorded in the '90s on them or not.

That's what I meant - recorded in the 1990s. So I can understand Babe Ruth and Nazareth and Laughner, etc. But I don't get how the live Heartbreakers counts as a 1990s release. Was there a particularly noteworthy 1990s reissue?

None of the above. Best album on the list is the Naçao Zumbi one, but honestly, they got better after Chico Science died.

xp Yep, ROIR put Live At Max's out on CD in 1995, with four bonus tracks.

Never got the appeal of Pantera. At all. Especially when people claim they sound like "Southern rock," yeah right. Do wish I'd included some Anacrusis and My Dying Bride and Wildhearts in the book, though.

Still have never heard anything by Tea Party, Doctor Butcher, Dearly Beheaded, or Mourning Sign (all of whom Martin Popoff thinks were pretty great.) Or Mekong Delta (who sound interesting, from his description.) So I'm not claiming I didn't miss anything (or that I wouldn't pick several different albums, were I to re-write the book.)

Disagree that Nacao Zumbi were better sans Chico Science -- not even close -- but Futura from 2005 was pretty good. (They probably did get heavier after he died, though; I'll give them that.)

8. Ace of Spades - (Ex) Cat Heads
...haven't heard the Ace of Spades cover & assume it sucks

Weird -- my copy of that comp had Motorhead's own version. Maybe they changed it up on later editions, due to a copyright issue or something? (Bizarrely, Lemmy's later not-very-good rockaibilly band is called Head Cat, right? But the Cat Heads were a band from San Francisco, featuring Alan Korn, a lawyer specializing in " art, entertainment, intellectual property and business law"! AMG says "Babbit and Korn immediately formed the (ex) Cat Heads after the group's demise." That is so wacky.)

Here is the website for Alan Korn's law practice, which gives a shoutout to Flipper on the release of their crappy new studio album!:

http://www.alankorn.com/

That Voivod album's not their best but it's pretty good.

And I'm actually a little surprised you never heard (Windsor's) Tea Party, xhuxk. Were you not in Detroit during the 90s?

Nope, mostly Philly. Then New York at the end. Did they get played on Detroit's rock stations much? (I mean, maybe I did hear them sometime, to be honest. But if I did, I didn't know what I was hearing.)

And Outer Limits may actually be my favorite Voivod album, oddly enough.

I think, despite both nominally being metal fans in the '90s, that we had totally separate listening experiences, Chuck. It's just weird to look at this list, from the time that I was most into metal in my life, and see barely any of it that I recognize—that I even feel qualified to vote on. Like, I don't think I ever would have bought a best of, and qualifying something that's a reissue of some prior decade's work as a '90s album just seems like a tremendous cop-out.

I know that I'm biting at the bait just like everyone else regarding the intentionally provocative lists, but I was listening to Sepultura, Metallica, Anthrax, Ministry, Slayer, Death, Morbid Angel, Pantera, Emperor, Mayhem, Cathedral, Immortal, Eyehategod, The Melvins, Kyuss, Sleep, Electric Wizard, Helmet, Therapy?… And a whole host of local Detroit-area metal and Amphetamine Reptile stuff and… Man, reading this, it's just, like, looking at a list made by someone whose taste has ossified and who is wildly out of touch with the genre they're pontificating on—even though I know that's not really the truth.

And it seems like a shame to talk about this stuff as if it was the best metal qua metal. I know, I know, it's just a list and a bit of a piss take at that, but it reminds me of how many times I was told as a teenage that what I was listening to was just noise, man, not real metal like Led Zep, they were awesome I saw them right before Bonham died etc. If I had to listen to that fucking cassette of Molly Hatchet on the tape deck at the Mexican joint I worked at one more time, I was going to fucking stab someone, and reading this list, it's like listening to someone saying, yeah, heh heh, wasn't that great? Fuck no! my teenage self shouts, It fucking sucked!

None of this is your fault, y'know, and there's a lot of stuff there that I do love, regardless of its connection to TRV METAL. But it's rubbing on that sensitive adolescent spot from when I really did care about all of this and was constantly arguing with people who thought that metal meant '80s metal, and there's a little too much of that in this list.

That all said, out of the eight of these I own, I'm not sure whether I'd go with the Eels or GNR. I don't think that Toten Hosen album held up all that great (it might be my rusty German), I don't think Fat of the Land plays well all the way through, Sublime is still here mostly because no one else will buy it, and while that's my favorite Hole album, I just don't think it's in the same league when it comes to metal. One of the best pop albums of the '90s, sure.

Not sure why Soundgarden didn't make it in, but I think they're only sentimental favorites for me. In trying to listen to their music again, it's a lot more turgid and dumb than I remember it.

Did you ever listen to Paw? I only really remember that "Jesse" song, but they seem like they might have been up your alley.

Soungarden did make it in -- The A-Sides best-of CD, at #82. (Remember, the list above is only the first 25 out of the 100 '90s albums I added. And also remember, the Screaming Life EP had been #445 of the original 500. Still think that's their peak, and I'd long stopped paying attention to them by the time they had actual MTV hits, which then made me slightly start paying attention to them again. Never thought their albums were all that great.)

Liked a Paw video once, I think.

Of the '90s bands you listed, the only ones I have much use for, even now, are Therapy?, Electric Wizard, and maybe Cathedral, all of which I'll concede should probably have made it into the book. Maybe Immortal's Sons Of Northern Darkness, too -- not so much to listen to, as to make fun of the giant pitchforks and bottle brushes they're weilding on the CD cover. (Didn't come out until 2002, though!) Not so sure about the rest. (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Ministry all have titles in the original 500, but were comparatively blowing chunks by the '90s, as far as I could tell. Not that a couple of them were ever all that great in the first place.)

a list made by someone whose taste has ossified and who is wildly out of touch with the genre they're pontificating on—even though I know that's not really the truth

Nah, it probably was the truth to a certain extent. Except for the "pontificating" part. Well, maybe a little bit. But if I was "out of touch," it was the music's fault more than it was my fault. Shit just wasn't holding my attention. So I looked for other stuff that did what "real metal" was supposed to do, but did it better. Or at least seemed to, to my jaded ears at the time. (And yeah, like I said, I did miss out on some good stuff in the process. Just not as much of it is some people pretend I did.)

The Electric Eels: God Says Fuck You

A band that wanted YOU to suffer for THEIR art. And you did. I reviewed these guys once. They were amusing on a couple of songs about sissies, particularly if saw the pic of the guitar player -- witha bulld like Ray Nitschke's, kitted out as a cross-dresser.

"...(this) physically demanding hermit-rock is all I thought it'd be after reading reviews off and on for years..."

This quote of mine is actually in an Amazon blurb for one of their records. Physically demanding hermit rock -- damn right.

xp I promise, Giorgio, that the next time I see a used Paw CD for under three bucks, I will buy it on your recommendation. (Though I'm pretty sure I bought one on somebody else's recommendation once before, and wasn't impressed enough to keep it that time.)

Always kind of wanted to like Sepultura (and later Soulfly), fwiw - at least when they tried to do the Brazilian percussion stuff, which was interesting in theory. Only problem was, bands like Chico Science and Nacao Zumbi were 100 times more rhythmic at it, and didn't force you to listen to some nincompoop thowing up his lunch on top.

tiamet's wildhoney is one of my favorite albums of the 90's. and i love the slumber album too. those are the only actual 90's albums that i love on this list. though i really do like the hole album too.

Mmm, I raved too much about The Tea Party during my first year on ILM and kinda regret it now. I still stand by what I said about The Edges of Twilight tho: "What it lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in width". (They had that Led Zep metal/folk/blues/world music thing down.)

"Never got the appeal of Pantera. At all. Especially when people claim they sound like "Southern rock," yeah right."

I think you may be thinking of Down here, Chuck. Ive never heard Pantera looped in with "southern rock" other than the fact that they are, in fact, southern.

i liked tiamat 'wildhoney' at one point. it was pleasant, ambient metal that never felt particularly extreme despite its moods. it struck a similar chord with me as the gathering's 'mandylion' did. interestingly enough, i don't listen to that album much anymore either despite being enchanted by it once upon a time.

Suede? Metal? Suede? That's an extraordinary parallel universe where the possession of a pedal is enought to make you metal. On those grounds, going with John D and Youth Gone Wild. And it's got Dio, Accept and Priest. Kudos to the Business for launching Oi! Against Racism, arguably the most pissing-into-the-wind political movement since Stalinists Against Purging.

man, Pantera and Sepultura were probably the two bands most responsible for my disgust with practically all things heavy back when they got actual MTV play. what exactly was their appeal again? that they were hard? and loud? and heavy? and so fucking what? so were the Butthole Surfers, who were at least funny and not so full of shit some of the time.

Pantera could get a nice tight groove on, plus the 'Bag always came up with some real tasty licks. The soundtrack to my 20s.

Hard loud heavy and funny in the '90s, how about Monster Magnet?

"I promise, Giorgio, that the next time I see a used Paw CD for under three bucks, I will buy it on your recommendation. (Though I'm pretty sure I bought one on somebody else's recommendation once before, and wasn't impressed enough to keep it that time.)"

Heh. Maybe a dollar—I'm in the dubious position of recommending an album that I sold back years ago. But my hunch was that the reasons that I sold it back might be things that would appeal to you. At the very least, I think "Jesse" was one of the better songs about a dog in popular music (coincidentally, The Spaghetti Incident has one of the others).

Also, my name's Josh. I suppose if I want to be called that, I should stop fucking around with the display names, but it took me a minute to recognize who that comment was directed to.

what exactly was their appeal again?

Their music was ugly. Big fucking whoop. (Honestly, my big problem with metal come the early '90s is that "ugly" is mostly all it seemed to want to be. Which is why I thought it was refreshing when bands like Tiamat and the Gathering later came along, to let some beauty back in.)

you may be thinking of Down here, Chuck.

Who never sounded very Southern rock, either. (I am fairly sure I've heard people claim a Southern rock influence on Pantera on occasion too, btw, but I can't cite specifics now, so I'll drop it.)

Butthole Surfers had actual hooks, at least early on. (First two EPs and first full-length album -- though that was way back in the early/mid '80s) And right, they were funny, too. (And when they eventually had a pop hit, it was way more fun than Soundgarden's hits.)

Leaving Monster Magnet out was a major mistake, though. I'll admit that. I stupidly didn't get into them until the tail end of the decade, after the book had been updated. (In fact, I was mostly oblivious to the "stoner rock" revival in general until, say, 1989 or so; had I heard more of that stuff earlier, I assume I would have been smart enough to replace Hole and Sublime and Suede and Weezer etc. with it.)

"Who never sounded very Southern rock, either."

There's some, albeit minimal, southern influence on Down. Granted, its not exactly the Charlie Daniels Band. What's that tune on NOLA, Eyes of the South I think, that would fit right in on Flirtin with Disaster.

Hard loud heavy and funny in the '90s, how about Monster Magnet?

now that we can agree on.

my beef with '90s metal is mainly that all the UGLY stuff seemed to predominate to such an extent, back when, that you could easily assume that it was all like that. it pisses me off 'cause i missed out on some really good shit--mainly stoner stuff, duh--as a consequence. likewise, hitting my 30's HARD in '94 didn't help much, i imagine.

Pantera was essentially a Texas version of Helmet. Except they looked like heshers as opposed to the prep school soccer team.

but Pantera sounded WAAAAAY uglier--by which i mean grossly/theatrically overly masculine, i guess--than Helmet. (hai, i like girly metal.)

"the possession of a pedal is enought to make you metal"

new ilx username up for grabs, people.

xp Fwiw, nobody ever gives me shit about it, but another subgenre I was almost totally oblivious to when I wrote Stairway (original edition) was early '80s NWOBHM, lots of which I now think was pretty entertaining. Not saying that, had I listened to much Tygers of Pan Tang or Quartz, they would have displaced the Osmonds or Teena Marie. But you never know. (There's not even a single Saxon LP in the book, I mean wtf? Fuck Crue and Maiden, man; that's the real omission.)

oh, i just heard Tiamat's Wildhoney (thanx, thread!), and it's really fuckin' good. late to the show as usual--serves me right for not trusting in the Chuckles, i suppose.

xp

hmm, i always just assumed you lumped the NWOBHM stuff in with yr Priest/Maiden loathing and proceeded accordingly. guess not.

Pretty sure I was under the impression at the time that NWOBHM was just an imaginary invention of the silly British music press (like all those fake techno genres years later), and never really happened. So there's a Diamondhead album in there, that's about it.

Also...No Anvil! Who I barely even knew existed until this year. And no Helix, either, while I'm at it. How come nobody ever complains about that, instead of whining about all the unlistenable stuff I left out?

ah, what would be the fun in that?

xposts but helmet were great and pantera were pish

I like them both.

Pantera was what put me off listening to metal in the latter half of the decade. I was a stoner rock guy back then in my heavy listening (it was also when i was tracking down krautrock and cheap prog rock lps as newer bands weren't cutting it for me at the time(i.e. the music press was pretty poor post britpop. Thankfully I got the internet and got talked into downloading Napster when i didnt want it and discovered so much new and older stuff I never looked back.

xhuxk: Ha, I didn't live in Windsor in the 90s either but don't you get Windsor stations in Detroit? Anyway, I'm not even much of a Tea Party fan at all (though they're better than I used to give credit for), was just a little surprised you never heard them.

Badmotorfinger and Superunknown hold up remarkably well for me personally. I'm a little surprised someone would find them turgid and dumb, actually. I actually think the rhythms were pretty nimble and relatively complex for the genre.

ugliness is a beautiful thing

Well, it can be. And there are shitloads of supremely ugly albums in Stairway To Hell, from Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Metal Machine Music and Last Exit on up. Problem with so many '90s and '00s metal bands isn't just that they were ugly or noisy; it's that they weren't even very interesting about it.

like Pantera

I mean, I've got early Celtic Frost and Voivod and Venom albums in there. And an early Boredoms album, even! But when extreme metal noise (and eventually, extreme noise noise) got to the point where all the supposed "interesting innovations" were happening in barely indiscernible increments, within a more and more prescribed perimeter, so you needed to be an expert with a microscope to even notice them, it started to totally feel like work, and it wasn't fun anymore. So I stopped paying attention.)

("barely discernible," I guess I meant.)

which Wildhearts would you choose, chuck? Earth vs The Wildhearts?

Yeah, definitely. That should be way up there in the '90s addendum; don't think I'd even heard of the band when I wrote it. Might include another album by them, too, but Earth Vs. is by far my favorite.

its easily their best followed by the 2nd one. Fishing for luckies is good but not in the same league as the first 2. Saw them loads of times in the mid 90s.

There's not even a single Saxon LP

Yeah, no Saxon! The first twenty seconds of "Strong Arm of the Law" has to be one of my tip five fave riffs of all time. And almost every guitarist who's ever played loud plays it at least once a year even without having heard Saxon, it's that natural. Also a band great at being intentionally and unintentionally comical. The UK version of The Gods -- without the "we're everyone your parents have warned you about" rap replaced by longevity and actual chart action in their prime.

oblivious to the "stoner rock" revival in general until, say, 1989 or so

I meant 1999 here, obv.

while that's my favorite Hole album, I just don't think it's in the same league when it comes to metal. One of the best pop albums of the '90s, sure.

Esp. after reading a long and passionate post about what counts as 1990s metal, I think it's a bit distorting to call Hole pop and leave it at that (though they were indeed pop, even in the Jane Dark sense of the word, i.e. they were actually popular). Not really busting your balls, though, cuz that ever-fluctuating desire to define is one of the many things I find so fascinating about genre.

They were basically a grunge band. And grunge = metal, right? (Nobody ever argues about any of the other grunge bands in the book.)

They were, yes. But I doubt Courtney Love (or Sebastian Bach) would agree that grunge = metal.

True, but maybe 30% of the world's metal bands deny that they're metal

and 90% of grunge fans listened to metal

and metal mags covered the 1st couple of hole albums era

btw chuck I hope theres Warrior Soul albums in your revised 90s list!

Manowar proclaimed "death to false metal", therefore you can't be metal if Manowar would kill you. So the question is: which bands on the list would Manowar kill? Furthermore, how many original members of Manowar must be involved in your murder for you to be incontestably not metal?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

have to admit I voted for "The Fat Of The Land." Not very metal either, but the revving effect it has on me is similar, and I like it a whole lot more than the other albums on this list. "Hole" is second for me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

rofl
bill to thread!

Who else voted for Voivod?

they voted aplenty for voivod in Stairway to Hell: The 100 Best Heavy Metal Albums of the '90s (pt. 2)!

WAHT

and i demand bill comments on these results

ok cmon this has to have been a set up

speaking as a dude who went back and listened to that prodigy album in the last year, it is so much more fucking dreadful than i recalled

i have no idea how it got in the book ahead of jilted..but thats chuck.

but prodigy were/are covered in Kerrang and prob have more metal fans than most in this list tbf.

You really think Jilted Generation sounds as metal as Fat Of The Land?

I don't, but it sure sucks less.

its better and still had the heavy guitars, its not like the prodigy experience album.
It was the album that kerrang and other uk metal mags started covering them by (along with the live shows) and firestarter/breathe benefited from that. Kerrang polls since then though I think have fat of the land in them instead of jilted so i guess loads agree with chuck.