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GD's Most Dominating Albums Of The 1990's (80-71)

31/03/07 || Global Domination

80. Trouble: Trouble
^{Released: 1990}

Black Sabbath clones are literally a dime a dozen, but no one took that style and made it their own quite like Trouble. While the band’s previous albums were a strange morass of Christian lyrics and deep, slow burning depression (and excellent in their own right), the band kicked the speed up and toned down the Christianity for this one. The result? “Trouble” flat out rocks.

The driving riff that opens “At the End of My Daze” would make Tony Iommi a little jealous and the album never really slows down from there. Even Eric Wagner’s vocals, usually quite flat, make you want to jump up and head bang. In a lot of ways, these songs are the embodiment of what the classic metal sound should be in a modern setting; memorable, riff-driven and delivered in heavier boxes than even Sabbath could have envisioned. Trouble hit their peak with this album and it will always be a shame they didn’t get more attention for it.

-Stephen Fallen

79. Ulver: Nattens Madrigal
^{Released: 1996}

Many less-than-hardcore metal fans would consider “Nattens Madrigal” to be unlistenable and far from the best album of the 90’s. It has all the classic aesthetics of black metal: ultra-fast, distorted, horrendously produced, treble turned up to 11, and strikes you like auditory acid. It’s easy to write the album off after one listen, but its true beauty comes out when you pick apart the music on successive listens.

“Nattens Madrigal” has that hazy, droning effect similar to Darkthrone’s “Transylvanian Hunger”, but is infinitely harsher than the latter. Whereas Darkthrone’s soft production invited listeners inside to relax, Ulver’s production guards the door with a rabid, blood-thirsty midget.

This, my friends, is why you must be prudent with this album. Many mournful and beautiful melodies lie just beneath the abrasive surface. They would never reveal themselves during a casual listen. Ulver mastered the pretty/ugly dynamic early in their career and used it to create some truly masterful music.

-Hanging Limbs

[Full Review]

78. Angel Corpse: The Inexorable
^{Released: 1999}

Relentless. That single adjective sums up my feeling about this violent piece of death metal that Angelcorpse managed to weave and unleash unto the unprepared masses. They managed to flow through the scope of old school black/death metal and the hyper-blasting spasmodic assault of the new school with ease, taking selected pieces from both realms to cook the listener a vicious and succulent piece of metal.

It is an album so intense and pictorial one gets carried away on describing it with epic and gruesome metaphors. Is it like being skinned alive by a bunch of vultures while being nailed to a cross assembled with infants’ bones? Of course it isn’t, but once the album is spinning one can’t avoid conjuring such brutal images.

Angelcorpse honed its craft from album to album and The Inexorable is near perfect example of what a death metal album should sound like. And did I ever mention Pete Helmkamp is one of the best death metal lyricists ever?

-Tiago Bonamigo

77. Ministry: Psalm 69
^{Released: 1992}

This album contained the minor “hit” song and video “Jesus Built My Hotrod”, which single-handedly launched a whole new scene upon the masses. I remember it getting heavy play on MTV, and I must have spun it 100 times during a summer stint as a radio DJ. The influence of “Psalm 69” and their “Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste” album are still felt today, for better or worse, and helped to make electronics in metal sound “cool”.

-Chazz

76. Darkthrone: Transylvanian Hunger
^{Released: 1994}

Yet another one of those “Duh” albums, as in “Duh, this is going to be on any top metal albums of the 90’s list”. It would be easy to listen to this for the first time in 2007 and dismiss it as simple, under-produced crap. Hell, there are many metal fans that heard this album in 1994 and had that very opinion. Nevermind the naysayers. “Transylvanian Hunger” is a classic.

It’s hard to imagine black metal without Darkthrone. Genre adjectives such as “grim” and “cult” may have even originated with this band. I don’t know if they did, but go research it and get back to me.

The music is indeed pretty grim.

And cult.

And cold.

And full of hate.

Stupid black metal descriptions aside, Darkthrone’s limp recording is actually pretty soothing. Was it intentional? Who knows, but whenever I listen to this album, I always picture myself laying in bed and staring up into a multi-colored pinwheel spinning psychedelia. The album-length hypnosis may lack aural dynamics, but for some reason it works.

It just fucken works.

-Hanging Limbs

[Full Review]

75. Anathema: Judgement
^{Released: 1999}

These Brits were always known for evolving into more rock-oriented styles, and “Judgement” stands somewhere at the crossroads of two styles – doom metal and rock. The Cavanagh brothers took the sorrowful ambience of doom and mixed it with rock-laden guitars and passages. It turned out great, like nothing before. Albums like this one are sometimes the work of luck, but I’m sure that luck wasn’t a significant factor during the recording sessions for “Judgement”. The thing that probably helped substantially is called “genius”. Yeah, a genius album to say the least.

-Rafal

74. Prong: Cleansing
^{Released: 1994}

Oh, what a sweet piece of history for all metal heads! Snap your penis, snap your cock is one of those songs that just bring us back to a wonderful time period. These were the days we’d sit around the garage listening to metal and just doing shit that’s not looked upon with high esteem. Prong’s “Cleansing” album is easily their pinnacle, and one of the great early discs that Terry Date worked on (“Vulgar Display of Power” another during this time period). Prong came out of virtually no where with an album that helped to solidify the importance of GROOVE in heavy music. This album is just full of integrity and awesome songs. I’d suggest throwing it on every month or so just to remember, and pay tribute to one of the fore-fathering bands of groove.

-Syrrok

73. Melvins: Stoner Witch
^{Released: 1994}

If you’re puzzled about the importance of Melvins and what the hell they’re doing on this list, well, they were the first post-punk band to start borrowing those Sabbath tones. And although not every album is all that, this one definitely is. Why? Because it shows all sides of this multi-faceted band, and does so in a way that’s quite irresistible, and very, very cheeky. There really is something in this album for everyone, from pounding rhythms with wild joyrides of noisy, crunching riffs and sleazy loungy songs suitable to strip to, to hypnotic ambient drones. The album even sports two classic rock type tracks, and throughout there’s melody aplenty. Well paced, and with plenty variation, it’s almost impossible to become bored with the album. And it’s guaranteed to change your mood for the better. Or the naughty. Whichever comes first.

-Tash

[Full Review]

72. Disembowelment: Transcendence Into The Peripheral
^{Released: 1993}

The early 90’s saw doom metal take a turn for the ugly. Some bands, like Thergothon, slowed it down and made soul crushing atmospheric funeral doom. Others, such as Winter, added a death metal kick to the typical gloom and doom attitude. Australia’s Disembowelment took both approaches, blasting like a death metal band at times, then dropping to a crawl and suffocating their listeners beneath a ton of slow, heavy and distorted riffs.

Though this album is great for a variety of reasons, one of its strongest points is the production. “Transcendence…” sounds like it was recorded in cave, with each member being progressively deeper. The drums are up front and clear and the guitars are a bit further in with a little echo and lot of distortion. Behind it all, the vocals are issued from the deepest bowels of the earth, only reaching the listeners ears after being ricocheted off hundreds of feet of rock. The end result is an ugly, chilling sound you can only find on this album.

Disembowelment only issued one album, but it was a hell of an outing, memorable for using death and doom metal to create a uniquely despondent atmosphere. It’s a shame that they won’t pass this way again…

-Stephen Fallen

71. Arcturus: Le Masquerade Infernale
^{Released: 1997}

Arcturus is one of the strangest bands to come from the black metal scene, but also one of the best. Their disturbing brand of carnival metal does justice to the “supergroup” tag they get labelled with. This is the album that propelled them from an above-average black metal group to one of the most unique bands in metal. Lucky for all of us, the songwriting only improved after the change.

I can’t think of a band either Hellhammer or Garm has been a part of that I haven’t liked at one point or another. While they both add a ton of character to “La Masquerade Infernale”, the star of the show is keyboardist Sverd. Some of the stuff he comes up with is out of this world. He is definitely the soul of the band.

Although this is the album that people most often associate with Arcturus, let me take a minute to pimp the follow-up: 2002’s “The Sham Mirrors”. The drumming and keyboards on that disc are stunning. It definitely gives “La Masquerade Infernale” fierce competition as the best Arcturus album.

-Hanging Limbs

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